Chapter 2
Nobody moved for several seconds.
The only sound was rain tapping against the windows.
Chloe stared at Marcus as though he had risen from the dead.
“You’re supposed to be in Houston.”
“I canceled the trip.”
“When?”
“After Jessi called me.”
Chloe looked at me with naked hatred.
“You called my husband?”
“No,” I said.
“I called the man whose money you were stealing.”
Luca slammed his hand against the table.
“This is ridiculous.”
Marcus opened the binder.
“Then you should enjoy the next few minutes.”
Luca stepped toward him.
“Stay out of my marriage.”
“I’m not in your marriage, Vance,” Marcus said, pulling a financial ledger from the sleeve.
“I’m in my own.
And currently, my wife has been using our joint corporate credit accounts to fund your firm’s unrecorded offshore liabilities.”
Luca’s posture stiffened.
“The twenty-eight thousand dollar bracelet?” Marcus held up a bank authorization copy bearing Chloe’s signature.
“Billed under a shell consultant company that directly routed funds to Vance Capital Development to cover a defaulted loan payment last month.”
Chloe gasped.
“Marcus, please, it’s not what it looks like—”
“It looks like corporate embezzlement, Chloe,” Marcus said, his voice terrifyingly calm.
“And considering I am the chief managing partner of the firm you skimmed it from, I’ve already forwarded these records to federal compliance officers.”
Luca looked at Chloe, his eyes widening in pure rage.
“You told me those accounts were private!”
“They were!” she wailed.
“They were linked to my primary trust,” Marcus corrected her.
“Did you honestly think I wouldn’t notice half a million dollars moving through secondary vendor transfers over eleven months?”
Luca turned to me, his jaw trembling.
“Jessi… we can handle this privately.
The divorce terms—we can renegotiate—”
I picked up the leather folder on the dining table, walked over to the stone fireplace, and tossed the settlement documents directly onto the burning logs.
The paper caught fire instantly, curling into ash.
“There are no terms, Luca,” I said softly.
“You’re no longer managing Vance Capital Development.”
“You can’t remove me!” he snarled.
“I already did,” I replied, pulling my phone from my pocket and tapping the screen.
“The board executed an emergency proxy vote twenty minutes ago, based on the audit files Marcus and I submitted this morning.
Your executive access is revoked.
Your corporate accounts are frozen.”
Chloe dropped onto the sofa, clutching her head in her hands, her illusions of a luxury lifestyle entirely shattered.
Luca stood in the middle of my living room—the room I had designed, in the house he had tried to steal—surrounded by the ashes of his papers, his career, and his freedom.
“You set me up,” Luca whispered, staring at me as if seeing me for the first time.
“No, Luca,” I said, looking him dead in the eye as the firelight reflected off the glass.
May you like
“You brought her here to make me sign away my life.
I just made sure you brought the witnesses.”
