Chapter 2

When I woke up the next morning, my head was foggy, everything hazy around the edges.

Desmond was still asleep, his arm slung across my waist like always.

Last night, the party had barely reached its halfway point when he'd made some excuse about celebrating privately with a few political friends, sending me home alone.

I'd forced myself to stay awake on the living room couch until three in the morning, but he never came home.

Looking at the dark circles under his eyes now, I told myself he must have had one too many last night—exhausted from landing such a massive project.

He never used to sleep in like this.

Not wanting to wake him, I carefully lifted his arm off me and slipped out of bed.

Shaking my head at myself, I turned toward the bathroom, but my toes suddenly caught on something. My balance faltered, and I nearly stumbled.

I looked down—it was his deep navy shirt, carelessly discarded on the carpet from last night.

I sighed and bent down to pick it up, intending to toss it into the hamper out of habit. But the moment my thumb brushed against the collar, my whole body froze.

There, glaring against the white fabric of the inner collar, was half a lipstick print in vivid red.

Trembling, I lifted the shirt to my nose. A sickly-sweet rose perfume assaulted my senses, cloying and unmistakable.

I gripped the shirt so tight my knuckles went white, standing there taking deep breath after deep breath just to stop myself from hurling it at his face.

Political celebration, my ass. He'd crawled straight out of that woman's bed last night.

I waited—a long while—until I was certain Desmond had left for the office before I finally got dressed and walked out the door.

I didn't go to the company. Instead, I drove straight to the top floor of a skyscraper in downtown Seattle.

Sitting across from me at my desk was Silas Mercer—the most feared business dispute and divorce attorney in the entire city.

Silas, dressed in a sharply tailored gray suit, flipped through the photos and screenshots I'd printed out the night before.

"Mrs. Vance," Silas finally said, looking up from the documents and sliding the stack back across the desk to me, "unfortunately, your husband isn't just a rotten partner. He's a cold-blooded business fraud."

"That five hundred thousand that was transferred..." I clutched the now-cold paper coffee cup in my hands, my grip unrelenting.

"That's just the appetizer." Silas cut me off without mercy. "Take a look at this asset restructuring draft you captured. It's only fragmentary information, but it's more than enough to reveal the pattern. Desmond is using that V.T. Consulting shell company to set up a scheme—fabricated contracts, the whole works."

"The moment that twenty-million-dollar payment from city hall clears, he'll launder at least seventy percent of the profit clean through a so-called 'outsourcing' arrangement. All perfectly legal on paper."

"But the company was founded by both of us! We split the shares fifty-fifty!" I said, panic rising in my voice.

Silas leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. "Which is exactly why he's rushing to get you to sign that equity trust agreement. Didn't the text say it himself? Pushing you to sign by the end of this week. The moment you put your name on that paper, control of the company—and every dollar in it—belongs entirely to him."

"And when it's time for the divorce, he'll dump every bit of debt onto your shoulders and walk away clean, while you're left drowning in liabilities with absolutely nothing to your name."

A wave of nausea surged up my throat.

Five years ago, in that damp, moldy basement, we used to huddle under the same threadbare blanket at night, sketching designs, trying to save on heating costs.

To buy him a decent suit for his first client meeting, I pawned the last necklace my mother had ever left me.

Back then, gnawing on cold pizza, stretching every penny until it screamed—I actually believed that was the badge of honor for our love.

Turns out, it was just the knife he'd been sharpening to carve me open and drain me dry.

Not only was he betraying everything we'd built together, he intended to squeeze out every last drop of my life's work and cast me out, buried under a mountain of debt.

"Go ahead and cry if you need to, Mrs. Vance. It's perfectly normal." Silas glanced at my reddened eyes and slid a tissue across the desk.

"But in this office, tears don't buy you real money. If crying is all you came here for, you're free to go home right now, sign the papers, and watch your husband move his PR director into that big villa on Mercer Island."

"But if you can't stomach swallowing this, then wipe that weakness off your face right now."

I froze.

A few seconds passed. I grabbed the tissue and wiped my face roughly, then took a deep breath.

"What do I need to do, Mr. Mercer?"

"Good." Silas's tone softened just slightly.

"First, go home and keep playing the clueless, devoted wife. Act like you know nothing about the business side of things."

"Second, these screenshots won't hold up in court on their own. We need hard evidence—actual bank statements, the original fraudulent contracts, and direct proof of the affair."

I clenched both fists so tight my perfectly manicured nails dug deep into my palms, drawing thin lines of blood. I didn't even feel the pain.

"I want every single dollar that belongs to me. And I want him to lose everything."

"As you wish." Silas slid a retainer agreement across the desk, along with a small recording pen.

When I walked out of the law office, the rain in Seattle had finally stopped.

I pulled out my phone and typed out a message to Desmond with practiced ease.

[Sweetheart, I'm feeling a little dizzy today, think I'll stay home and rest. ]

[I've been craving your pasta tonight—think you could come home a bit early to keep me company? ]