Chapter 10 - Lauren's Choice
Lauren called before I could call her.
“I can explain.”
“Please do.”
“George gave me the login months ago.”
“Why?”
“In case something happened to him.”
“That was Rodrigo's account.”
“I know that now.”
I waited.
Lauren's voice shook.
“George told me yesterday Rodrigo was going to drain it and disappear.”
“So you drained it first?”
“I moved it into my attorney's trust account.”
That changed everything.
“You didn't take it?”
“No.”
She emailed documentation.
The money was secure.
Untouched.
Her attorney had notified relevant parties.
Lauren had protected the funds.
I sat back.
Months earlier, she had handed me a mop schedule.
Now she was preserving evidence.
People can change quickly when denial becomes too expensive.
“Thank you,” I said.
She started crying.
“I was awful to you.”
“We've covered this.”
“No. I need to say it.”
I let her.
“I thought marriage meant siding with your husband no matter what. I watched George disrespect people and called it loyalty when I defended him.”
Her voice cracked.
“Then I realized loyalty without boundaries just makes you an accomplice.”
That sentence stayed with me.
Lauren filed for divorce the following week.
George blamed me.
Naturally.
Rodrigo blamed me too.
Apparently I possessed supernatural powers capable of forcing grown men to forge signatures, misuse money, lie to their wives, and destroy their own marriages.
I declined the honor.
The financial investigation continued.
My employer recovered part of its losses through frozen accounts and insurance processes.
I remained employed.
Then something unexpected happened.
I received a promotion.
Not because of the scandal.
Because before my vacation, I had been under consideration for a director-level financial controls position.
My supervisor called me in.
“I worried you'd think the timing was strange.”
“I do.”
“We evaluated you before any of this happened.”
I accepted.
For ten months, I had worked overtime to save $3,000.
Now my salary increased by nearly thirty percent.
The irony wasn't lost on me.
When the promotion became public internally, Rodrigo heard.
His message arrived that evening.
So you got everything you wanted.
I stared at it.
Then deleted it.
He still didn't understand.
I hadn't wanted a divorce.
I hadn't wanted an investigation.
I hadn't wanted a viral story.
I wanted fourteen days at the beach with my husband.
He destroyed that because he believed my money, labor, reputation, and choices belonged to him.
What I had now wasn't what I'd wanted.
It was what I'd built from the wreckage.
Then Monica called.
“Settlement offer.”
“Good?”
“Very.”
Rodrigo was offering to relinquish his claim to most equity in the house in exchange for resolution of several marital financial disputes, subject to the separate legal matters outside divorce proceedings.
I considered it.
Then Monica added:
“He has one condition.”
“What?”
“He wants the family wedding ring back.”
I looked down.
I hadn't worn it since Destin.
It sat inside a drawer.
A diamond his mother had once proudly told me had passed through three generations.
I smiled.
“Tell him he can have it.”
Monica sounded surprised.
“That easy?”
“It's jewelry.”
I paused.
“My freedom is worth more.”
But when I opened the drawer to retrieve the ring, I found something beneath its box.
An old receipt.
A receipt that proved Rodrigo had lied to me years before the fishing business ever existed.
May you like
And suddenly I wondered how long my marriage had actually been built on deception.
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