Chapter 2 - Cold Mathematics
I didn't cry.
When you spend your life structuring plotlines, analyzing motives, and building suspense for millions of readers worldwide, betrayal doesn't make you scream. It makes you calculate.
I pulled out my legal pad and began writing down every asset, every account, and every legal tie binding me to Evan Bennett.
When I married Evan four years ago, he was a handsome, charismatic account manager at a mid-tier logistics firm. I was already a bestselling fiction author whose film rights were netting seven-figure checks.
My father, a retired tax attorney who had seen enough messy divorces to fill a library, insisted on an airtight prenuptial agreement. Evan had signed it with a wide, charming smile, claiming, "I'd love you if you worked at a coffee shop, Claire. I don't care about your money."
Clearly, he had changed his mind.
By 4:30 a.m., I had frozen the primary black credit card, but I did not close the account completely. Instead, I flagged the secondary card as stolen and set real-time push notifications for any attempt to swipe it.
Then I called my estate attorney, Arthur Vance, at his home number.
"Claire?" Arthur's groggy voice rasped through the speaker. "Is everything alright? It's before dawn."
"Evan took his mistress to Switzerland on my secondary credit card," I said, my voice dead calm. "She was caught in an avalanche while skiing with him. The U.S. Embassy called thinking I was the victim, and my mother-in-law told them to let me freeze to save money."
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. I heard Arthur sit up in bed, the sheets rustling violently.
"Good Lord," Arthur breathed. "Where are you?"
"In my apartment. In Manhattan. Entirely uninjured."
"Claire... what do you want to do?"
"I want Evan to land back in the United States with nothing," I said. "No credit cards, no access to our joint slush fund, no job, and no house. I want a forensic audit on his company expenses, and I want the Range Rover reported as taken out of state without the registered owner's consent."
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"Consider it done," Arthur said without a second of hesitation. "I'll draft the divorce petition before six. But Claire... what about the girl in Switzerland?"
I looked at the window as the first gray light of morning peeked over the Manhattan skyline. "If she survives, she's going to find out what happens when you try to live in another woman's shadow."
