Chapter 4 - WHY JOLENE WANTED HER ON HER KNEES
The dinner had been presented as reconciliation.
Jolene called Sloan three days earlier.
“We’ve all said things.”
Sloan nearly laughed at the plural.
Jolene invited her to a formal family dinner at the penthouse.
Another detail worth noticing.
Jolene invited Sloan to Sloan’s own home.
Vance had apparently offered the space without asking.
“Mom wants to fix this,” he said.
Sloan agreed because she wanted clarity about the new financing.
She did not know Tinsley would accidentally give her the most useful document twenty-four hours earlier.
Tinsley stopped at Sloan’s Midtown office carrying a packet Vance asked her to deliver.
“Loan stuff.”
Sloan frowned.
“For me?”
“Vance said you’d know.”
Sloan opened the folder after Tinsley left.
Most pages concerned Mercer House.
One was the First Hudson collateral letter.
Sloan called Vance immediately.
“Why is my address in your bank file?”
“Because they’re doing full family diligence.”
“It says collateral.”
“Potential collateral.”
“Not mine.”
“We’ll discuss it.”
“There’s nothing to discuss.”
His tone changed.
“Don’t do this right before dinner.”
“Do what?”
“Make everything transactional.”
Sloan actually laughed.
“It’s a bank loan.”
That evening Vance came home before Jolene and Tinsley arrived.
For forty minutes he tried every version.
It wasn’t a mortgage.
It was only a standby pledge.
The bank might never need it.
The company would refinance within eighteen months.
Sloan’s signature would save hundreds of jobs.
His father’s name was at stake.
His mother was under enormous stress.
Sloan said no each time.
Then Jolene arrived.
She had already been drinking.
So had Tinsley.
Within twenty minutes the conversation stopped being about collateral and became a trial of Sloan’s character.
“You married into this family,” Jolene said.
“That doesn’t make my property family collateral.”
“Your property.”
Jolene laughed.
“Do you hear yourself?”
Tinsley said Sloan cared more about a view than the employees depending on them.
Vance told her not to be selfish.
Sloan responded:
“If the company is strong enough to survive, show me the numbers.”
That was the wrong sentence.
Jolene went quiet.
Then she told Sloan that a wife who benefited from the Mercer name had obligations.
Sloan reminded her she had loaned the company $900,000.
Jolene called it money Sloan had “dangling over Vance’s head.”
Sloan got up to leave the table.
Jolene blocked her with the metal washbasin Tinsley had brought from the guest bathroom as a joke.
“You think you’re too good for us?”
Then she sat in the cream chair.
Removed her heels.
And pushed the basin toward Sloan.
“If you want to act like this family’s queen, start by remembering what a wife actually does.”
Vance did not tell his mother to stop.
He looked at Sloan and said:
“Just end this.”
That was why Sloan knelt.
Not because Jolene physically forced her down.
Because for one humiliating second Sloan thought:
If I comply, maybe they’ll finally stop.
Then Jolene pushed her foot toward Sloan’s face.
May you like
And Sloan realized compliance had never ended anything in the Mercer family.
It only taught them how much more they could ask for.
