Chapter 3 - The Mistress Asked to Meet Me
Every instinct told me not to meet Lyra.
Curiosity won.
Sloan insisted we meet in the lobby restaurant of my hotel, surrounded by cameras and people.
Lyra arrived fifteen minutes early.
Without the photographs, I might not have recognized her.
Online she always looked polished, bright and impossibly confident.
In person, she looked twenty-six.
Tired.
Terrified.
And ashamed.
She sat across from me without touching the coffee she ordered.
“I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t come for an apology.”
She nodded.
“You shouldn’t accept one anyway.”
That surprised me.
Then she placed her phone on the table.
“Thain told me your marriage had been over for almost a year.”
I said nothing.
“He said you stayed together because of property and the company.”
“Did the fact that he still lived with me seem unusual?”
Her face reddened.
“Yes.”
“Did the wedding ring seem unusual?”
“Yes.”
“Then why continue?”
Tears appeared in her eyes.
“Because I wanted to believe him.”
That answer was painfully familiar.
Lyra admitted the affair had started fourteen weeks earlier.
Thain told her he was filing for divorce after the current funding round closed.
Then, three weeks ago, she found a spreadsheet on his laptop.
Ravelin.
Payments.
Loans.
My name.
“I asked who Kala Hale was on the documents.”
“What did he say?”
Lyra looked at me.
“He said you handled household investments and knew about everything.”
I felt my anger sharpen.
Then she opened an audio recording.
Thain’s voice played through the phone.
Once the round closes, I can clean up the Ravelin balance before Kala ever needs to see it.
Lyra’s recorded voice asked:
And if the round doesn’t close?
A pause.
Then my husband answered.
Then we say she authorized the transfers. Her name is already on the paperwork.
For several seconds, I couldn’t breathe.
It wasn’t enough that Thain had risked my money.
He had prepared to blame me if his gamble failed.
Lyra wiped her face.
“There’s more.”
She opened her photo gallery.
One image showed documents spread across Thain’s office desk.
At the top was a draft shareholder transfer.
Thain was preparing to move part of his startup ownership somewhere else.
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The recipient wasn’t Lyra.
It was his mother.
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