The Useless Wife They All Feared

Before I made that call, the Hawthorne family had already been backed into a corner.

"They just pulled our last revolving line of credit. If we can't come up with three billion dollars by three p.m., all four fabs shut down and 30,000 employees go without pay."

Edward Hawthorne, Arthur's oldest brother, put down his phone. His shirt clung to his back, soaked with sweat.

In the boardroom at the Manhattan headquarters, all 12 market screens were a sea of red.

Hawthorne Tech's stock had crashed 62 percent, and one overseas settlement account after another had been frozen.

"Abyss Capital has warned every bank on Wall Street. Any bank that gives us a bridge loan will be their next short target."

My father-in-law, Richard Hawthorne, had run the Hawthorne Group for more than 30 years. For the first time, I saw his hand shake as he held his coffee cup.

Meanwhile, I sat at the other end of the conference table, flipping through a catalog from a Fifth Avenue jeweler, trying to decide whether the pink or blue diamond would look better with my evening gown.

Arthur cut off a small piece of strawberry cheesecake and held it up to my lips.

"Open up."

I glanced at the circuit-breaker alerts going off again and again on the screens. Then I leaned in and ate it anyway.

Edward looked over at us, red-eyed. "We're about to get delisted, and you're sitting here feeding her cake?"

"Evelyn hasn't had lunch."

Arthur wiped a smear of cream off my lip. His voice was perfectly calm. "We'll worry about the company. Don't scare her."

As far as they were concerned, I knew nothing about short selling, couldn't make sense of a loan covenant, and wouldn't understand a word about algorithms or patents. I'd only come to the office because I wanted Arthur to take me to Tiffany's to pick out a necklace.

Vera, Edward's wife, was still glued to her four monitors. She'd won a world hacking championship, but two hours in, she still hadn't managed to trace the money through the dozens of layers of shell companies registered in the Cayman Islands.

When her last connection dropped, a warning popped up on the screen.

"Don't waste your time. You can't save the Hawthorne Group."

Vera stared at the words, and the light slowly went out of her eyes.

Catherine closed the patent transfer agreement too.

"A top legal team drafted these terms. If we sign, Abyss Capital gets everything—company shares, the quantum chip algorithms, and all our global patents. If we don't, the lenders will trigger the cross-default clauses this afternoon, and we'll have to file for bankruptcy today."

She was one of New York's most formidable M&A lawyers, yet for the first time, I heard defeat in her voice.

She might not have liked how delicate I was, but she still pressed the lounge key card into my hand.

"Evelyn, go in there and lock the door. Don't come out, no matter what you hear."

Richard spoke up too, his voice hoarse. "Arthur, put your personal trust in her name. At least she'll be taken care of for the rest of her life."

The family was out of options, and yet they still made sure I had a way out.

Then Arthur's phone rang.

He listened for a few seconds, and his eyes went ice-cold.

"Victor Langdon will be here in an hour. He's bringing the four families' private security teams. If I don't sign, they'll make me sign it themselves."

Catherine immediately applied for a temporary restraining order in federal court, but the system rejected her filing. The earliest she could get a hearing was tomorrow.

The last legal way to fight back had just been shut down.

Arthur took my hand. "I'll have the driver take you home to the Upper East Side. Buy whatever you want tonight. Don't wait up for me."

He said it like it was nothing, but I caught a glimpse of the papers he'd just signed.

The apartment, the beach house, his trust fund. He'd left all of it to me.

He wasn't sending me home. He was putting his affairs in order.

Once the car pulled out of the underground garage, I had the driver stop at the Italian place on the corner so I could pick up the lunch I'd ordered for Arthur.

He had a sensitive stomach, and I could hardly let him take a beating on an empty one.

By the time I got back to headquarters with the lunch bag, more than a dozen black Cadillac Escalades were blocking the entrance.

The building's security guards lay on the floor by the revolving doors, and employees were fleeing out the side exits in a panic. Four men stood at the head of the armed group, each wearing cufflinks bearing a different crest: a wolf, a raven, a snake, and a lion.

It had been five years since I'd last seen them, and New York's four families had gotten awfully full of themselves.

What I wanted to know was who'd made them think they could come after my husband.