Chapter 2
The next morning, Grace took one look at my face over breakfast and spoke directly: “You know.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.
She opened her backpack, pulled out a black spiral notebook, and set it on the kitchen island.
Inside were handwritten dates, times, and locations. Notes on every instance Derek had claimed to be working late while his car was spotted near boutique hotels, steak houses, or a luxury condo building in River North.
I stared at the pages, horrified. “How long have you been tracking this?!”
“Months,” Grace replied quietly.
“Grace, you shouldn’t be spying on your father!”
“I don’t spy on him,” she snapped back, her voice cracking slightly. “I started writing things down when I realized he was lying to us.”
Then she flipped to the back section of the notebook…
Glued to the pages were printouts of wire transfers from our joint holding account to an entity named RZ Consulting LLC. Nearly four hundred thousand dollars moved over two years.
“Where did you get these legal records?” I whispered.
“Aunt Rachel,” Grace said.
Rachel was my cousin—a corporate CPA who managed accounting for Derek’s firm.
When I called her twenty minutes later, her voice was heavy. “Victoria… I’m so sorry. We need to meet.”
We met at a coffee shop an hour later. Rachel explained that Derek had set up an off-book shell company tied to a silent partner, siphoning money from family-allocated assets into private accounts. She couldn’t confirm tax fraud yet, but one thing was certain: Derek was systematically stripping away my financial security.
“Don’t confront him yet, Victoria,” Rachel warned. “If he realizes you know about the accounts, he’ll move the remaining liquid funds offshore before you can file for discovery.”
That night, I lay in bed beside the man I had built a life with. Derek was sleeping peacefully.
I looked at his face in the dim light of the bedroom and realized a terrifying truth: the problem wasn’t just that he had another woman. The problem was that he had spent months building a life in which Grace and I were completely disposable.
For the next two days, I lived out a scenario entirely of my own making. I laid out Derek’s clothes, smiled as he grumbled about work pressures, and quietly watched my lawyer gather evidence. My divorce attorney, Mr. Bennett, had already prepared the paperwork to revoke his power of attorney over our assets, an emergency account freeze, and a petition for a unilateral divorce.
Everything was scheduled to be served on Monday morning.
But Derek accelerated the timeline in a way even he hadn’t foreseen.
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Saturday night was the corporation’s annual charity gala. It was an event I had attended by his side for a decade, helping him cultivate the image of an exemplary family man and a respected, successful businessman.
“I’ll be a little late,” Derek said as he adjusted his tie in the bedroom mirror that afternoon. “You and Grace go on ahead. I have an urgent meeting with a partner.”
