Chapter 2

It belonged to my husband, Alex Grant.

For a second, the room turned over.

I put my hand out and caught the cold edge of the desk, and that was the only thing that kept me standing.

My blood seemed to stop moving, and my arms and legs went cold, as though I had fallen into a freezer.

I couldn't understand how it could be him.

Michael saw how white I had gone, and he seemed to work out what had happened.

His eyes went from shocked to furious. "Jane, what exactly is going on here?

"Your husband has been the one collecting those dividends, all these years.

"Every time, he brought your ID and a letter of authorization with your signature on it.

"He said you were in poor health and couldn't come in, so you had given him full authority."

There was nothing wrong with my health.

I had barely taken a sick day in twenty years.

I had never signed any letter of authorization in my life.

Then the pictures started popping into my head.

I remembered all of it.

Years earlier, Alex had said he needed to file proof of our joint property, and he had me sign a stack of documents.

He told me that once I signed, everything he earned would belong to me.

I had laughed at him for being soft about it.

We were married, so it made no difference who earned the money, because all of it went into the same house.

I never doubted him, and I signed with my eyes shut.

There were all the times he needed my ID for registration or an errand, too.

I handed it over every time.

So that was how it all had happened.

My trust, my love, and twenty years of everything I had given had turned into one enormous joke.

I had believed we were carrying each other through the hard years and sharing whatever came our way.

To him, it had been nothing but a long and careful con.

He lived in my house, spent my money, and enjoyed everything that should have been mine, and he did it with a clear conscience.

And I had gone on living small on 1,600 dollars a month, buried under a mortgage I could never finish paying.

It was ridiculous and pathetic.

"Jane?" Michael's worried voice pulled me back out of it.

I lifted my head and looked at him.

There were no tears in my eyes, only something flat and dead.

"Mr. Turner." My voice was frighteningly calm. "Is this stock certificate real?"

Michael nodded hard. "My father put it in your hands himself. He said there would be no company today without you. He said you had earned every bit of it."

So it had come from his father.

Michael's father had been the one.

He had been as steady as a mountain, and he had treated me like a daughter of his own.

Even at the end of his life, he had held my hand and told me to keep working hard, because the company would never shortchange me.

He had set all of it up for me long ago.

But I had been blind, and the person closest to me had kept me that way.

I asked, "Then what happened to the dividends?"

Michael said, "Every one of them went into an account your husband gave us after he signed for it."

He pointed at a bank account number on the record.

I had never seen that number before.

I knew Alex's payroll account and our savings account by heart.

That one was his private vault.

He had built it for himself with my money.

My heart felt like it was being cut apart with a dull knife, one slow pass at a time.

It had been twenty years of marriage.

I had given him children, waited on his parents, and looked after his sister.

I had gone without, worn the same clothes for years, and never bought myself decent makeup.

And he had spent seven million dollars of mine without one second of hesitation.

The month before, his sister, Lily Grant, had wanted a handbag that cost seven thousand dollars.

Alex told me to borrow the money from my coworkers, because what mattered was that his sister was happy.

I put my pride away and went to three of them before I had the seven thousand together.

Looking back, I had been a complete fool.

I had been the fool his whole family passed around between them.

Michael said, "Jane, what do you want to do?"

There was anger held down underneath Michael's voice.

"This is serious fraud and embezzlement.

"Say the word and our legal department moves today.

"We can put him away for the rest of his life."

I could have called the police.

I could have given my son a father in prison.

I didn't want that.

It would have let him off far too easily.

What I wanted wasn't a cell for him.

I wanted him to bring up every cent he had swallowed, with the interest on top.

I wanted him and his whole family to learn what it felt like to fall from the clouds into hell.

I wanted them to learn that what belonged to Jane Evans wasn't so easy to take.

I folded the stock certificate back up slowly and put it into the manila envelope.

Then I looked up at Michael. "Mr. Turner, I'm taking the resignation back. I'm staying in this job."

Michael blinked, and then he understood exactly what I meant.

Something like admiration went through his eyes. "All right. The company is behind you, always. If you need anything, say so."

I nodded. "Do something for me. Make me copies of every dividend record from all these years and of the authorizations he signed.

"I want copies of the originals, the kind that hold up in court."

"Of course." Michael picked up the phone at once. "I'll have legal start on it now."

I picked up my bag and turned to go.

"Jane." Michael stopped me. "You're still the second largest shareholder in this company.

"Starting tomorrow, take the office next to mine.

"It's the vice president's office, and it has been empty a long time."

I looked at that closed door with too many things moving in me at once.

There had been a time when that door seemed a galaxy away from me.

I should have been sitting behind it for years.

"All right."

I walked out of the office, and the sunlight was hard on my eyes.

It felt as though I had come back from another lifetime.

But I knew that from that day on, nothing would be the same.

The Jane Evans who bowed her head and swallowed everything and understood nothing had died in that office.

The woman who walked out of it had come for revenge.