Chapter 4: The Morning After the Bill
Daniel Whitmore woke up at 6:47 a.m. with a pounding headache and a dry mouth.
The events of the previous night came back to him in fragments — the private room at Aurum House, Vanessa’s excited laughter, the endless bottles of wine, and the jewelry tray. He remembered handing over Emily’s black card with confidence.
Then the waiter’s pale face returned to his memory.
“All linked cards have been cancelled or restricted.”
Daniel sat up abruptly, ignoring the way the room spun. He grabbed his phone from the nightstand and opened his banking app.
Account Restricted.
This card is no longer active.
He tried the backup card.
Transaction Declined.
He tried his personal cards.
Every single one was either frozen or showing fraud alerts.
“Fuck,” he muttered, throwing the phone onto the bed.
Vanessa stirred beside him, her voice still groggy. “What’s wrong?”
Daniel didn’t answer. He was already dialing Emily’s number.
The call went straight to voicemail.
He tried again. Same result.
By the time Vanessa sat up, Daniel was pacing the bedroom in just his boxers, phone pressed to his ear for the fifth time.
“She blocked me,” he said through gritted teeth. “That bitch actually blocked every single card.”
Vanessa’s expression shifted from sleepy to alert. “All of them?”
“Every single one!” Daniel snapped. “Even the corporate cards. Even the emergency ones.”
He stopped pacing and stared at nothing, his mind racing.
“She changed the PINs,” he said slowly. “Last night. Right after the divorce was finalized. That’s why nothing worked.”
Vanessa frowned. “How did she know to do it so fast?”
Daniel let out a bitter laugh.
“Her father,” he said. “Richard Hayes. That paranoid old bastard probably told her to do it the second the judge signed the papers.”
He sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, running both hands through his hair.
“We spent almost a million dollars last night, Vanessa. And now I can’t even pay for breakfast.”
Vanessa was quiet for a moment.
Then she asked the question Daniel had been avoiding.
“What are we going to do?”
Daniel didn’t have an answer.
May you like
For the first time since the divorce, he felt a flicker of real fear.
Because if Emily had moved this fast with the cards, what else had she already done?
