Chapter 5
Nicole's situation was worse than I'd imagined.
It was on a whole other level of bad.
By the fifth day, she barely came home. She'd only pop in to grab a change of clothes, and her face looked worse every time.
There wasn't much I could do for her, except make sure there was always a hot meal waiting when she came back, and keep the fridge stocked with coffee to keep her going and her favorite soup.
But when it came to the real problems, I was powerless.
The crisis at Visionary Holdings came down to three main problems.
First, there was the accusation of financial fraud. Nicole was being set up, but whoever was behind it was so cunning that there was no hope of clearing her name anytime soon.
Second, the banks were yanking their loans. Over a dozen of them joined forces to demand repayment, and the total was nearly 270 million dollars.
Third, the suppliers cut them off completely, and the downstream clients were all just waiting to see what would happen. With no cash flow, the company was dead in the water.
These three problems were locked together in a vicious cycle, squeezing the life out of them.
On the sixth night, Nicole finally sat down for a proper dinner at home.
After she finished eating, she opened her laptop, her screen lit up with nothing but financial reports and legal paperwork.
I poured her a glass of water and sat quietly beside her.
"Ryan," she suddenly called out.
"Yeah?" I replied.
"What did you do before?" she asked.
I blinked in surprise.
She'd never asked me that before.
After three years of marriage, all Nicole really knew about me was that I could cook, had a thing for spending cash, and was pretty shameless.
"I've tried all sorts of jobs," I said after thinking for a moment.
"Like what?" she asked.
"Delivered food, worked as a bartender, sold real estate, and even did odd jobs at a private equity firm for a couple weeks," I replied.
"Private equity?" Nicole finally looked up from her laptop.
"Yeah, just the gofer. I grabbed coffee for the fund managers and handled whatever grunt work they threw at me," I said.
She looked at me for a moment, then dropped her gaze back to her laptop.
"Oh," she said.
I knew exactly what Nicole wanted to ask, but she just couldn't bring herself to say it.
She wanted to ask: Was there anything I could do to help her?
The answer was—
Maybe.
But not yet.
I might not have many skills, but there's one thing I've got going for me: a photographic memory.
Seriously, it's scary good.
Back when I was running errands at that private equity firm for eleven days, I handled hundreds of documents. Project proposals, due diligence reports, risk assessments, since I was the one printing and filing everything, I ended up reading every single one.
Most people would just glance at them and forget.
But not me. I remember every single detail.
But I'd never told Nicole about it.
There was no point.
Who'd believe a guy who lived off his wife suddenly claiming he knew anything about finance?
Besides, I actually liked my life just the way it was.
No job, no grinding, no pretending to like a bunch of corporate drones in some office building.
But now...
I watched Nicole, her face lit up by the laptop screen, totally zoned out.
The dark circles under her eyes were so bad, it looked like she was wearing smoky eye makeup.
Alright, fine.
If I want to keep enjoying my cushy life as a kept man, I guess it's time I actually lift a finger.
On the seventh day.
Nicole left early to meet with her legal team.
I picked up the document she'd left on the table last night and took a closer look.
It was a summary of Visionary Holdings' financial data from the past three years, along with the specific items they were being accused of falsifying.
I spent twenty minutes just reading through it.
A grin crept onto my face.
Whoever framed Nicole was slick, but they made one crucial mistake.
They'd doctored a cross-border transfer from two years ago, making it look like Visionary Holdings had sent roughly 123 million dollars to a shell company overseas for money laundering.
But I remembered that shell company.
Two years ago, when I was doing grunt work at the private equity firm, I came across a due diligence report on that exact company.
The person really in charge of that company wasn't Nicole.
It was Alan.
I leaned back in my chair, idly spinning the pen in my hand.
Alan.
You little bastard.
Alright, let's see how this plays out.
I pulled out my phone and found the record of that seventy-dollar transfer from a couple of days ago.
Seeing Alan's name on the screen, a real laugh burst out of me.
Seventy bucks for a life.
That's a deal I can't lose on.
I opened the food delivery app and ordered myself a iced latte.
Make it a large. And double up on the boba.
After all, I was about to get to work.
Gotta treat myself to some iced latte first.