Chapter 3 - THE FIRST LIE
I took pictures of every page.
Then I put the papers back exactly where I found them.
Marcus came home around midnight.
He smelled like expensive cologne.
Not his.
Hers.
He stopped when he saw me at the kitchen table.
“You’re back.”
“My aunt died.”
His face shifted just enough to imitate concern.
“I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t come to the funeral.”
“I had meetings.”
“Of course.”
He exhaled.
“Rebecca, can we not do this tonight?”
I almost admired the nerve.
He had ended our marriage by email while I was watching the only family member who raised me die.
Now he was tired.
I looked at him.
“Who is Vanessa?”
His expression froze for less than a second.
That was all I needed.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The perfume.”
He looked annoyed.
“Jesus Christ.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“She works in strategy.”
“And your bed?”
His jaw tightened.
“You’ve been gone for weeks.”
I laughed once.
“You cheated because I went to care for a dying woman?”
“I’m saying we were already over.”
“Interesting. I wish someone had told me.”
He leaned over the counter.
“This is exactly why I didn’t want a dramatic confrontation.”
“You emailed me.”
“I wanted to avoid this.”
“No, Marcus. You wanted to avoid accountability.”
His face changed then.
The softness disappeared.
“You want honesty?”
“Yes.”
“You became dead weight.”
I said nothing.
He kept going.
“You stopped showing up to events. You stopped networking. You stopped caring about how we looked. I’m running a company worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and you were off playing nurse.”
For one second, I couldn’t breathe.
Then something inside me went quiet.
Not broken.
Quiet.
Dangerously quiet.
I stood.
“Good night, Marcus.”
He stared at me.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
He scoffed.
“You always do this. You go silent.”
“Yes.”
“It’s manipulative.”
“No. It gives people room to show me who they are.”
I walked upstairs.
The next morning, I went to Harrison’s office.
He was already waiting.
So was a lawyer named Dana Ruiz.
And on the table between them sat a thick blue binder marked HELEN CARTER ESTATE.
Harrison pushed it toward me.
“Your aunt owned shares in Cole-Whitmore Technologies.”
I blinked.
“How many?”
“More than Marcus knows.”
Dana opened the binder.
“Your aunt held them through three separate trusts.”
My mouth went dry.
“How much are they worth?”
Dana looked at Harrison.
Harrison looked at me.
“Enough to make you the company’s largest individual voting shareholder.”
I stared at both of them.
Then Dana turned one more page.
“And that isn’t the biggest part.”
She slid a document toward me.
At the top were the words:
SUCCESSION AGREEMENT.
Harrison leaned back.
“Your aunt and I made a deal seventeen years ago.”
“What deal?”
“That if something happened to her, you would be given the chance to take her seat.”
I shook my head.
“I don’t understand.”
Harrison’s eyes sharpened.
“You will.”
May you like
Then he reached for another folder.
“First, we need to talk about what your husband has been doing with company money.”
