The Contract Wife Chapter 11
I severed every remaining connection with Nathan.
I moved. Changed my number. Instructed the front desk not to accept a single item forwarded under any name connected to the Ashford family.
I imagine he finally understood: my refusal had no crack in it, nowhere to lever open.
Bit by bit, the gifts and messages stopped.
I thought he had finally given up.
It was only much later that I pieced together, from other people’s accounts, what happened next.
After Ruby’s career collapsed, she went looking for Nathan like a woman possessed.
When his phone was unreachable, she staked out his office.
When she couldn’t reach him in person, she opened burner accounts online and posted long, sprawling essays denouncing him as cold-blooded, as the kind of man who threw people away once they’d served their purpose.
No one paid attention.
So she pivoted, claiming she was going to “expose” him for cheating during his marriage, painting herself as a used and discarded victim.
From start to finish, Nathan didn’t utter a single word in response.
His legal team issued three cease-and-desist letters, each harsher than the last.
Cornered, on a late night in Los Angeles, Ruby got behind the wheel of a rented sports car and, on a mountain road near Beverly Hills, drove head-on into Nathan’s car.
Police and ambulances arrived quickly.
Ruby was taken into custody at the scene.
She was later charged with intent to cause bodily harm and dangerous driving, among other counts, and received a substantial sentence.
Nathan spent three months in the hospital.
His spine had been badly damaged. Sensation was gone from his legs. The doctors delivered their verdict: the nerve damage was irreversible. He would never walk again.
The Ashford PR team locked the news down tightly. They were afraid of what it would do to the stock.
It reached me only much later, in the roundabout way of a private conversation.