Chapter 5

Three days later, I received the first preliminary report from Oliver.

Emily asked me to meet her at her law firm's office. She pushed a kraft bag to me. "You might need to brace yourself."

I opened the bag. Inside was a stack of A4 papers, with a photo on top.

In the photo, Richard stood in front of a luxurious villa, with Caroline and two young people beside him.

One was a tall, thin guy with glasses, looking refined. The other was a girl with a ponytail, dressed in a school uniform.

The four of them looked like a happy family, all smiling.

On the back of the photo, there was a handwritten note: [2023 Christmas, taken at Cloudview Manor in the east of the city.]

It was this year's Christmas. At that time, Richard told me he was on a business trip to Shoredale and didn't come back for Christmas Eve.

I flipped to the next page. It was a list of properties.

Richard had seven properties registered directly under his name, worth about 60 million dollars in total.

But thanks to Oliver's tracking, there were another eleven properties Richard controlled indirectly, registered under Caroline, her mother, and a guy named Charles Lane.

I checked the name and glanced at Emily.

"Charles is their oldest son. He is twenty-two, got back from Brotonica last year, and now he serves as a VP at one of Lane Holdings' subsidiaries," Emily said.

"A twenty-two-year-old VP?" I asked.

"On paper, Charles is the VP, but he has been running some of the core business. Oliver dug up that Richard put the subsidiary in charge of three projects last year."

"So Richard is setting things up for his son."

"It's not only about laying the groundwork." Emily flipped to the last page of the report. "Oliver found out Richard changed his will six months ago. Your name's gone from the new one."

"What?"

"The original will was made back in 2010. You were the only heir. But this January, Richard had another law firm write up a new will. Now the heirs are Charles and Alice, the girl in the photo. Caroline is the executor."

"What about me?"

"You get to stay in your villa for life. And you'll receive a pension of 300 thousand dollars every year, until you pass away."

I could only get an annual payment of 300 thousand and lifelong residency in the villa.

With nothing more than the right to live in a house and yearly 300-thousand payouts, Richard wrote off thirty-eight years of our marriage, the four prime plots my father had given him, and the fallopian tubes that had been removed from my body.

"Is the new will legally valid?" I asked.

Emily shook her head. "You're Richard's legal wife, so you have statutory inheritance rights. He can change the will, but he can't take away your legal entitlements as a spouse. If you don't agree, his new will wouldn't stand up in court."

"But what if he divorces me first?"

"That's why Caroline came to see you that day. It was the first step. She wanted to push you to file for divorce, take some money, and leave. Then Richard could hand over his assets to his 'new' family without any trouble."

I picked up the photo and looked at it again.

Richard wore the same smile he'd always put on for me.

"Emily, what do you think these thirty-eight years of my life amount to?" I asked.

Emily didn't try to comfort me. She simply said, "They count as everything you're still owed."

I put the report back into the kraft bag. "Emily, book me a top-tier marital property lawyer."

"You're going to divorce Richard?"

"I want to claim every single cent that rightfully belongs to me."

"When are you going to make your move?"

"I need to meet someone first."

"Who?"

"The lead surgeon who operated on me back in 1997. Oliver had tracked him down. He has retired, living out in the suburbs."