I didn’t cry.
Instead, something much colder took over.
My professional instincts.
I had spent years following financial trails that other people believed were invisible.
And suddenly, I wondered what kind of trail my own husband had been leaving behind.
I picked up my laptop.
Then I began searching.
Not for the woman.
Not yet.
I started with Clint’s company.
Sterling Global Assets.
At first, everything looked normal.
Too normal.
Then I noticed something.
A series of corporate restructuring transactions had been made over the previous six months.
Small amounts.
Then larger ones.
Money moved between accounts.
Shell companies appeared.
And one name kept appearing in places where it shouldn’t have been.
Meredith Sterling.
Clint’s boss.
I leaned back in my chair.
Meredith wasn’t simply his boss.
She was the woman who controlled his future.
And now I had a strange message about a ring…
A private dinner…
And transactions that didn’t make sense.
I opened another file.
Then another.
The deeper I looked, the stranger everything became.
At 1:17 in the morning, I finally closed my laptop.
I already knew I was going to The Obsidian Room.
But I wasn’t going there as Clint’s embarrassed wife.
I was going there as an investigator.
And if my suspicions were correct…
Thursday night wasn’t going to be an anniversary dinner.
It was going to be the night my husband lost everything.
THE WOMAN BEHIND THE MESSAGE
For the next two days, I said nothing to Clint.
That was harder than it sounds.
