Chapter 8 - Who Owned Aurelia
After I left the boutique, Harrison did not follow me.
He remained inside with Patricia and the black rising-sun emblem burning in his memory.
At 2:10 that afternoon, he arrived at Rebecca’s office without an appointment.
She refused to see him.
At 2:35, he called Aurelia Group’s public headquarters and demanded to speak with an executive about Wescott Design Group.
At 2:42, the receptionist transferred him to corporate relations.
At 2:50, he asked who controlled Aurelia.
The representative directed him to publicly available disclosures.
By evening, Harrison had hired a corporate research firm.
The researchers traced subsidiaries, trusts, and historical filings.
They found my name in a six-year-old document from Aurelia’s earliest days.
Claire Bennett.
Founder and managing member.
Bennett was my maiden name.
Harrison called me seventeen times that night.
I answered the eighteenth call after Emma was asleep.
“You own Aurelia.”
It was not a question.
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
“I own a controlling interest.”
“How much is it worth?”
“That is no longer your concern.”
His breathing changed.
“My building belongs to you.”
“To an Aurelia subsidiary.”
“My largest clients were yours.”
“Some were companies in which Aurelia invested.”
“The bank?”
“Aurelia has a controlling interest in Meridian.”
“My mother’s house?”
“Aurelia Residential Holdings purchased it after she failed to qualify for financing.”
There was a long silence.
Then he asked, “How long?”
“I founded Aurelia six years before our wedding.”
“You were rich when we met.”
“I was financially secure.”
“You let me think I was supporting you.”
“I paid half our household expenses through the account you rarely reviewed. Later, I paid much more than half.”
“You made me look like a fool.”
“No, Harrison. I protected my privacy. You decided that my quietness meant I was inferior.”
“You watched me struggle.”
“I helped every time you struggled.”
“You could have told me.”
“I almost did, many times.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I wanted your respect before you knew the number attached to my name.”
“I respected you.”
I closed my eyes.
“You called me professionally irrelevant. You planned to use Emma to force me into a settlement. You allowed your mother to describe me as a burden while she lived in a house I provided.”
“I didn’t know.”
“That is the point. You believed I had nothing, so you thought my dignity was optional.”
His voice became smaller.
“Did I earn any of it?”
I could have punished him with one word.
Instead, I gave him the truth.
“Yes. You earned many projects. You are talented. But Aurelia gave you access, stability, introductions, and time. You treated every advantage as proof that you were superior to everyone who lacked it.”
“Can Aurelia save the company?”
There it was.
Not an apology.
Not yet.
A request.
“Aurelia already offered to invest.”
“The offer with the emblem.”
“Yes.”
“I rejected it.”
“Twice.”
“Can you send it again?”
“No.”
“Because of the divorce?”
“Because your company’s condition has changed and because you refused the oversight required to protect investors.”
“What happens now?”
“That depends on you.”
“You could fix this with one phone call.”
“I fixed your problems with phone calls for nine years. Look where it brought us.”
He began to cry quietly.
Harrison had cried only twice during our marriage: when Emma was born and when his father died.
I felt sorrow, but not enough to reverse my decision.
“Claire, I am sorry.”
“You are shocked.”
“I am both.”
“Then prove the apology by changing how you live, not by asking me to restore what you lost.”
I ended the call.
The next morning, Patricia appeared at the gates of Aurelia’s headquarters.
She demanded to see me.
Security refused her entry.
She shouted that she was the mother of Claire Wescott’s husband.
The receptionist calmly informed her that I no longer had a husband.
Patricia then called three newspapers and claimed I had deceived the Wescott family.
Only one reporter contacted Aurelia for comment.
Our public statement was brief.
Aurelia Group does not discuss the private family affairs of its founder. All financial arrangements involving related parties were lawful, documented, and disclosed during the relevant legal proceedings.
The story disappeared within a day.
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Patricia had expected public sympathy.
Instead, people began asking why a woman who claimed to come from a wealthy family had depended on her daughter-in-law’s credit card.
