Chapter 6
REID
The wedding band rested on the quartz counter, an absolute and damning finality.
The elevator doors had already slid shut. The mechanical latch had clicked into place, sealing the penthouse and leaving me entirely alone.
I stood in the center of the kitchen, unable to move a single muscle. The silver corkscrew I had grabbed just minutes before dug sharply into my palm. The metal edges bit deeply into my skin, but my fingers refused to release their grip.
My eyes remained locked on the island.
Directly beneath the recessed lighting, the teardrop diamond necklace rested exactly where Gwen had dropped it. Beside the custom piece of jewelry sat the plain, unyielding circle of her wedding band.
My brain, ruthlessly conditioned to untangle logistics and manage high-stakes corporate crises, immediately attempted to process what I saw. It was a puzzle. It was a failure that simply required me to isolate the variables and apply a rational solution.
She was upset. She had taken her coat and her purse on her way to the elevator, but she hadn’t gone down the hall to the master suite.
She hadn't pulled a suitcase from the closet.
She hadn't taken her passport, her clothes, or anything of actual substance.
Therefore, the only logical conclusion was that she was just taking a drive to cool off.
She needed temporary space. She would drive around the downtown grid, realize her reaction was entirely out of proportion to the situation, turn her SUV around, and come right back up.
I forced my hand to open. The corkscrew clattered against the floorboards and rolled under the edge of the cabinets.
I walked over to the island and stared down at the ring.
I had purchased it back when Mitchell Energy was nothing but a collection of frantic blueprints and a dwindling, desperate bank account.
We said our I do’s in front of friends and family in a small ceremony.
There hadn’t been money then to host a lavish wedding. Now it could be massively different.
I turned and stared at the closed elevator doors. I waited for the digital floor indicator to light up.
Ten minutes passed. Then twenty.
The triumphant adrenaline that had fueled my body for the last three days of cutthroat negotiations evaporated completely. A creeping, horrifying sensation began at the base of my spine and spread rapidly through my nervous system.
I am removing the obligation.
Her final words played back in my head. They hadn't been delivered with the heat of an argument.
They were completely stripped of anger, devoid of tears, and entirely hollow.
The absolute emptiness of her voice finally bypassed my logical processing centers and struck pure, visceral panic directly into my chest.
She wasn't taking a drive. Women who needed a moment of space didn't slide their wedding rings off their fingers and leave it sitting abandoned on a counter.
I lunged across the kitchen. I abandoned the wine.
I ignored the leather briefcase full of contracts that I had yet to move to the safe.
I grabbed my car keys from the bowl by the entryway and sprinted to the elevator.
I slammed the heel of my hand against the call button, hitting the metal so hard my knuckles instantly bruised.
The descent to the parking garage took half a minute, but it felt like hours of agonizing confinement. The moment the doors parted, I ran. I vaulted into the driver's seat of my car, turning the key. The engine roared to life, echoing sharply off the concrete walls.
I tore out of the garage. The tires screamed as I hit the incline to the street level, merging recklessly onto the avenues of downtown Seattle.
The streets were mostly abandoned as midnight approached.
There was no traffic and nothing standing in my way, yet I felt an overwhelming, suffocating sense of being trapped inside my own collapsing life.
"Call Gwen," I ordered the car’s Bluetooth system. My voice sounded harsh, fractured, and unrecognizable.
Calling Gwen, the digital interface replied.
The speakers hummed. The line rang once. Twice.
“You’ve reached Gwen. Please leave a message.”
I gritted my teeth and gripped the steering wheel until my hands ached. "Call her again."
I merged onto Interstate 5 North and slammed the accelerator to the floorboards.
The engine surged with a deep, vibrating growl, pushing the heavy car to the absolute edge of its capabilities.
The city skyline turned into a blurred smear of lights in my rearview mirror as I broke every speed limit in the county.
“You’ve reached Gwen. Please leave a message.”
"Pick up the phone," I pleaded. The words tore out of my throat, raw and desperate. It wasn't a command. It was a humiliating, terrifying beg.
