Every payment.
Every property.
Every account.
And at the bottom was a column labeled:
CAROL’S LIABILITY
My blood went cold.
There were millions of dollars beside my name.
Dale had been preparing for this for years.
He hadn’t suddenly decided to divorce me.
He had been planning it.
For more than a decade.
Patrice looked at me.
“He wanted you to walk away with the debt.”
I nodded.
“And he planned to keep everything else.”
She pointed to another line.
“Look.”
I did.
There was a planned transfer scheduled for the following Friday.
The warehouse.
Everything.
Dale was going to move them out of the second company immediately after the divorce paperwork was filed.
And the person receiving them wasn’t Ashley.
It was another company.
Owned by someone named Margaret Cole.
I recognized the name.
My stomach dropped.
“Who is she?”
Patrice searched her computer.
Then she looked at me.
“She used to work for your husband.”
“What did she do?”
“Bookkeeper.”
I sat back.
“She’s the other woman.”
Patrice nodded.
“Apparently.”
Suddenly everything made sense.
Ashley hadn’t been the only affair.
Ashley had been the distraction.
Margaret had been the partner.
The financial one.
The woman who understood the business.
The woman who knew where every dollar went.
The woman Dale planned to disappear with.
Ashley was simply the person he’d allowed to believe she was special.
And Dale had probably been telling Margaret the same story.
That afternoon, Patrice contacted the appropriate authorities.
