No Objections

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It had been two months since Marisol uncovered the secret life her husband had buried beneath years of practiced charm, tailored suits, and pillow-soft lies.

Sixty agonizing days of silence.

Sixty nights lying next to him, pretending that the very sight of him didn’t curdle her stomach.

Sixty days of biting her tongue so hard it bled, of faking smiles through family brunches, of pretending her perfect marriage still existed for the sake of optics.

Not one slip. Not one scream. Not one emotional outburst.

She’d mastered the art of emotional warfare—and no one knew it.

Not her mother, who still called Elliot “her favorite son.”

Not her father, Arturo Vargas, CEO of Vargas Global and one of the most powerful legal minds in Miami. Had he known what Elliot had done—what he was still doing—he would’ve had him fired, blacklisted, ruined. But that kind of reaction would’ve blown Marisol’s cover. And this… this needed to be handled her way.

The only one who knew the truth was Nayeli Santiago—her best friend, her ride-or-die since prep school, and the daughter of her father's business partner. When Marisol had told her, Nayeli had nearly driven to Elliot’s office with a tire iron and pepper spray.

But Marisol had sworn her to secrecy.

Now, two months later, Marisol sat behind the sleek walnut desk of her corner office at Vargas & Co., the premier law firm in downtown Miami. Floor-to-ceiling windows cast golden light across the expanse of her workspace, which was as elegant and formidable as the woman who ruled it.

High ceilings. Abstract gold-and-ink artwork. Pristine white orchids in a silver vase on the windowsill. A tailored gray pantsuit clung to Marisol’s figure like it had been stitched to her body. Her hair, a thick curtain of lustrous dark waves, was twisted into a sharp bun at the base of her neck. Her stiletto heels were Jimmy Choos. Her lipstick was matte crimson—sharp, like her smile.

She looked every bit the confident, polished lawyer the world expected her to be.

But inside?

She was a volcano—quiet, patient, and ready to explode.

A soft knock at her door broke the silence.

“Come in,” she said, not looking up.

The door opened and Carmen, her paralegal, entered, balancing a tray with espresso and a stack of fresh files. “You’ve got three client calls to return, and Judge Alvarado’s clerk moved the Soto hearing to Thursday. Oh, and your nine a.m. canceled—something about a stomach bug.”

Marisol finally looked up, eyes sharp and clear. “Great. That gives me time to go through the Pendrake case.”

Carmen nodded, hesitated, then added gently, “You should take a break. You’ve been in here since 6 a.m.”

“I’ll take a break when Elliot’s neck is under my Louboutin,” Marisol said under her breath.

Carmen blinked. “What?”

“Nothing. Thank you, Carmen. I’ll call Judge Alvarado’s clerk myself.”

Once the door clicked shut, Marisol turned back to the real reason she hadn’t left her office in hours.

Her second desk—a smaller oak table tucked in the back corner—was stacked with files, spreadsheets, and printed screenshots marked with yellow tabs. Dozens of them.

And at the center of it all:

A forensic accounting report, twenty-seven pages long. The work of a highly paid, deeply discreet accountant she’d hired under the table. It read like a horror novel.

Seven years.

Seven f*****g years of theft.

Not huge amounts—never more than a few thousand at a time. He was careful, methodical. But it was her money. Herinheritance. Her name on those accounts.

The funds had been siphoned through dummy companies, rerouted through shell businesses in South Florida, and deposited into accounts that were technically in her name—but only accessible through a shared digital signature platform that Elliot had quietly added himself to during their second year of marriage.

Her heart pounded in her ears as she flipped through the pages again.

There were screenshots of wire transfers. Receipts from off-shore deposits. Even a few flagged transactions linked to a holding company called J.K. Investments.

That name again.

Jericho King.

Every time she saw that name, it cut through her like ice.

A chill crawled down her spine, crawling into her bones like a warning she couldn’t shake. He was the ghost in Elliot’s tangled web—the shadow lurking behind every shell company, every closed-door deal, every off-record wire transfer.

It wasn’t just the penthouse in Brickell—though the luxury condo overlooking Biscayne Bay had been shocking enough. A home she’d never seen. A property she didn’t even know she owned… until two weeks ago when her forensic accountant had quietly handed her the file with that name scribbled in ink across the deed: J.K. Investments.

The name triggered something familiar in her memory.

Marisol narrowed her eyes, fingers hovering over her laptop as she scrolled through her firm's secure document system. She tapped her acrylic nails against the polished desk—tick, tick, tick—until finally she froze.