I was Reid Mitchell. I commanded boardrooms. I dictated terms to massive manufacturing consortiums. I managed thousands of employees and billions of dollars in capital.
I built infrastructure designed to change global energy forever.
And yet, flying up the highway in the dead of night, the invincible CEO was powerless.
I was left a broken man, begging an automated voice message to yield.
“You’ve reached Gwen. Please leave a message.”
My mind frantically began running the math.
I tore through the realities of the geography with the same intense focus I usually reserved for supply chain bottlenecks.
The drive from Seattle to the Anacortes ferry terminal was roughly an hour and a half with clear roads.
If she pushed it, she might make it a few minutes faster.
I glanced at the clock on the dashboard.
It was approaching midnight. The ferry schedule was severely restricted.
The final boat out of the slip to the San Juan Islands departed late in the evening.
If she drove straight there, I still had a chance to intercept her.
I still had a chance to stand in front of her car and refuse to move until she listened to me.
You outsourced your wife.
The accusation slammed into my chest as a brutal, undeniable truth. I swerved in my lane. The tires bit aggressively into the pavement as I yanked the wheel to correct the drift, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
I had been blindly infuriated by her reaction to the necklace in the kitchen.
To my mind, Victoria had simply solved a problem.
I had been locked in a room, fighting tooth and nail to secure the physical real estate that would guarantee our entire future.
I couldn't leave the table. I couldn't stop the momentum.
Victoria had recognized a conflict in my personal schedule. She had executed a solution so I wouldn't have to break my focus. She had bought the apology on my behalf, presenting it to me as a favor, a seamless way to keep the CEO operating at peak capacity.
But as the dark stretches of the Skagit Valley rushed past my windows, the horrifying reality of what I had done cracked completely through my corporate armor.
I hadn't just delegated an errand. I had told the woman I swore to protect that she was secondary to my ambition.
I had told her my time was too valuable to spend on her heartbreak.
I had invited another woman to step into the most intimate space of my life and manage my wife like a disgruntled employee.
I hit the steering wheel with the heel of my hand. A sound of pure self-loathing ripped from my chest, echoing loudly in the sealed cabin of the car.
“You’ve reached Gwen. Please leave a message.”
"Gwen, please," I choked out, staring at the dark highway ahead. The taillights of distant semi-trucks blurred together as my vision swam. "I'm sorry. I am so damn sorry. Please just answer the phone. Tell me where you are."
The only response was the steady, mechanical beep of the voicemail system.
I pushed the car harder. I ignored the speedometer and the inherent risk of the dark roads, driven by a consuming terror that if I didn't catch her before she reached the island, the distance between us would become permanent.
I had starved our marriage. I had fed every ounce of my energy, my passion, and my time to the company, leaving her with nothing but scraps and empty promises.
She had tried to warn me. She had begged for a weekend away at the lighthouse.
She had asked for a fraction of the attention I gave to my business.
I had dismissed her needs as trivial roadblocks to my success.
I had patronized her, assuring her that my neglect was a noble sacrifice for our future.
I took the exit for Anacortes so fast the tires smoked against the asphalt, the smell of burning rubber briefly filling the car.
I tore down the highway, covering the final miles to Anacortes.
And only then did I reach the winding road toward the water.
The shapes of the towering pines closed in around me, dark and oppressive.
The smell of salt water suddenly flooded the cabin through the vents, signaling the proximity of the coast.
I rounded the final bend. The sprawling expanse of the ferry terminal came into view under the harsh glare of the sodium lights.
My foot slammed the brake pedal to the floor.
The holding lanes were completely empty.
I threw the car into park, leaving the engine running and the driver's door open. I sprinted across the vacant asphalt lot. The night air was freezing. A biting wind rolled directly off the water and cut right through my thin dress shirt, but I didn't feel the cold.
I ran straight toward the massive chain-link gate that blocked the vehicle ramp to the docks.
The heavy steel barricades were locked shut. A thick padlock rested heavily against the metal crossbar, an immovable barrier.