Chapter 2 - THE MIDNIGHT AMBUSH
I arrived at our limestone estate in Lake Forest forty minutes before Callum did. The house was quiet, vast, and cold. For years, I had walked these marble floors telling myself that Callum’s coldness was merely the weight of corporate ambition. I had excused his late nights, his dismissive comments about my quiet life, and the way he slowly pushed me out of industry circles.
I walked straight to his study.
The room was paneled in dark mahogany, smelling faintly of Macallan and expensive leather. I didn't waste time looking through his desk drawers; I went directly behind the framed original print of the Chicago skyline and opened the hidden safe. I had purchased the safe five years ago; Callum had never bothered to change the factory reset master override.
Inside was a red leather binder. Within it lay the trail of his vanity: private banking transfers, personal guarantees he had illegally cross-collateralized with our marital assets, and a duplicate deed for the two-million-dollar Gold Coast penthouse he had gifted Vivienne Ashford to seal their affair.
The heavy front door slammed downstairs. Footsteps thundered up the staircase, frantic and uneven.
“Zariah!” Callum’s voice echoed through the high ceilings. He burst into the study, his silk tie loosened and dangling, his jacket discarded somewhere in the foyer. Sweat glistened on his forehead. “What the hell did you pull at Alden House? Do you realize Marcus Vance walked out before dessert? The entire syndicate deal is on life support!”
“The syndicate deal is dead, Callum,” I said, not looking up as I slipped the binder into my leather briefcase. “Marcus called Everett fifteen minutes ago. He isn’t investing a dime in a founder who doesn’t even own the voting rights to his own enterprise.”
Callum rushed forward, his hands outstretched as if to grab the briefcase, but he stopped himself, trembling with fury. “You set me up. You’ve been sitting on this, waiting to humiliate me!”
“I didn’t set you up. You set yourself on fire, and you handed Vivienne the matches.” I closed the briefcase with a crisp snap. “Nine years, Callum. I gave you my capital, my advisory network, and my silence while you played the visionary boy-wonder of Chicago finance. And you had the audacity to demand I apologize to your mistress in front of your peers?”
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“She’s the senior vice president of public relations!” he shouted, desperation cracking his voice. “Her family has connections to the governor’s board! I had to keep her happy, Zariah! It was business!”
“Fucking her on an eight-hundred-thread-count sheet in the Gold Coast on company funds isn’t business, Callum. It’s embezzlement.” I looked into his bloodshot eyes. “And tomorrow morning, the board will treat it as such.”
