“Mrs. Chen, I’ve completed the preliminary analysis. We need to talk.” Her tone made my stomach drop. “Your husband has been systematically draining the joint accounts you’ve been funding. Over the past three years, approximately four hundred and seventy thousand dollars has been transferred into private accounts held solely in his name.”
I felt dizzy. “Four hundred and seventy thousand?”
“That’s the conservative estimate. He’s also taken out credit cards in both your names and run up significant balances—roughly eighty thousand dollars—that he’s been paying for from the joint accounts.”
“What kind of personal expenditures?”
Dr. Wong’s pause was significant. “Hotel rooms. Restaurants. Jewelry. Airline tickets for two to the Caribbean last spring. Mrs. Chen, I believe your husband has been conducting an affair and financing it with money he’s taken from you.”
The room seemed to tilt. “Can you prove all this?”
“I have receipts, bank records, credit card statements. He left a paper trail a first-year accounting student could follow.”
The identity of Marcus’s girlfriend came from my assistant, Jennifer. “Katherine, I need to tell you something. Marcus has been seeing Valerie Chen. Your Valerie Chen.”
My Valerie Chen. My head of client relations. A woman I’d hired two years ago, mentored personally, and trusted with our most important accounts. A woman who had been to our apartment, who had met Marcus dozens of times, who knew—who absolutely knew—that I was the CEO hiding her identity.
“She knows who I am,” I said, my voice hollow. “She knows everything.”
“Yes. And Katherine, I think she’s been helping Marcus. I think they’ve been planning something. Your accident just accelerated their timeline.”
I called my business attorney immediately. Within twenty-four hours, Valerie Chen was on administrative leave, her company laptop under investigation. The emails were damning.
Marcus to Valerie: “Once the divorce is final and I’ve got my settlement, we’ll start our own firm. You bring the client lists, I’ll bring the capital. We’ll destroy Wade Digital within a year.”
Valerie to Marcus: “She still has no idea. God, she’s so clueless, thinking she can keep living two separate lives. When this all comes out, her reputation will be destroyed.”
Marcus to Valerie: “The inheritance is perfect timing. She’ll have the money for a clean settlement, I’ll take what I’m owed for supporting her all these years, and we’ll be free.”
