Chapter 4 - The House of Cards
While Anna was quietly climbing to the top of the Pacific Northwest real estate world, Mark Peterson was drowning in the illusion of his own grandeur.
In Portland, his life with Chloe had quickly turned into an expensive, suffocating cage.
Without Anna at home to manage his schedule, cook his meals, balance his personal accounts, and keep his life running seamlessly behind the scenes, Mark’s polished exterior began to fray.
Chloe was not a partner; she was a consumer. She didn't organize his cupboards or ask about his day. She expected five-star dinners, trips to Aspen, and designer wardrobe allowances. When Mark suggested they save money for a down payment on a larger home, Chloe threw a martini glass against the kitchen tile.
“I didn't leave my ex-husband to live on a budget, Mark,” she spat. “You told me you were a senior manager in finance. Act like it.”
To maintain the illusion, Mark made reckless choices. He began taking massive risks with client portfolios at his firm, chasing aggressive commissions to fuel their lavish lifestyle.
For three years, luck carried him. Then the market shifted.
A high-yield tech fund Mark had pushed heavily onto his firm’s key clients collapsed overnight. Within forty-eight hours, his firm faced a wave of client lawsuits and regulatory audits.
When the managing partners investigated the disaster, they discovered Mark had bypassed internal risk protocols and forged secondary approval signatures to rush the investments through.
He wasn't just fired; he was quietly escorted out of the building by security on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, his reputation in the Portland financial sector burned to ash.
When he walked into his house—the house he had mortgaged to the hilt to buy Chloe a sports car—he found the garage empty.
Chloe’s closet was stripped bare.
On the kitchen island lay a short, typed note from her attorney. She had moved to Los Angeles with a wealthy commercial developer she had been seeing quietly for four months.
Mark sat down at his kitchen table—the same table where Anna had sat wrapped in a blanket six years earlier.
May you like
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, his hand trembling as he searched for Anna’s name. But her number had been disconnected years ago. Her social media was nonexistent.
He was forty-two years old, two hundred thousand dollars in debt, blacklisted from finance in Oregon, and completely alone.
