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I filed for divorce citing fraud and financial misconduct. The legal papers were straightforward and detailed—a documented list of all the ways that Anthony had violated the basic trust of marriage, all the ways that he’d made decisions about his life without considering his obligations to me.
I asked my company’s HR director to audit Chloe’s access to confidential files. It wasn’t revenge—I genuinely needed to understand what information might have been compromised, what competitive intelligence might have been shared, what damage might have been done to the company through her access to systems and documents that she shouldn’t have had access to.
I also instructed my financial advisor to review every “business trip” that Anthony had claimed over the past year. Every conference, every investor meeting, every client dinner that had necessitated his travel, his absence, his unavailability. I wanted to see if the financial records matched his claims, or if some of those trips had been something else entirely.
The findings were exactly what I expected—which is to say, they were worse than I’d feared.
Several of the “business trips” had no corresponding business expenses. The money had been spent on luxury hotels, flights to romantic destinations, restaurant reservations at upscale restaurants. The timeline of those trips matched vacations that Chloe had mentioned in casual office conversation.
My financial advisor sat across from me with a folder of documentation, and she didn’t even need to explain what it meant. I already knew.
“I’m sorry,” she said simply.
“Don’t be,” I replied. “I needed to know.”
Soon my phone was flooded with calls from people I hadn’t heard from in months or years. First Anthony, calling from a number I didn’t recognize, probably from a temporary phone since his primary phone had been contracted under my account. Then Patricia, her voice tight with fury and confusion. Then distant relatives—cousins, aunts, people whose names I could barely remember—suddenly remembering my phone number, suddenly remembering that they’d always been fond of me, suddenly wanting to help mediate the situation.
I finally answered one evening when the caller ID showed it was Anthony.
“We need to talk about this,” he said, his voice carrying an edge of desperation. “Stop overreacting. Just let me into the house so I can get my things. My books, my personal items. Surely you can be reasonable about this.”
“You never owned anything in that house,” I replied, my voice steady. “You were only given permission to live there. That permission has been revoked.”