There it was.

A case from three years ago—Morrison v. Telleron Holdings—involving a bitter property dispute and a string of LLCs trying to hide asset ownership. She hadn’t handled the case personally, but she had reviewed it for one of her junior associates. There it was in the financial discovery files:

J.K. Investments.

Her pulse spiked.

The name wasn’t just tied to Elliot. It was deeper, more entrenched in Miami’s underworld of high-stakes property laundering and quiet political bribes than she had realized.

Her hands flew over the keys as she started cross-referencing property records, tracing the paper trail like a bloodhound. One Brickell condo turned into three. Then five.

A house in Coral Gables.

A condo in Sunny Isles.

A brownstone in Coconut Grove.

A storage facility in Wynwood.

A warehouse in Hialeah.

All originally purchased under her name—and slowly, over the years, transferred through a series of shadowy transactions to himself.

It had been happening right under her nose.

What the hell had he been planning?

Why spend years pretending to love her? Why marry her, share her bed, attend her family’s Christmas dinners, and hold her hand in courtrooms like they were a team?

The money, she realized bitterly.

That was all she had ever been to him.

A vault with a pretty face and a powerful last name.

Her stomach twisted, and her chest burned as tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. Her perfectly applied eyeliner suddenly felt heavy, her lipstick too tight on her lips.

No.

Not here. Not now.

She wouldn’t fall apart at her desk, in her office, surrounded by people who saw her as a pillar of strength. Marisol Vargas did not cry at work.

She pressed the intercom button on her desk phone, her finger trembling slightly.

“Carmen,” she said, her voice tight. “Reschedule all of my meetings for tomorrow. Tell them… tell them a family emergency came up.”

There was a pause.

Then, “Yes, Ms. Vargas,” her paralegal replied gently. But something in her tone shifted. She heard it too—the small, almost imperceptible crack in Marisol’s voice. “Marisol?” she said softly, her voice barely a whisper now, like a secret she didn’t want the walls to hear. “Are you okay?”

Marisol closed her eyes and cleared her throat, shoving the pain deep down into her gut. “I’m fine. Just some… family issues I need to handle personally.” Her voice was back to its usual controlled tone, though her heart was shattering under every word. “I’ll be leaving in thirty. Only call if it’s urgent.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Carmen replied, but she didn’t sound convinced.

Marisol ended the call before she could unravel any further.

With practiced movements, she gathered the files—every page of stolen assets, every forged signature, every shadowed transfer—and stuffed them into her crocodile leather briefcase. Her hands moved fast, robotic. Her mind was already racing toward the exit, toward air, toward Nayeli.

She grabbed her phone and dialed.

The moment the call connected, she didn’t even let Nayeli greet her.

“I—” she started, but her throat caught. The pain hit like a freight train. The betrayal, the humiliation. Her body curled inward as the sobs punched out of her chest.

“I need you,” she choked.

Nayeli didn’t hesitate. “Aw, Mari, come over. I’ll break out the good wine—the one we swore we’d save for our thirtieth birthdays—and we’ll order Thai from that hole-in-the-wall place you love. Just us. Girls’ night. Like old times.”

Marisol exhaled a shaky breath, her lips twitching into a half-smile. “I’m leaving now,” she said softly, and hung up.

She stood up and walked to the private mirror mounted on the wall behind her office door. Her reflection was pale. Her eyes, red-rimmed and glassy. Her hair still flawless, her lips still perfect—but the mask was cracking.

She reached into her desk drawer, pulled out a compact, and reapplied her makeup with a surgeon’s precision. One breath. Then another. Then another.

By the time she stepped into the hallway, she was once again Marisol—Miami’s most unshakable attorney.

She passed by her staff, offering a polite smile. “I’ll be out the rest of the day. Text if you need anything urgent,” she told them.

“Hope everything’s okay, Ms. Vargas,” Carmen said carefully from behind her desk.

Marisol gave her a tight nod and exited without another word.

The elevator ride down felt like forever. When she finally stepped into the underground parking garage, the cool air hit her skin like a balm. She slid behind the wheel of her black Mercedes AMG and sank into the leather seat, gripping the steering wheel as if it were the only thing anchoring her to reality.

She let out a massive breath and stared at the windshield.

“Keep it together,” she whispered to herself. “Just until you get there.”

She turned the key and drove toward the only person who could hold her broken pieces without judgment.

But even as she left the parking garage, even as the skyline shrank behind her, the ghost of J.K. Investments and the phantom betrayal of Elliot haunted her every turn.