Chapter 6 - The Unraveling of Grant Mercer: Panic Attacks, Canceled Board Meetings, and Bourbon at Midnight
Back in New York, the titan of Mercer Development was falling apart at the seams.
Three weeks had passed since Claire’s disappearance. In the ruthless arena of Manhattan high finance, blood in the water attracts sharks instantly.
Grant sat at the head of the boardroom table on the forty-second floor of his Midtown headquarters. Around him sat twelve of the most powerful institutional investors in the city, along with Daniel Pierce. A junior partner was mid-way through a slide presentation regarding the financing of a new commercial development in Brooklyn.
Grant heard none of it.
His gaze was fixed on his own hand resting on the polished table. The gold wedding band was still there. He had refused to take it off. But the phantom weight of Claire’s missing ring felt like a lead shackle around his wrist.
"...Grant? Mr. Mercer?"
Grant snapped his head up. Richard Vance, the lead representative from a major private equity firm, was frowning across the table.
"Are you with us, Grant? We need your sign-off on the debt restructuring before the close of business today."
Grant opened his mouth to speak, but the air suddenly caught in his throat.
His heart began to pound with violent, erratic thumps against his ribs. The walls of the glass boardroom seemed to close inward. The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed with a deafening, piercing hum. The faces of the board members blurred into indistinct, menacing shapes.
“I can always marry again.”
His own words echoed in his skull like a mocking demon.
“Patient discharged unaccompanied... spontaneous abortion... no heartbeat...”
Grant stood up abruptly, knocking his leather portfolio off the table. Papers scattered across the floor.
"Grant?" Daniel said, alarmed, rising from his chair.
Grant couldn't breathe. He tore at his collar, ripping the top button of his dress shirt off completely. His vision tunneled into darkness. He staggered backward toward the glass door, gasping for oxygen that wouldn't reach his lungs.
"Meeting is adjourned," Daniel announced loudly to the stunned room, rushing to Grant’s side. "Everyone out. Now!"
Daniel grabbed Grant by the shoulders, steering him into his private corner office and shutting the heavy mahogany doors behind them.
Grant collapsed onto the leather sofa, his head between his knees, hyperventilating violently. "I can't... Daniel, I can't breathe..."
"Breathe, man. Look at me. Breathe in for four seconds, hold it, let it out," Daniel commanded, kneeling in front of him. "You’re having a panic attack."
It took twenty agonizing minutes for the attack to subside. When Grant finally lifted his head, his face was pale as chalk, soaked in cold perspiration.
Daniel sat back in a leather armchair, rubbing his temples with deep exhaustion. "Grant, you can't keep doing this. You haven't slept in a month. You’ve lost fifteen pounds. You’re missing investor calls. The board is talking about invoking the leadership incapacity clause."
"Let them," Grant rasped, his voice raw.
Daniel stared at him in disbelief. "Let them? You spent eleven years of your life building this company from nothing! You almost bled out on the floor of a basement office to make this empire happen!"
"And what was it for, Daniel?" Grant asked, looking at his partner with hollow, haunted eyes. "Tell me. What was any of it for?"
Daniel was silent.
"I built all of this so we would never be poor again," Grant whispered, tears tracing clean lines through the dust of his exhaustion. "I thought if I gave her penthouses, luxury cars, designer clothes, and security, I was loving her. I thought my job was to build the castle."
Grant lowered his face into his hands.
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"I never realized that while I was out building the castle, I left my wife to starve to death inside it."
That night, Grant sat alone in his darkened penthouse, an open bottle of bourbon on the kitchen counter. He didn't drink to get drunk; he drank to numb the deafening silence of the thirty-fourth floor. He knew that if he didn't find Claire, if he didn't find a way to beg for her forgiveness—even if she never took him back—he would remain a ghost in his own life forever.
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