In the parking lot at Chicago O’Hare Airport, Nate placed his garment bag into the trunk of his black 2007 Mercedes S600. After paying the parking attendant and driving out of the lot, he assessed the results of his operation with Tori Thomas.
He had not expected the bloodshed, but he had gotten back what he had set out to get, and that was all that mattered to him.
After his ride home, Nate pulled into the driveway of the six-bedroom brick mansion where he had now been living for a year. After his divorce from Monica, he couldn’t take walking through the rooms of the penthouse they had shared for the four years of their marriage. Too many memories, too many reminders of what could have been.
It had to go.
Every now and then, Nate missed that place, as he still missed his wife on occasion.
He told himself to squelch those feelings, replace them with hateful ones. Nate had loved his wife, knew he wanted to be with her from the first day he met her in the clothing store where she worked. He asked her out that day. Six months later, they married.
It was all based on the assumption that she would give him children. A family was what Nate had wanted all his life.
But she made him wait three years, telling him she wanted to build a firmer foundation. Against his will, he waited for her okay for them to conceive, always trying to convince her to get pregnant sooner.
After the three years, she had allowed them to start trying. But it was too late. At the age of thirty-one years old, his wife had gone through early menopause. She would no longer be able to conceive children.
Nate thought that maybe it was something that he could have accepted, just as if she had come down with cancer or some other disease that would have stopped her from giving him a family.
But when he learned from her doctor that this ran in her family, that her mother and her sister had gone through the same thing, and Monica knew it could happen to her, Nate knew he could not just let that pass.
The doctor confirmed for Nate that if his wife just would have allowed them to get pregnant when they first got married, Nate would have had a child or two by the time she had gone through menopause.
After hearing those words, and knowing how much he wanted a family, Nate decided he had a decision to make. Stay with his wife and never have children, or divorce her, get with someone else, start over, and have the family he always wanted.
He decided to divorce his wife. But there was the slight issue of his sixty million dollars.
Divorcing her would entitle Monica to half. Nate told himself he would not pay that woman thirty million dollars for making him wait three years not to have a family.
He spoke with his attorney. Then Nate was reminded of the prenuptial agreement stating that if Monica was ever to commit adultery, she would be entitled to nothing. This was the out Nate needed. The only problem would be getting his wife to cheat on him.
Nate devised a plan and found a young, good-looking man named Lewis Waters, down on his luck, without a job, without money. He set this man up in one of the town houses Nate owned. He gave the man a five-thousand-dollar clothing allowance and five thousand dollars a week as compensation. Nate gave him a new identity as a young, successful real-estate developer. Gave the man a bank account, business cards, and most important, all the information he would need to get Nate’s wife in bed.
The plan worked as Nate hoped it would, but afterwards Nate realized that he still loved his wife, that he had made a mistake in ever devising such a plan.
But it was too late. Monica had found out all about the scheme. And even after Nate begged her not to divorce him, she did anyway, and with Tori’s help, she took him for fifteen million dollars of his money. Nate figured he should’ve felt lucky, considering she only took fifteen, when she was entitled to twice that.
Nate jumped out of his car, retrieved his bag from the trunk, and walked into his house. He stepped across shining hardwood floors, under the towering ceiling, and through rooms with antique furniture set against dark wood walls.
“Mrs. Weatherly,” Nate called out to the woman he had hired a year ago to take care of the house and whatever else he required. Nate laid his garment bag over one of the ten chairs that sat around the formal dining-room table, then stepped into the kitchen, loosening his tie.
On the refrigerator door, there was a note.
Dear Mr. Kenny, Gone for groceries. Will be back soon.
Mrs. Weatherly.
A cold-cut sandwich, sliced carrots, and baked chips sat on a plate under Saran wrap on the kitchen counter. Nate took off his suit jacket and rested it on one of the kitchen chair backs. He grabbed the plate, unwrapped it, sat down, and took a bite of one of the halves.
He stared, glassy eyed, at the far kitchen wall as he chewed. After Tori had gone on the run, it had taken a year to find her, get close to her, win her trust, and finally get his money back. Since his ex-wife lived here in Chicago (and probably felt that he had forgotten all about her), Nate figured it wouldn’t take half as long to deceive her in some similar fashion and take the money she had stolen from him back. All he had to do was decide how.