Chapter 1
“Just one last time,” Joshua whispered as he slipped into my bed on the night before our divorce.
Gretchen froze as the mattress sank beneath her husband's weight. For nearly six months, they had slept in separate bedrooms and had barely touched each other. So when his fingers brushed gently across her hand beneath the sheets, she felt no warmth. Only fear.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Joshua looked at her through the darkness with a weary expression.
“I don't want us to end up hating each other.”
He set his phone on the nightstand. A few seconds later, the screen lit up.
Gretchen caught the notification before he could grab the phone.
“Has she signed everything yet?”
The message was from Cheyenne. A chill ran through Gretchen's body.
Joshua hadn't come back to her bed because he still loved her. He had come back because the next day she was supposed to sign the settlement agreement that would officially end their fourteen-year marriage.
And someone was waiting for her signature.
Gretchen was thirty-eight years old and worked as a surgical nurse at a hospital in downtown Minneapolis. For months, she had bur:ied herself in exhaustion to avoid facing what had really been happening inside their home in Plymouth.
Their house had once been full of life. Backpacks by the front door, school uniforms hanging in the patio, and Joshua humming while making coffee in the mornings. Now it felt like a model home, spotless, silent, and completely lifeless.
Their thirteen-year-old daughter, Maxine, spent more and more time with her friends. No one asked many questions. Children often sense a storm long before adults are willing to admit that the rain has begun.
Joshua was the chief financial officer of an investment firm in downtown St. Paul. After his promotion, his suits became more expensive, his business trips more frequent, and his patience much shorter. When he asked for a divorce, he did it with such calm confidence that Gretchen mistook it for maturity.
“We're not making each other happy anymore,” he had told her one evening.
Eventually, she believed him. She convinced herself that their marriage had simply worn down under the weight of night shifts, meetings, a mortgage, and endless responsibilities.
Now she realized it might all have been carefully planned.
“Cheyenne works with me,” Joshua said far too quickly. “She's only asking about the paperwork.”
“Why does she care whether I've signed it?”
He said nothing.
Gretchen slowly pulled her hand away.
“What were you trying to accomplish tonight?”
“It's not what you think.”
She let out a dry laugh. Every man who got caught seemed to memorize the same sentence.
Joshua quietly returned to the guest room without apologizing.
Gretchen stayed awake until sunrise, replaying every detail she had ignored. His constant insistence on reaching a “civilized” agreement. His refusal to hire independent appraisers. The way he repeatedly claimed that reviewing the financial accounts would only cause her unnecessary stress.
At six o'clock that morning, she canceled her hospital shift.
She waited until Joshua left for work before walking into his home office. The gray folder containing their divorce agreement was sitting on his desk. She compared the listed assets with old tax returns.
Two investments were missing.
Together, they were worth more than 1.2 million dollars.
It wasn't a mistake. The money had been deliberately hidden.
Then she discovered monthly deposits sent to a company registered under the name Cheyenne.
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In that moment, Gretchen realized the betrayal was far bigger than an affair.
She couldn't believe what she was about to uncover...
