Chapter 7 - When the Mistress Smells Poverty
Desperate, shivering, and completely out of options, Daniel dragged his three garbage bags to an upscale café three blocks away, where Chloe Ruiz was waiting after posting her own bail using the last of her personal savings.
Chloe was sitting in a corner booth, frantically scrolling through her phone while chain-smoking electronic cigarettes. Her designer mascara was smudged across her cheeks, and her expensive blowout was ruined.
When she saw Daniel walk in carrying black trash bags like a homeless man, her expression transformed from anxiety to pure disgust.
“Where is your car?” Chloe demanded, not even waiting for him to sit down. “Where is the Porsche? Where is your luggage?”
“Audrey seized the garage,” Daniel muttered, collapsing into the booth opposite her, his teeth chattering from the cold rain. “She locked the gates. She had security guards waiting. She invoked the prenuptial exclusion clause.”
Chloe stared at him, her eyes wide with mounting fury. “What about the offshore account in the Caymans? Did you call our contact in George Town?”
“It’s gone, Chloe,” Daniel whispered, burying his face in his trembling hands. “Audrey’s forensic team filed an international freezing order through the British High Court at dawn. Every dollar we transferred over the last six months has been routed into an escrow holding account pending federal forfeiture.”
Chloe sat frozen for ten long seconds. The reality of their situation settled over her like a suffocating blanket.
There was no luxury villa in Lake Como. There was no private yacht waiting in Monaco. There was no thirty-million-dollar early retirement.
There was only a mountain of federal indictments, millions of dollars in legal fees, and a ruined reputation that would ensure she never worked in corporate marketing again.
“You idiot,” Chloe said, her voice dropping to a venomous snarl. “You pathetic, incompetent idiot.”
Daniel looked up, startled by the viciousness in her tone. “Chloe? What are you saying? We’re in this together! We love each other! We planned this for two years!”
“Love each other?” Chloe let out a harsh, mocking laugh that turned the heads of several patrons in the café. “You think I spent two years listening to you whine about your boring, plain wife because I loved you? I was with you because you promised me you had sixty million dollars of Sterling Global’s equity in your back pocket!”
“Chloe, please—”
“Don't touch me!” she hissed, slapping his hand away as he reached across the table. “You told me Audrey was a weak, sheltered little girl who didn't even know how to balance a checkbook! You told me she was so stupid she would never notice the missing funds!”
Chloe stood up, grabbing her trench coat and slinging her handbag over her shoulder.
“You didn't outsmart her, Daniel. She played you like a cheap violin from day one. And now, you’re dragging me down into your federal prison sentence.”
“Where are you going?” Daniel cried out, lunging forward to grab her sleeve. “I have nothing left! You’re the only person I have!”
Chloe looked down at him with cold, merciless eyes.
May you like
“I’m going to the federal prosecutor’s office, Daniel. I’m going to hand over every text message, every email, and every voice memo you ever sent me instructing me to forge Audrey’s signature. I’m cutting a plea deal before you can even find a public defender.”
She ripped her arm from his grasp and stormed out of the café into the rain, leaving Daniel Sterling sitting alone in a booth, surrounded by garbage bags, with fourteen dollars in his pocket.
