Chapter 2
The screen burned into my retinas in the dark study.
Ten thousand dollars. Every single month. Deposited on the eleventh into an LLC named *Crestview Holdings*.
Five years.
Julian and I had been together for four.
The arithmetic made my stomach lurch. That meant he had been siphoning cash from Thorne Logistics before he even met me. Before he casually struck up a conversation in line at that downtown coffee shop. Before he spilled half a latte on his sleeve, apologized with that self-deprecating grin, and charmed his way into my life.
Our entire relationship hadn't been a romance. It had been an audit.
My hands trembled as I plugged a flash drive into his laptop, downloading every transaction, every offshore routing slip, every email saved in an encrypted folder labeled *Personal/Taxes*. He hadn’t bothered hiding the folder deeply; he believed I was too soft, too distracted by wedding tastings and floral arrangements, to ever look.
At 4:45 a.m., the file transfer completed with a quiet chime.
I printed the top statement, laid it flat across the quartz counter in our kitchen, and slipped my platinum diamond band directly over the LLC name. Beside it sat his ring—the one he had taken off before stepping out the front door.
I threw two changes of clothes, my passport, my car title, and my grandmother’s vintage leather briefcase into an overnight duffel. I didn't take a single thing he had ever bought me. Not the sapphire pendant from our third anniversary, not the cashmere coat he surprised me with last Christmas.
I took the service stairs down to the detached garage, started my grandfather’s restored 1968 Mustang—a car Julian had always hated driving because it was manual—and rolled down the gravel driveway without the headlights on.
As the iron gates clicked shut behind me, the eastern sky bled a dull, bruise-colored purple.
I pulled onto Highway 9, pulled my phone from my purse, popped the SIM card out with an earring post, and tossed the tiny plastic chip out the window into the rushing dark.
My destination wasn’t a hotel. It was a nondescript brownstone forty miles north in Oakridge—the home of Arthur Vance, my late grandmother’s corporate attorney for thirty-five years.
When Arthur opened his door at 6:15 a.m. in his bathrobe, steam curling from a mug of black coffee, he took one look at my mascara-streaked face and the briefcase in my grip.
"He left, didn't he?" Arthur asked quietly.
I froze on the porch. "You knew?"
May you like
"I didn't know he'd be stupid enough to do it on your wedding night," Arthur replied, stepping aside to let me in. "Come inside, Clara. We have a lot of work to do before the banks open at nine."
***
