MÓJ TELEFON ZAWIBRAŁ, UTRZYMANY U MAMY NA OBIAD. KOCHAM CIĘ. SPOJRZAŁAM W GÓRĘ – BYŁ TRZY STOLIKI DALEJ, PRZESUWAŁ SIĘ…

I paid cash.

I did not want Ethan tracking my location through credit card alerts.

I returned to the hotel, changed into the cheap clothes, and sat on the edge of the bed.

I felt lighter.

Stripped down.

I was in evacuation mode.

I picked up my phone and sent a text to Talia Brooks.

Talia had been my roommate in college and was now a ferocious marketing executive who treated life like a contact sport.

Meet me tonight.

Rivergate Hotel, room 304.

Do not ask questions over the phone.

Talia arrived at 6:00.

She did not knock.

She pounded.

When I opened the door, she took one look at me—the cheap T-shirt, the dark circles under my eyes, the laptops surrounded by notepads—and she stepped inside, locking the door behind her.

She placed a bottle of vodka on the desk.

“Talk,” she said.

I talked.

I walked her through the dinner.

The text.

The woman.

The envelope.

The transfers to Veil Orchard Consulting.

The hidden PO box.

Talia did not gasp.

She did not hug me.

She listened with the intensity of a predator watching prey.

When I finished, she poured two glasses of vodka—neat—in the hotel tumblers.

“He is not just—”

Talia said, her voice low.

“He is building an exit strategy. The money transfers to an LLC. That is asset diversion. He is funneling marital funds out before he files so he can claim he is broke.”

“I know,” I said.

“He looked happy, Talia. When he handed her that envelope. He looked like they had just pulled off a bank heist.”

Talia swirled her glass.

She looked me dead in the eye.

“Elena, listen to me carefully. Most women in your position want an apology. They want to know why she’s better. They want closure.”

She leaned forward.

“Do you want justice, or do you want peace?”

I looked at the spreadsheet on my screen.

I looked at the sum of $25,000.

I thought about the lie about his mother’s meatloaf.

“I want the truth,” I said. “I want to know exactly what was in that envelope. And then, once I have the facts, I will decide how much it is going to cost him.”

Talia nodded.

“Good. Then you need a shark, not a mediator. You need Diane Carver.”

The name was legendary in the city.

Diane Carver was a divorce attorney who cost $600 an hour and was rumored to be able to find a hidden nickel in a haystack.

They said she read financial statements like poetry and could smell a hidden asset from three counties away.

“I will call her,” I said.

“Do it now,” Talia said. “Leave a trail. You have a complex financial fraud case wrapped inside a divorce. That will get her attention.”

After Talia left—promising to check on my house without letting Ethan see her—I sat in the dim light.

I felt a strange calm.

I had a plan.

I had a team.

My phone buzzed.

It was Ethan.

I stared at the screen.

My heart rate spiked for a fraction of a second.

Then I forced it down.

Hope you are okay.

The text read.

I am worried about you.

I am taking Mom to her heart specialist tomorrow morning, so I will be out of pocket until noon.

Please call me when you can.

I read the text twice.

Taking Mom to her heart specialist tomorrow.

I turned to my laptop.

I opened my personal calendar.

I managed the family schedule because Ethan was incapable of remembering birthdays or anniversaries.

I scrolled to the current week.

Ethan’s mother—Barbara—was a snowbird.

She spent October through March in a condo in Sarasota, Florida.

I had booked her flight myself three weeks ago.

I had the confirmation number in my email.

She was not here.

She was a thousand miles away.

Ethan was not taking his mother to the doctor.

He was using his mother—a woman who loved me, a woman I had cared for when she was sick—as an alibi for something else.

And he was sloppy.

He was so arrogant, so sure of his control over me that he did not even bother to check if his lie was physically possible.

He assumed I was too emotional, too broken, to check the flight logs.

He was wrong.

I did not reply.

I took a screenshot of his text.

I took a screenshot of his mother’s flight confirmation.

I saved them both into the folder.

Evidence two.

I closed the laptop.

I was not just a wife scorned anymore.

I was a witness building a case.

And tomorrow I was going to see Diane Carver to find out how to bury him with it.

Diane Carver’s office did not look like a place where marriages went to die.

It looked like a place where corporations were dismantled.

Located on the forty-second floor of a glass tower in the financial district.

It smelled of espresso and intimidatingly expensive leather.

There were no boxes of tissues on the desk.

There were no inspirational quotes about healing or new beginnings.

There was only a massive slab of polished marble and a woman who looked like she could cut a diamond with her gaze.

Diane was in her fifties, wearing a suit that cost more than my first car.

She did not offer me coffee.

She held out her hand for the file.

I handed over the folder.

Inside were the printouts of the photos.

The spreadsheet of the transactions.

The text messages.

The screenshot of Ethan’s mother’s flight confirmation.

Diane put on a pair of thick-rimmed glasses.

She flipped through the pages in silence.

The room was so quiet I could hear the hum of the hard drive in her computer.

She spent a long time looking at the photo of the wax-sealed envelope.

She spent even longer looking at the transaction history for Veil Orchard Consulting.

Finally, she closed the folder and took off her glasses.

She looked at me.

“Do you still love him?”

The question surprised me.

I opened my mouth to answer, to explain the complexity of seven years of history.

But she held up a hand.

“Actually, strike that,” she said sharply. “I do not care. That is a question for a therapist. I charge $600 an hour.

“Elena, you are not paying me to manage your heart. You are paying me to secure your future. So let us talk about the only thing that matters in this room.

