He looked up at me, his face a pathetic mask of desperation, the man who had wanted to kill me just moments ago now begging for mercy.
I looked down at him, my face impassive, and watched him crumble.
“True or false,” I said, my voice flat, “I don’t care anymore. Save it for the police.”
As if on cue, the front door opened, and several uniformed police officers walked in.
Pure terror washed over Andrew’s face. He clung to my leg. “Leslie, I’m sorry! I was wrong! Please, give me one more chance! We’re family! If not for me, think about Lily!”
At the mention of our daughter, the last bit of my restraint vanished. I closed my eyes, seeing only Jenna’s smug face claiming to be Lily’s mother.
I looked down at him. “We are not family. We stopped being a family the moment you let Jenna into our lives.”
The room erupted into chaos. Andrew’s aunt tried to intercept the officers with a strained smile. “Officers, what’s all this? It’s just a family matter, my nephew and his wife are having a dispute…”
An officer gave her a withering look and pushed past. They produced handcuffs and efficiently secured the wrists of Andrew, his uncle, and his cousin.
“We’ll let the investigation determine if it’s just a ‘misunderstanding‘,” the lead officer said grimly. “You’re coming with us.”
They were led away without another word.
In the ensuing panic, Jenna, the woman who thought she was about to marry into a fortune, finally succumbed to the shock and fainted on the floor.
09:57
Chapter 2
09.57
But this time, no one cared. Everyone was too worried about their own fate to spare a glance for the girl and her unborn child.
Shortly after I left the estate, my friend sent another file.
“Leslie,” his text read, “these are all of Andrew’s assets. We’ve had them frozen. You should… take a look.”
His hesitation told me there was more bad news, but at this point, I felt numb. I could handle anything.
I opened the document and began to scroll. Near the end, I saw it: a savings account with a balance of over ten million dollars. The
name on the account was Jenna Bird.
My heart sank. I checked the date the account was opened. It was during the exact period Andrew had come to me, claiming his
company was on the verge of collapse and he needed an emergency loan to cover the losses. The time I had gone to my parents
and begged them for the money.
It all clicked into place.
No wonder he was so bold about embezzling company funds to pay his family’s gambling debts. It wasn’t his first time playing this
game.
And I, like a fool, had believed him. Worried about the stress he was under, I had run to my parents without a second thought. I
could only imagine how he must have laughed at me, the gullible little cash cow.
I closed the file and made a call. “Effective immediately, terminate all partnerships with Cole Industries. And contact every one of
our associates who does business with him. Advise them to do the same. The reason? The CEO’s character is compromised. He’s
a high–risk investment.”
After hanging up, a wave of relief washed over me. I glanced at my phone. The screen saver was still a photo from our wedding
day. The vows and sweet nothings of our youth felt like a cruel joke.
My friend’s last file contained a single audio clip. I almost deleted it, but curiosity won. What more could there be?
I was wrong. There was more. Hearing it was like plunging into an abyss.
Even though Jenna had already told me, hearing Andrew’s actual voice, dripping with contempt as he described my C–section scar, mocking my body while praising Jenna’s youthful figure… for a moment, I wanted to kill them both.
But it got worse. They were discussing what to do with my daughter after the divorce.
“That ugly hag,” Andrew’s voice sneered. “She actually thinks I love her. I was only ever with her for her family’s money. I can’t stand
to be in the same room with her for a second longer.”
“Andrew,” Jenna cooed, “as soon as I have our baby, we’ll get married. And we should send Leslie’s daughter away. To a boarding
school abroad or something. She’s just a girl, after all. We won’t have time to raise her.”
“Good idea,” Andrew agreed instantly. “Whatever you want.”
“And make sure she leaves with nothing,” Jenna added. “I’ve always loved her jewelry collection. I want it. And all of your assets will
go to my son.”
“Of course,” he said. “It’s all yours.”
That was it. The last shred of my composure snapped. I compiled every piece of evidence–the financial fraud, the embezzlement,
the audio recording–and sent it all to the lead detective on the case.
I would make them pay for everything.
News travels fast. With the police investigation public, Cole Industries, already on life support propped up by my family’s money, went into a nosedive. The stock plummeted. The banks called in their loans. And Andrew, locked away, was oblivious to the empire
09:57
Chapter 2
0957
he’d built on my back crumbling to dust.
The story of his affair became city–wide gossip. It didn’t take long for internet sleuths to uncover Jenna’s identity. They discovered that three years ago, she had gone from a broke college graduate to a wealthy social media influencer overnight, posing as an
heiress. Now, her followers learned the truth: her lavish lifestyle was funded by a married man. The outrage was immense. Betray-
ed fans flooded her social media with vitriol.
