“What does she mean? Where is the money? We need the money for the baby!”
Richard shoved her away—hard. She stumbled back, almost falling into the dessert table.
“Get off me!” Richard roared, losing all control. “You stupid cow! You couldn’t keep your mouth shut. You ruined everything!”
The crowd gasped again. This was the man who played the gentleman. Now he was a cornered rat, attacking the pregnant woman he claimed to love.
“Get out,” I commanded, pointing to the door. “Both of you. Get out of my house.”
“Laura, please,” Richard turned to me, his eyes wild. Switching tactics instantly, he fell to his knees—actually dropped to his knees in the middle of the gold confetti. “Laura, baby, listen. She trapped me. She seduced me. It was a mistake. I love you. I was just saying those things to keep her quiet until I could get rid of her.”
It was pathetic. It was revolting.
“You just tried to claim I was insane to steal my money, Richard.” I looked down at him with pure contempt. “You aren’t a victim. You are a parasite.”
I nodded to the security guards.
“Take the trash out,” I said.
The security guards, two hulking men who looked like they chewed glass for breakfast, moved in. One grabbed Richard by the arm, hauling him up from his knees like a rag doll. The other moved toward Monica.
“Don’t touch me!” Monica shrieked, batting the guard’s hand away. “I’m pregnant! You can’t touch me!”
“Then walk,” the guard said, his voice flat.
The walk of shame was excruciatingly long. Richard tried to struggle, shouting about his rights, about his lawyer.
“Call your lawyer!” my father shouted after him, his voice booming. “He’s already seeing mine on Monday!”
As they were dragged toward the front door, the guests parted like the Red Sea. No one looked at them with sympathy. Even Monica’s friends were filming it on their phones, live-streaming the downfall of the woman who had bragged about her rich baby daddy for months.
At the door, Richard grabbed the doorframe, desperate. He looked back at me, tears streaming down his face.
“Laura, think about what you’re doing! We have fifteen years! You can’t just throw me away!”
“You threw us away the moment you decided my womb wasn’t good enough,” I said. “Goodbye, Richard.”
The guards shoved them out into the rain and slammed the heavy oak door. The sound echoed through the house, a finality that felt like a guillotine dropping.
Silence returned to the room. The party was ruined, obviously. The gold balloons looked tacky now. The cake was uncut.
I stood at the bottom of the stairs, trembling—not from fear, but from the massive adrenaline dump leaving my body. My mother walked up to me and wrapped me in a hug.
“It’s over,” she whispered. “You did it.”
“I’m sorry,” I said to the guests, my voice shaking slightly. “There won’t be a cake cutting. Please take the food home, and thank you for coming to the show.”
Then something amazing happened. Mrs. Abernathy, the head of the charity board and the biggest gossip in town, started clapping. Slow, steady applause. Then my cousin joined in. Then Richard’s former business partner. Soon the whole room was applauding.
They weren’t clapping for the drama. They were clapping for me. They were clapping for the woman who refused to be a victim.
I let out a sob—a laugh mixed with tears.
Outside, the drama wasn’t over. Through the window, we could see flashing lights. My father had called the police—not to arrest them for the fraud that would come later, but for trespassing and causing a disturbance, just to add to the humiliation. I watched through the sheer curtains. Richard was arguing with a police officer, gesturing wildly at the house. Monica was sitting on the curb in the rain, her gold dress soaked, crying into her hands. The Range Rover she thought she was getting was nowhere to be seen. Her beat-up Honda was still parked down the street.
They were turning on each other. I could see Richard screaming at her, pointing a finger in her face. The “love” he spoke of on the phone had evaporated the second the money disappeared.
That night, I slept in the guest room. I couldn’t bear to sleep in the bed Richard had lied in. But for the first time in months, I slept without nightmares. The monster wasn’t under the bed anymore. He was out in the cold where he belonged.
The next morning, the real work began. Sterling arrived at 8:00 a.m. with a briefcase full of subpoenas.
“We have the video,” Sterling said, laying out the files on the kitchen table. “We have the signed guarantee. We have the DNA. We have the forensic accounting of the $280,000 he stole. What’s the first step?”
“We freeze his personal accounts,” Sterling said. “Then we file the divorce petition citing adultery. Then your father files the lawsuit for the debt. We hit him from three sides at once. He won’t be able to breathe.”
“Good,” I said. “Suffocate him.”
I looked at the empty spot on the counter where Richard’s espresso machine used to be. I had thrown it in the trash bin earlier that morning.
“And Monica?” I asked. “She’s a co-conspirator.”
“We can sue her for the return of the stolen funds, the jewelry, the medical bills, the rent,” Sterling said. “We can garnish her wages for the next twenty years.”
“Do it,” I said. “I want every penny back. Not because I need the money, but because she needs to learn that nothing in life is free.”
The divorce proceedings were less of a battle and more of an execution. Richard tried to hire a high-profile lawyer, a man known for getting settlements for cheating husbands. But once the lawyer saw the Project Green contract and the personal guarantee for ten million dollars, he dropped Richard faster than a hot potato.
Richard ended up with a strip-mall attorney who looked like he slept in his car.
We met for mediation in a glass-walled conference room three weeks later. Richard looked terrible. He had lost weight. His skin was gray, and he was wearing a suit that looked unpressed. He was living in a motel, according to the papers.
When I walked in, he tried to make eye contact, to give me that sad puppy-dog look that used to work. I looked right through him.
“My client,” Sterling began, “is offering nothing.”
Richard’s lawyer sighed.
“Look, Mr. Vance is destitute. The debt to Vance-Reynolds Capital is crushing him. He can’t pay it. He’s filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.”
“Bankruptcy won’t clear the debt incurred through fraud,” Sterling said cheerfully. “We have evidence he signed that guarantee under false pretenses of managing a fund he intended to embezzle from. That’s non-dischargeable.”
Richard slammed his hand on the table.
“I didn’t embezzle anything! I never got the money!”
“Because we stopped you,” my father said from the corner of the room.
“Attempted grand larceny is still a crime, Richard.”
Richard slumped back in his chair.
“What do you want?” he whispered.
“We want you to sign the divorce papers uncontested,” Sterling said. “You walk away with your personal effects—clothes and shoes. No claim on the house, no claim on the retirement funds, no spousal support, and you agree to a repayment plan for the $280,000 you stole during the marriage.”
“I can’t pay that,” Richard cried. “I have a baby coming.”
“Not my problem,” I said.