“Leverage.”

I sat up straighter.

“I want to know what is going on.”

“You already know what is going on,” Diane said, tapping the folder. “Your husband is having an affair. But he is not just sleeping with her. He is investing in her. This LLC—Veil Orchard Consulting—is less than a year old. The payments are regular. He is treating this woman like a business expense.”

She leaned forward, her eyes narrowing.

“Now the real questions. Do you have children?”

“No,” I said.

“Good. Custody battles are messy and expensive. Whose name is on the house?”

“Both of ours,” I replied. “We bought it five years ago.”

“Retirement accounts?”

“He has a 401(k). I have a diversified portfolio and company stock options.”

“Debts?”

“Just the mortgage.”

“We pay off our—”

“She corrected. “If he is diverting mail to a PO box, he could have opened lines of credit in your name or joint name without you seeing the statements. We see it all the time. The husband buys the girlfriend a condo and the wife ends up paying the interest.”

My stomach turned over, but I kept my face impassive.

“What is the plan?”

Diane stood up and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window.

“Three prongs. First, we separate the finances. Legally, I will file a motion to freeze assets to prevent dissipation. That means he cannot move another dime to Miss Vale without a judge asking why.

“Second, we build the case for adultery and financial misconduct. In this state, fault still matters for alimony and asset division. If we prove he spent marital funds on an affair, we can claw that money back from his share of the estate.”

She turned back to me.

“Third—and this is the most critical—we check for identity theft. You need to lock down your credit reports today. Right now.”

“He wouldn’t go that far,” I said.

Though my voice lacked conviction.

“He lied about his mother having a heart condition,” Diane said coldly. “A man who uses his mother’s health as a cover story has no bottom. Do not underestimate him, and do not underestimate what he will do when he realizes he is cornered.”

She sat back down.

“He is going to flip the script, Elena. When you serve him papers, he will not apologize. He will attack. He will tell everyone that you are the problem. He will say you are cold, work-obsessed, neglectful. He might even try to paint you as mentally unstable to justify his actions. He will try to get ahead of the story at your workplace.”

“My workplace?” I frowned. “He doesn’t work at Northline.”

“Reputation travels,” Diane said. “Just be ready.”

She pushed a retainer agreement across the desk.

It was $5,000 just to start.

I signed it without hesitating.

“I need more than just the bank statements,” I said, handing the pen back. “I need to know what was in that envelope. It had a wax seal, Diane. It looked official.”

Diane nodded.

She pressed a button on her intercom.

“Send Ronan in.”

The door opened, and a man walked in.

Ronan Sheay did not look like a private investigator from a noir movie.

He looked like an overworked auditor.

He wore a rumpled button-down shirt and carried a tablet.

He had the tired eyes of someone who had seen every variety of human deceit and found them all boring.

“Elena, this is Ronan,” Diane said. “He specializes in corporate fraud and forensic accounting. He traces money that does not want to be found.”

Ronan sat down next to me.

He did not shake hands.

He looked at the photo of the envelope on Diane’s desk.

“Wax seal,” he muttered. “Theatrical usually means a personal contract or a deed or a love letter from someone who thinks they are living in a nineteenth-century novel. But given the money transfers, I would bet on a contract.”

He looked at me.

“I can pull the filings for the LLC. I can run a background check on Marissa Vale. I can put a tracker on his car. If you authorize it, I can find out who she is, where she lives, and how long this has been going on.”

He paused, studying my face.

“But I need to know your tolerance. Some clients just want a summary. They want to know yes or no so they can sign the divorce papers. Other clients want every detail. They want to know what they ate, where they slept, and what color the sheets were.”

“I don’t care about the sheets,” I said. “I want to know the business. I want to know why he’s paying her. I want to know what they are planning. If he is moving money, he is planning a future. I want to know what that future looks like.”

Ronan nodded.

“You want the ammunition?”

“I want everything,” I said. “But it has to be usable. Admissible in court. No illegal wiretaps. No breaking and entering. I need a clean kill.”

“Clean kills are my specialty,” Ronan said.

He tapped his tablet.

“I will start with the LLC. Veil Orchard Consulting. It sounds like a shell company. I will have a preliminary report for you in twenty-four hours.”

I stood up to leave.

My legs felt steadier than they had the night before.

I had a lawyer.

I had an investigator.

I was not just a victim anymore.

I was a plaintiff.

“Elena,” Diane called out as I reached the door. “One more thing. Do not sleep with him. Do not let him move back into the bedroom. If you resume marital relations after discovering the affair, it can be argued that you condoned it. It weakens your case.”

“Trust me,” I said, my hand on the doorknob, “that will not be a problem.”

I walked out of the building and into the bustling street.

The city was alive with the lunchtime rush.

People shouting into phones.

Eating sandwiches on benches.

Living their normal, honest lives.

I felt detached from them.

Like I was moving through a different dimension.

I checked my watch.

It was 1:30 in the afternoon.

I had told my assistant I would be offline.

But habit forced me to check my work email.

I pulled my phone out of my purse.

There was a notification from Northline Strategies internal server.

It was marked high importance.

Subject:

Urgent: city partnership strategy meeting. External consultant introduction.

I frowned.

The city project was my deal.

I had closed it.

Why was there a strategy meeting without me?

I opened the email.

Team, due to the accelerated timeline of the urban development initiative, the city council has requested we bring in an independent compliance auditor to oversee the finalization of the contract. Please welcome our external partner who will be leading the transition phase.

Meeting time: tomorrow, 9:00 a.m.