Chapter 2 - The Letter

Damen’s hands were shaking as he broke the wax seal on the envelope. He unfolded the heavy stationary. There were no tear stains. There were no frantic scribbles of a broken heart. The handwriting was as precise and unforgiving as a balance sheet.

Damen,

By the time you open this safe, I will be untouchable. I did not leave because I was afraid of the divorce hearing. I left because attending it would have been a waste of my time, considering Asheford Capital will cease to exist as a solvent entity by the end of the fiscal quarter.

For two years, you believed I was ignorant. You thought my silence at dinner was submission. You thought my early bedtimes were due to the pregnancy. You thought Vanessa Hail was a secret.

Vanessa is not a secret, Damen. She is a liability.

Six months ago, when you were in Zurich 'securing foreign capital'—and by that, I mean sleeping with Vanessa in the Baur au Lac hotel—I bypassed your biometric firewall. You always were predictable, Damen. You used the date of your first company's IPO as your secondary passcode. I spent the last hundred and eighty nights meticulously downloading, copying, and cataloging every single transaction routed through your Cayman shell entities.

Damen stopped reading. The air in the study felt suddenly too thin to breathe. He backed away from the safe, sinking into his leather chair.

You didn't just hide marital assets from me, Damen. You defrauded your primary investors. You leveraged mezzanine debt using phantom collateral, and you used Vanessa's signature to authorize the wire transfers. I know this, because I have the receipts. I have the emails. I have the un-redacted ledgers.

You thought you were starving me of resources. You thought you could hand me a settlement that would keep me quiet and small. But I don't want a percentage of your empire, Damen. I want the entire board.

May you like

My Husband Put His Mistress’s Name on My Mother’s Memorial—Then I Found...

Thirty Days Before Our Wedding, I Found His Secret Messages—Then He Lear...

My Husband Brought His Mistress to My Family Lake House—Then He Learned...

I have already transferred the $42 million in liquid capital from the joint trust you forgot to secure. Since I am your legal wife and a primary signatory, the bank executed it without question. That money is now resting in an irrevocable trust for our child, completely outside your legal reach.

As for the flash drives, they are not with me. I mailed them three days ago.