PART 2
Mark walked into the house that night carrying a large bouquet of yellow tulips, which he knew were my favorites. He wore a smile that was so incredibly fake it made me want to scream, but I kept my face perfectly still. “I am so sorry that I am late tonight, but I have been completely swamped with work at the office,” he said.
I watched him from the dining room table where I had already set out a bowl of warm noodle soup. I had prepared his favorite meal because that is what I always did when he claimed to be stressed. I hated myself in that moment for still knowing every little detail of his preferences.
“Is everything going well with my father and the new investment?” I asked while I feigned a sense of calm. Mark sat down across from me and picked up his spoon to begin eating. “Yes, Thomas is very excited about the project and it is going to be a great opportunity for everyone involved,” he lied.
While he was eating his soup, my cell phone began to vibrate in my lap where he could not see it. It was a message from my father that I read with a sense of grim determination. “Send me the documents he asked you to sign immediately,” the first message read.
“I have already spoken with Robert, our primary lawyer, and we are preparing a strategy,” my father wrote in the second text. “Do not sign a single piece of paper that Mark gives you this weekend,” he warned. “This is much more than just a simple case of infidelity,” the final message stated.
I felt a strange and biting coldness wash over my back as I realized the depth of the situation. Later that night, after Mark had fallen into a deep sleep, I crept into his home office and opened his laptop. He was so arrogant that he had never bothered to change his security settings and used his fingerprint for everything.
I carefully took his hand while he was snoring and pressed his finger against the keyboard sensor to unlock the screen. What I found within his private files left me completely breathless and shaking with rage. There were emails from supposed investors that did not actually exist and messages where he referred to my father as the old man.
I found folders with titles like “Clean Exit” and “Temporary Control” that detailed exactly how he would drain our accounts. There was even a draft for a divorce petition that claimed I suffered from emotional instability. He wanted to use my grief over my mother’s death to prove that I was unfit to manage my own inheritance.
However, that was not even the most heartbreaking thing I discovered during my late night search. I found a hidden folder containing digital copies of medical receipts and appointments. There were prenatal consultations at an expensive private hospital and images of ultrasounds showing a growing child.
Everything had been paid for using a business credit card that was linked to my father’s secondary company accounts. Mark was not just deceiving me and planning to leave me for my best friend. He was actively using my family’s hard earned money to fund the lifestyle and medical care of his mistress.
I had to lock myself in the guest bathroom so that I could vomit without waking him up. At dawn the next morning, my father called and asked me to meet him at his private office in the city. He did not hug me immediately when I walked through the door because he was a man who struggled with showing emotion.
But when he saw my swollen eyes and my pale face, he dropped his pen and held me like he did when I was a child. “Please forgive me, Audrey,” he murmured into my hair as I began to sob. “Why are you asking for forgiveness when you did nothing wrong?” I asked through my tears.
“I am asking for forgiveness because I was the one who brought that snake into our inner circle,” he sighed. My father had trusted Mark with everything and had given him a seat at every important board meeting. He had opened doors for him and introduced him to the most powerful business partners in the state.
Robert, our family lawyer, sat down with us and explained what they had found in less than twelve hours of searching. Mark had already promised third parties access to funds that he did not legally control yet. He had used our family name to close fraudulent deals that would have ruined my father’s reputation.
“Can we actually send him to jail for what he has done?” I asked as I looked at the legal documents. Robert looked at me with a very serious expression and nodded his head slowly. “If we can verify every single one of these transfers, then the answer is yes,” he replied.
“But first we need him to attend the meeting on Monday believing that he still has the upper hand,” Robert added. That afternoon, I received a sweet and casual text message from Lydia. “Hey girl, are you doing okay because you seemed a bit off lately, so do you want to grab coffee tomorrow?” she wrote.
I read those words over and over again while I felt a wave of pure disgust wash over me. She called me her friend while she was carrying my husband’s child and spending my father’s money. I wanted to scream at her and tell her that I knew every single one of her disgusting secrets.
But my father had specifically asked me to be patient so that we could catch them both in the trap. “Sure, Lydia, I would love to see you for coffee,” I replied with a shaking hand. We met at a small, trendy cafe in a quiet neighborhood where the trees provided plenty of shade.
Lydia arrived wearing a loose fitting sundress and carrying a large designer bag across her stomach to hide her shape. She looked a bit pale and she seemed nervous as she leaned in to hug me far too tightly. “I have really missed our little chats,” she said with a smile that did not reach her eyes.
I forced myself to smile back and told her that I had missed her as well. For twenty minutes, she talked about absolute nonsense like television shows and her boring job. Then, without even realizing what she was doing, she placed her hand protectively over her stomach.
My gaze fell directly onto her hand and she immediately pulled it away as if she had been burned. “Are you feeling sick today, Lydia?” I asked with a tone of mock concern. She turned incredibly white and began to fumble with the strap of her expensive handbag.
“No, I am fine, it is just a bit of morning sickness from some bad breakfast I ate,” she lied. The lie burned me much more than the original betrayal ever could have. When we left the cafe, I watched her walk to the corner and get into the passenger seat of Mark’s car.
He did not even wait for me to drive away before he pulled up to pick her up. I took a clear photo of them together with my phone and sent it directly to Robert and my father. Monday arrived slowly like a tragedy that everyone sees coming but no one can stop.
Mark put on his most expensive blue suit and sprayed himself with a heavy layer of cologne. He kissed my cheek and told me that today was the day our lives would change forever. “Yes, Mark, I am absolutely certain that our lives will never be the same after today,” I replied.
He smiled at me because he did not understand the true meaning behind my words. An hour later, my father sent me a short message telling me that Mark had arrived at the office. “He is in the boardroom now, so come in when you hear the recording start to play,” the message said.
I was waiting in an adjoining room behind a sheet of dark glass where I could see everything. I watched my husband sit down with a look of pure arrogance in front of the lawyers and the auditors. Mark was still smiling until my father placed the first thick folder of evidence on the mahogany table.
