It was the first time I had spoken. He looked at me with hatred.
“You’re heartless, Laura. You know that? You’re a cold, heartless—”
“I learned from the best,” I replied calmly.
He signed. He had no choice. If he fought us, we would press criminal charges for the fraud and the wiretapping. He had recorded me without consent, as we found on his laptop.
He left the meeting with a suitcase of clothes and a debt that would follow him for the rest of his life. The bankruptcy court took his car. They took his watch collection. They even took the golf clubs I had given him for his fortieth birthday.
As for the house, I hired a crew to strip it. I replaced the mattress. I repainted the walls. I burned the sheets. I wanted every trace of his DNA scrubbed from my sanctuary.
One afternoon, I was overseeing the painters when my phone rang. It was an unknown number.
“Laura?” It was Monica. Her voice sounded small, broken. “What do you want, Monica?”
“I… I need help,” she sobbed. “Richard left. He said he can’t afford the baby. He said it’s my fault he’s broke. I’m due in three weeks, Laura. I have nowhere to go. My parents won’t take me back.”
“That sounds terrible,” I said.
“Please,” she begged. “I know I messed up. But this is an innocent baby. Can you… can you help me? Just a loan? Or maybe… maybe I could stay in the guest house again?”
The audacity was breathtaking. She actually thought she could play on my sympathy one last time.
“Monica,” I said, my voice hard as steel. “You didn’t just mess up. You plotted to destroy me. You mocked my inability to have children while carrying a child you planned to raise on my money. You aren’t a friend. You’re a predator who got caught.”
“But the baby—”
“There are plenty of adoption agencies and women’s shelters,” I said. “I suggest you call one. Do not call me again. If you do, I’ll file a restraining order.”
I hung up and blocked the number.
I stood there in my empty hallway, listening to the silence. It wasn’t lonely. It was peaceful.
Karma, as it turns out, is a patient artist. She paints with slow, deliberate strokes.
I didn’t seek out news of Monica, but in a small social circle, gossip travels faster than light. Three weeks after her desperate phone call, I heard through a mutual acquaintance that Monica had gone into labor. It wasn’t the royal birth she had envisioned. There was no private suite, no gold balloons, no videographer capturing the magic moment. She delivered at the county hospital—alone.
Richard didn’t show up. He was reportedly dodging process servers for another debt and living out of his car. The baby was a boy, a healthy baby boy—the son Richard had so desperately wanted to secure his legacy. But a legacy requires assets, and Richard had none.
The reality of single motherhood hit Monica like a freight train. She couldn’t afford the luxury condo anymore. She was evicted a month after the birth. She had to move back to her hometown in rural Ohio, moving into her parents’ basement—the very fate she had mocked me for avoiding.
She tried to sue Richard for child support. It was a comedy of errors. You can’t squeeze blood from a stone. The court ordered Richard to pay $200 a month based on his minimum-wage income at a hardware store, the only job he could get with a fraud flag on his background check. Two hundred dollars a month. That wouldn’t even cover the diapers she used to buy with my credit card.
As for her career—dead. The industry we worked in was tight-knit. Everyone knew what she had done. I didn’t even have to badmouth her. The video from the party had circulated quietly. No reputable charity or foundation would hire a woman known for embezzling from her benefactor. She was working as a waitress at a diner, I heard, serving coffee and eggs to truckers, with her Chanel clothes selling on eBay to pay for formula.
Richard wasn’t doing much better. The bankruptcy had cleared some of his debts, but the judgment for the stolen marital funds remained. My father’s lawyers garnished his wages. Every paycheck he earned, we took twenty-five percent.
He tried to contact me once, sending a letter to my lawyer.
