Chapter 2 - The Ledger of Lies
The interior of Julian’s car was a sanctuary of leather and silence.
I sat in the backseat,
shaking so violently that the ice-blue silk of my dress rustled like dry leaves.
Julian didn't ask me to stop crying.
He simply handed me a silk handkerchief and waited until we were miles away from the Vanguard Hotel.
"Why?"
I finally whispered,
my voice sounding like it belonged to a stranger.
"Why did you help me?
You and Kalin have been at war for a decade."
Julian looked out the window,
the city lights blurring into streaks of gold against his sharp profile.
"Because your father wasn't the one who ruined the Thorne family,
Saraphina,"
he said quietly.
The words felt like a physical blow.
"What?
Kalin has spent years telling me...
he said my father embezzled the pension funds.
He said that’s why his father died."
Julian turned to me,
reaching into a leather briefcase beside him.
He pulled out a thick folder,
bound in blue cardstock.
"Your father was a scapegoat.
The person who actually moved those funds was Kalin’s own father,
Arthur Thorne.
He was gambling on the offshore markets and lost everything.
He committed suicide to avoid the scandal,
leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that led straight to your father’s office."
I stared at the documents he handed me.
Bank transfers,
forged signatures,
and a confession letter from a former accountant that had been suppressed for ten years.
"Kalin knew?"
I asked,
my heart hammering against my ribs.
"He knew the whole time,"
Julian confirmed.
"He didn't marry you for revenge against your father's ghost.
He married you to keep the Winslow family from ever digging deep enough to find the truth.
As long as you were his wife,
as long as he had your father under his thumb with 'debt restructuring',
the secret was safe."
I looked down at the signature on a transfer dated ten years ago.
It was Arthur Thorne’s hand,
not my father’s.
My entire marriage had been a lie.
Every insult,
every bruise,
every moment of humiliation was designed to keep me small,
to keep me broken,
so I would never look for the knife he had hidden in my back.
"I want to ruin him,"
I said,
the coldness finally settling into my bones.
"I don't just want a divorce.
I want him to have nothing."
Julian leaned back,
a ghost of a smile playing on his lips.
May you like
"Good.
Because I’ve been waiting for a partner who knows where the bodies are buried."
