He Chose Her, Now My Body Is My Vengeance

Chapter 4 The Silent Hunt

Sarah was my oldest friend and now my lawyer. When I finished telling her what I had heard, she said, “You need proof we can actually use.”

She started with the law. Our state allowed me to record conversations I took part in. It did not allow me to plant a recorder and collect other people’s private conversations while I was away.

Because I co-owned the house, video in the shared study and living room was permissible in our jurisdiction. Bedrooms and bathrooms were off limits. Audio stayed off unless I was present.

The devices arrived the next day between children’s vitamins and organic juice boxes.

One looked like a speaker and sat on the living-room mantel with a view into the open kitchen. The other was hidden inside a leather-bound copy of *War and Peace* for the shared study.

Nothing went into Lily’s room. A remote in my pocket started the recordings when I entered and stopped them when I left.

After Julian fell asleep, I went through the shared home-office computer. His cologne lingered in the study, mixed with the sweet perfume Mia wore.

The hands that spent all day cutting crusts from Lily’s sandwiches still knew a balance sheet. I had managed a forty-million-dollar portfolio on Wall Street. Five years at home had not erased that.

I used my own authorized profile and never touched Julian’s private account. The quarterly reports I had always prepared were still available to me.

He had also synced the trust-management folder into the shared workspace.

Years earlier, I had given him limited investment authority over my revocable premarital trust. Distribution authority remained in my name.

The files contained invoices from Cayman advisory companies Julian controlled. Payments to them had been coded as permitted management expenses.

The agreement he wanted me to sign would approve those past transfers and appoint him sole trustee.

I copied only the records my profile could open onto an encrypted drive. One payment to a sham adviser matched the receipt transaction and reached the jeweler two days later.

Sarah would subpoena the rest and ask for a forensic image. If I broke into anything, Julian could turn my evidence into his defense.

I left the original memory cards inside the cameras. Each night, I exported a copy and logged the date and device.

Sarah’s evidence application generated a checksum before the copy went to her secure client portal. The cards, logs, and later subpoenas would preserve the chain back to each recording.

During the day, I trained. After a week of weights, I asked Liam to teach me how to box.

“Why boxing?”

I looked at the heavy bag. “I’m tired of assuming I’d lose a fight.”

He wrapped my hands and showed me how to plant my feet and turn from my core. He didn’t ask whom I planned to fight.

My first punches barely moved the bag. Liam corrected my stance and sent me back in.

“Save the anger,” he said when I started swinging too hard. “Pick the spot. Hit when you’re ready.”

The next Saturday, Mia came to the house without calling. She carried a portfolio under one arm.

“Julian sent me for the quarterly reports.” She walked past me and ran one manicured finger over the family photographs on the mantel.

“They’re in the study,” I said.

She turned toward the hallway. I stepped into her path.

Mia looked at my shoulders, then at my face. One of her heels scraped backward over the wood.

“I’ll get them,” I told her.

She left with the reports tucked against her chest. Her heels struck the floor faster on the way out.

Twenty minutes later, Julian’s car stopped hard in the driveway. He came through the door and threw his briefcase onto a chair.

“What the hell did you say to her? You do not intimidate my staff in my house.”

He had stopped in front of the bookshelf, with *War and Peace* directly behind him.

I pressed the remote. “Your staff? The one wearing a hundred-thousand-dollar necklace paid through Argent Advisory two days before the jeweler issued the receipt?”

His eyes narrowed. Then he smiled.

“Those reports are beyond you now. My investment mandate lets me pay advisers. Once you sign the final trustee amendment, you’ll have nothing left to question.”

He came closer. “Mia gets the Hamptons house. Lily goes to boarding school. You keep whatever allowance I decide.”

I stared at him as if I didn’t understand.

Behind him, the camera kept recording.