Unable to handle the fall from grace, Jenna planned to flee the country with the money and jewels Andrew had given her. But som-
eone leaked her travel plans. She was swarmed by an angry mob at the airport, and in the chaos, she was knocked to the ground.
She suffered a miscarriage.
The Cole family, who had risen with Andrew, fell just as hard. His relatives were hounded by creditors. His parents‘ estate was seized, and they were forced to move back to a dilapidated farmhouse in the countryside that had been abandoned for years. I heard the shock of their reversal of fortune made them both ill. When his father read about Jenna’s miscarriage–the loss of his
precious ‘heir‘–he had a stroke and was left bedridden.
Meanwhile, I had the divorce papers drawn up and sent to the prison for Andrew to sign.
He refused. He insisted on seeing me one last time, Reluctantly, I went.
We faced each other through a plexiglass barrier, the air thick with unspoken things. In just a few weeks, he had lost a shocking
amount of weight. His hair was streaked with gray. He looked ten years older.
The love was gone. So was the hate. All that was left was an empty space.
He spoke first. “Leslie… I’m sorry. I know I was wrong. Can we… can we go back?”
Go back? His words hung in the air. I didn’t know what “back” he was even referring to. We hadn’t shared a moment of genuine warmth since before Lily was born. There was no “back” for us. And if he meant back to our college days, the gray in his hair was
answer enough.
“Andrew, let it go,” I said, my voice soft but firm. “It’s been over for a long time. You’re the one who ended it, remember?”
His face fell, his lips trembling. After a long silence, he finally gave in. He signed the papers.
As I took the document and turned to leave, he called my name one last time.
“Leslie…”
I paused and looked back.
“If there had been no Jenna,” he asked, his voice raw with a desperate need for an answer, “if I hadn’t cheated… would we still be
together? Would you still love me?”
I looked at him, truly looked at him, and then gave a small, sad, ironic smile. “If there had been no Jenna, would you have stopped despising the scar on my body? Would you have stopped…” I trailed off. “Andrew, it was never about Jenna. If not her, it would have been a Jessica, or an Amanda. You were never in love with me. You were in love with my family’s name. You were in love with what
I could give you.”
I turned and walked away. As I left the room, I heard a sound behind me–the sound of Andrew Cole, the man who had everything,
breaking down in great, heaving sobs.
Perhaps now, he finally understood regret. But it was far too late.
With Andrew gone, his company was on the verge of collapse. His crimes–embezzlement, conspiracy to defraud–meant a long prison sentence. But that company also held a piece of me, of my work and my family’s faith. I couldn’t stand by and watch it die
because of his mistakes.
09 57
Chapter 2
09.67
The courts returned his majority shares to me. I was now the largest shareholder. I decided to run it myself.
When I first walked in as CEO, no one took me seriously. To them, I was just the spoiled, clueless socialite wife. The company was already teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, they saw me as the final nail in the coffin.
But they soon learned I was no fool.
In my first month, I led my team to land the most difficult account in our sector, a project everyone else had deemed impossible. I doubled the company’s quarterly revenue. The board members and employees who had once scoffed at me now looked at me with
a mixture of awe and respect.
As the company thrived, the media came calling. In every interview, they tried to bring up the past, to sensationalize the scandal. But it didn’t hurt anymore. The past was no longer a source of pain. It was the foundation I had built my new life on. The old me was gone. In her place stood the CEO of Phoenix Enterprises.
This afternoon, my assistant called with news that our European expansion was a massive success, projected to bring in over fifty
million in profit. It was good news, but expected. I told her to keep up the good work and moved on.
A little later, the evening news flashed a headline: Andrew Cole had been sentenced. The timing felt like a sign. A double victory.
I finally felt it, deep in my bones. The past was truly the past. That devastating betrayal hadn’t broken me. It had forged me into
something stronger, something better. It had taught me how to live, how to take care of myself and the people who truly mattered.
A career is only yours when it’s in your own hands. A lover’s sweet words are fleeting, but self–reliance is forever. Love was no
longer the center of my universe, but my life felt more full, more warm, more infinite than ever before.
In the evening, I went to pick Lily up from preschool.
The moment she saw me, her face lit up, and she came flying into my arms. In the months we’d been living alone, she rarely ment-
ioned her father. She never asked where he went. And I never forced the subject.
This was good. This was enough.
Lily and I were going to be just fine. More than fine.
(The End)
