Chapter 2

The blood in my palm was sticky, mixing with the cold water from the garbage disposal and dripping down my wrist onto the marble floor.

I clenched the mangled platinum pendant in my fist, keeping my breaths painfully shallow.

In the ventilation shaft above, that brief cough had vanished, replaced by the faint rustle of fabric against leather.

Melanie Crane was up there, sitting in my custom ergonomic chair, perhaps even watching my every move on the first floor through the security monitor.

Going head-to-head would be a rookie mistake.

If I stormed up there with security now or dialed 911, Gavin would only need a smooth line about "a breach in commercial secrecy, legal counsel reviewing contracts overnight in the secure study, choosing discretion so as not to disturb the mistress of the house."

Confronting them without catching them in the act meant that, against the top legal mind in Texas, I’d end up slapped with a lawsuit for invasion of privacy or defamation.

More importantly, our overseas listing agreement contained strict joint liability clauses for the founders.

If the company blew up with an executive scandal at this exact juncture, causing the stock to plunge, the biggest losers would be Mia and me, owners of the majority shares.

I had to get my hands on a card that was dirtier and far more lethal.

I walked back into the first-floor guest room, making a normal door-closing sound, and even dragged the bed slightly to create the illusion that I was turning in for the night.

Then, sitting on the carpet, I pulled up my phone again.

The power logs for the central system showed that the secure safe in the upstairs study had been opened three times over the past four hours.

That safe held every original design manuscript, patent authorization, and unannounced international client list Gavin and I had built over the last ten years.

Aside from our dual iris scans, only the chief legal counsel could open it using a specialized security key—upon receiving mutual authorization.

I narrowed my eyes and tapped into Gavin’s Apple ID family-sharing purchases.

An invoice from a week ago popped up.

Purchase: SmartLock Pro Remote Gateway Upgrade Plugin. Amount: $299.

The plugin served exactly one purpose: it allowed the primary account to bypass physical iris scans and remotely issue temporary high-level gate passes to a specific "sub-user."

My dear husband was using money from our joint account to personally open a green channel into my core commercial secrets for his mistress.

After what felt like an eternity, the faint click of a door opening finally echoed from upstairs.

Then came the footsteps. This time, they lacked Gavin's heavy cadence from earlier; they were light and deliberate.

I pressed myself against the guest room door, peering through the peephole.

Only a single nightlight was left on in the living room.

By its dim glow, I saw a tall silhouette moving toward the foyer.

Melanie had changed back into her signature gray power suit, her hair styled impeccably, her left hand clutching an Hermès Birkin worth twelve thousand dollars.

She walked briskly, her heels making half a sound against the rug.

But as she passed the first-floor guest room, she stopped dead in her tracks.

Even through the door, I could catch the drift of her perfume. Tom Ford's Jasmin Rouge—an aggressive, possessive scent.

Melanie tilted her head, staring at the guest room doorknob, the corner of her mouth curling into a sharp, slight arc.

It wasn't the panic of being caught in an affair; it was a cold, condescending assessment. She looked at the door the way one might look at an old piece of furniture cataloged for disposal.

Then, with precise strides, she moved toward the entrance.

"Goodbye, mistress," the smart system chimed, its pleasant electronic voice seeing her off as it detected her departure.

The heavy front door clicked shut, locking with a dull thud.

By the time I pulled open the guest room door and walked into the living room, Gavin was coming downstairs.

He had changed into a tailored suit, doing up his cufflinks as he walked toward the exit.

"Valerie, why are you awake?" A flash of awkwardness crossed his eyes when he saw me, quickly replaced by his perfect smile.

"Legal just found a loophole in a European client's contract. I have to head to the office for a video conference with London. You look terrible, is the jasmine allergy still acting up? Go back to bed."

He stepped closer, attempting to soothe me with that patronizing tone a senior uses on a junior.

I looked at the faint trace of foundation smeared near his collar—hastily wiped but still visible.

My right hand, hidden behind my back, squeezed the mangled pendant harder. The sharp metal bit into my wound, the sting keeping me brutally lucid.

"Gavin," I called out, my voice flat and completely devoid of emotion. "Has Melanie finished reviewing the asset audit reports we’re submitting to Wall Street next month?"

Gavin paused, his fingers freezing over his cufflink.

"Just about. She’s always thorough," he said, turning around, a trace of imperceptible scrutiny in his eyes. "Why the sudden interest? Haven't you been focusing strictly on the design department lately, leaving the financials and legalities to us?"

"No reason," I pulled the corners of my mouth up into a expressionless smile. "I just thought since the copyrights for the Sunset Bay resort project are still under my personal name, we should re-evaluate that asset before the company lists, just so it doesn't affect the overall valuation."

The muscles in Gavin's face twitched subtly. He walked back to me, placing both hands on my shoulders, his grip tightening with a force that bordered on aggressive.

"Honey, we’re a team. What’s mine is yours, and Mia’s future is secured by both of us." His voice dropped, carrying an unquestionable, hypnotic weight. "The copyrights for Sunset Bay are too messy. Those Wall Street vultures will use it to pick us apart. I’ve already had Melanie draw up an Asset Trust Optimization Plan. Trust me on this—in a few days, sign the authorization over to the trust. It’ll bypass the taxes and ensure Mia steps into a massive inheritance the day she turns eighteen. You trust me, right?"

For our daughter’s future.

Over the past three years, he had used that flawless excuse to make me surrender my core voting rights in the design department and my oversight on daily corporate cash flows, turning me entirely into an "artistic symbol" who merely stayed in the studio to pump out blueprints.

And now, he wanted to strip away my final card—the exclusive design rights to the Sunset Bay resort.

"Sure," I said, looking straight into his deceptive eyes, even reaching up to straighten his slightly disheveled collar. "Bring the paperwork over when it's ready, and I'll look it over."

The guard in Gavin’s eyes shattered instantly. He let out a sigh of relief, planted a perfunctory kiss on my cheek, turned, and strode out the door.

The hum of the Tesla's engine faded into the pouring rain.

I turned and walked into the study.

Since Gavin and Melanie could use a remote gateway to enter my core domain in the dead of night, it was time for this internal network—the one I had personally configured—to spit out some real secrets.

I sat at the computer, logging into the lead designer’s encrypted server.

Bypassing the CFO entirely, I pulled up the firm's offshore consulting fees from the past six months.

Rows of dense figures scrolled rapidly across the screen.

Finally, my eyes locked onto a shell company registered in the Cayman Islands called M&G Infinity.

On the fifteenth of every month for the last half-year, the firm had wired five hundred thousand dollars tax-free to this entity under the guise of "conceptual design consulting fees."

The digital signature on the authorization line belonged to Gavin.

I clicked into the underlying corporate structure for a deep dive.

As the loading bar hit one hundred percent, the name of the ultimate beneficiary popped up with absolute clarity.

It wasn't Gavin, and it wasn't me.

Staring at the legal document signed personally by Melanie Crane, showing her as the one hundred percent shareholder, the blood in my veins turned entirely to ice.

My husband was taking the company assets we had built together over a decade and legally funding another woman's commercial empire.