Chapter 1
“Just one last time,” Joshua whispered as he slipped into my bed on the quiet night right before our final divorce.
Gretchen froze in place as the heavy mattress sank under her husband’s body. For almost six months they had slept in separate rooms and barely touched each other at all. When his cold hand grazed hers over the sheet, she felt no affection whatsoever. She only felt a sudden wave of deep anxiety and fear.
“What is happening right now?” Gretchen asked in a low voice.
Joshua looked at her in the dark room with a very tired expression on his face.
“I really don’t want us to end up hating each other after everything,” Joshua said quietly.
Then he set his expensive smartphone down on the small nightstand right beside the lamp. The screen lit up bright white just a few seconds later, revealing a new incoming text. Gretchen managed to read the brief message quickly before he tried to snatch the device away from her view.
“Did she sign everything already?” read the message sent from a contact named Cheyenne.
Gretchen’s entire body went cold in an instant. Joshua had not returned to her bed because he still loved her or missed her. He had returned because she was supposed to sign the formal agreement that would end fourteen long years of marriage the very next day.
Someone else was waiting impatiently for her signature.
Gretchen was thirty-eight years old and worked dedicatedly as a surgical nurse at a busy hospital in downtown Minneapolis. For long months she had used sheer exhaustion from her long shifts as a convenient refuge to avoid facing what was truly happening in her quiet home in Plymouth.
Before this painful time, the large suburban house was always full of cheerful noise and energy. There were school backpacks resting by the front door, laundry hanging in the back yard, and Joshua singing loudly while brewed coffee every single morning. Now it felt like an empty model house that was perfectly clean but entirely lifeless.
Their thirteen-year-old daughter, Maxine, spent more and more of her free time staying over with her close school friends. Neither of them asked too many direct questions about the situation. Children always feel the coming storm long before adults are willing to admit that it has started raining.
Joshua worked hard as a high-ranking financial director at a large investment firm located in downtown St. Paul. Since his recent big promotion, his designer suits had become noticeably more expensive, his business trips far more frequent, and his personal patience much shorter. When he originally asked her for a divorce, he did so with a strange calmness that Gretchen completely mistook for pure maturity.
“We just don’t make each other happy anymore,” he had told her softly on a dark evening.
She ended up believing his calm words completely back then. She truly thought their long marriage had simply worn down under endless night shifts, long office meetings, heavy mortgage payments, and exhausting daily obligations.
Now she suddenly realized that perhaps every single detail had been carefully orchestrated from the start.
“Cheyenne works directly with me at the firm,” Joshua said far too quickly as he backed away. “She is just checking in on the progress of our legal paperwork.”
“Why does she care so much whether I have signed the agreement already?” Gretchen asked directly.
Joshua stayed completely silent while looking away from her eyes.
Gretchen pulled her trembling hand away from him immediately.
“What did you actually need to get out of staying here tonight?” she asked coldly.
“It is really not what you are thinking right now,” Joshua replied in a hurried tone.
She let out a very dry, quiet laugh at his defense. Every caught man seemed to memorize that exact same weak line whenever they got exposed.
Joshua walked back to the cold guest room without offering any kind of genuine apology. Gretchen stayed wide awake until the quiet dawn arrived, mentally reviewing every tiny detail she had completely ignored over the past year. She remembered his constant insistence on reaching a quick agreement, his firm refusal to hire professional property appraisers, and the subtle way he kept repeating that reviewing bank statements would only stress her out unnecessarily.
At six in the morning, she called her supervisor and canceled her scheduled work shift.
She waited patiently for Joshua to leave the house for his morning commute to St. Paul before walking into his private home office. Resting on top of the polished wooden desk was the thick gray folder that contained their final divorce agreement. She carefully compared the stated financial figures against their old tax returns from previous years.
Two major investment accounts were completely missing from the lists.
Together, those two hidden accounts added up to well over 1.2 million dollars.
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That was definitely not an accidental bookkeeping error. It was deliberate hidden money.
When she discovered regular monthly bank deposits going to a private consulting company registered under Cheyenne’s name, she realized the terrible deception was far bigger than a simple romantic affair. She could not believe what she was about to discover next.
