Chapter 4 - The House of Lies
By late afternoon, Selina Cole was arrested in the lobby of her luxury apartment building, caught on news cameras as federal officers placed her in handcuffs.
While Julian sat in a holding cell and Selina was processed, I returned to the penthouse under police escort accompanied by Vance Sterling and a team of forensic auditors.
Stepping across the threshold of my own home made my stomach turn. The cream Persian rug in the living room had been removed as evidence, leaving a bare, dark hardwood stain where my blood had pooled.
"Are you sure you want to be here, Nora?" Sterling asked softly, watching me lean heavily on my cane.
"I need my life back, Vance," I said, walking slowly into Julian’s private home office. "Julian built his entire company, Vance Logistics, during our three years of marriage. He always told me I had no share in it because he founded it prior to our wedding."
"And did he?" Sterling asked.
"No," I replied, sitting in the heavy leather chair behind Julian’s desk. "He rebranded his father's failing trucking firm using two million dollars from my father’s life insurance policy—money I invested as a silent loan that he promised to repay."
For three years, I had trusted Julian implicitly. I had never checked the books, never questioned his offshore transfers, and never looked into the corporate restructuring papers. But a woman who has survived two stab wounds no longer accepts promises.
I opened Julian’s desk drawer, pulled out his secondary laptop, and plugged in a bypass drive provided by Detective Marcus. Within minutes, the encrypted files opened.
What we found went far beyond marital infidelity.
Selina Cole wasn't just an "old friend" or a consultant. Over the last eight months, she had established three shell companies in the Cayman Islands. Julian had been transferring millions of dollars from Vance Logistics into these accounts—accounts held jointly under Selina’s legal maiden name.
"He was stripping the company," Sterling murmured, scrolling through the wire transfers in astonishment. "He was bankrupting his own primary corporation so that if you ever divorced him, there would be no marital assets left for you to claim."
"He was preparing to flee the country with her," I said, pointing to a set of digital airline reservations booked for January 15th—two non-refundable first-class tickets to non-extradition territory in South America.
They hadn't just planned to lie about the scratch. Selina had convinced Julian to push me out of the picture entirely, clear his legal liabilities, and frame my "instability" so he could claim my remaining trust fund assets as my legal guardian once I was committed or dead.
I looked at the screen, a cold realization settling over me.
May you like
Julian hadn't just stabbed me in a fit of passionate rage. He had executed a calculated, corporate assassination planned over eight months.
"Download everything, Vance," I said, leaning back against the leather chair and placing my hand over my unborn child. "We aren't just taking his freedom. We are taking every single dollar he ever touched."
