Chapter 4 - HIS BIRTHDAY INSULT HAD A PURPOSE
I read the emails until the words blurred.
USE SELINA.
MAKE CLAIRE FEEL LIKE JULIAN COULD DO BETTER.
THEN BRING UP THE PROPERTY DOCUMENTS.
My husband had spent months weakening my confidence because he believed insecure women were easier to pressure.
Suddenly every comment had a pattern.
“You used to dress better.”
“Other wives still make an effort.”
“Selina somehow manages to stay feminine.”
“You’d feel better about yourself if you lost twenty pounds.”
I had thought he was cruel.
Cruelty would have been simpler.
It was manipulation.
Selina looked sick.
“I didn’t know.”
“I believe you.”
She cried anyway.
Then she revealed her own surprise.
Ethan had told her the lake-resort project was backed by family inheritance.
That was why she never questioned the new Range Rover he bought.
Or the $18,000 watch.
Or the expensive honeymoon.
“Where did his money come from?”
I checked the files.
Some from Mercer Strategic.
Which meant income Julian and Ethan generated through the very company that had helped get Julian fired.
Then one expense stood out.
$36,000.
Category:
BRAND DEVELOPMENT.
Vendor:
S. MERCER IMAGE CONSULTING.
Selina stared.
“That’s me.”
“You have a company?”
“No.”
Then we found the invoice.
Her name.
Her old address.
Services supposedly provided:
Luxury-hospitality branding consultation.
Selina had never performed them.
Yet $36,000 had been paid to an account she did not recognize.
“Who owns it?”
That required deeper work.
My attorney and forensic accountant handled the next steps.
The account belonged to an LLC formed using Selina’s maiden name.
Authorized manager:
Ethan.
Selina’s face went white.
He had used her identity as a convenient vendor label.
Not necessarily stolen identity in the technical legal sense—we needed facts.
But she had never consented.
Then I remembered Julian’s old termination.
The original fake-vendor arrangement.
Same method.
Family name.
Consulting invoice.
No real work.
Two years earlier, Julian promised me it had been a one-time mistake.
It wasn’t.
May you like
It was a system.
And Ethan had rebuilt it almost exactly.
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