I spent that night in a Rittenhouse penthouse Prescott did not know existed because it sat inside a blind trust his name had never touched. My father had bought it years earlier and kept it waiting the way people keep emergency supplies they pray they will never need. He did not come upstairs when he dropped me off. He only looked once at my split lip and the mark on my cheek, then at the city beyond the windshield, and said, “Sleep. In the morning we finish it.”
By sunrise my phone had become a weapon vibrating itself across the kitchen island. Prescott had called more than forty times. Adeline had texted a dozen. I made coffee, drank it black, and sat watching the phone buzz while dawn climbed over the city.
When I finally opened Prescott’s messages, they came in waves: rage, command, threat, insult, panic, then rage again. I had been removed from all shared accounts. My key fob to the townhouse had been deactivated. My cards were cancelled. The concierge had been told to dispose of my belongings. I was a parasite. I would be broke by noon. No one would believe me. He would destroy my reputation. I had no last name without him.