My Smug Ex Claimed Leaving Me Was His "Smartest Move"—Then My Billionaire Husband Exposed His Sick Secret Email In Front Of His New Wife!** / Chapter 17 / 68

Chapter 19 - The New Horizon

By the following spring, Ellis Advisory had completed the first phase of the Charleston Harbor clean-water reclamation project four months ahead of schedule and six million dollars under budget. The national media took notice, with Forbes and the Wall Street Journal publishing feature profiles on our revolutionary public-private risk assessment model.

Our success led to an unprecedented invitation: a keynote address at the International Maritime Infrastructure Summit in Boston, followed by the groundbreaking ceremony for a state-of-the-art marine biology and logistics institute at the College of Charleston, funded jointly by Ellis Advisory and Bennett-Sterling Capital.

The afternoon before our flight to Boston, I received a certified legal letter from the South Carolina Department of Corrections.

I opened it in my office.

It was an official notice informing me that inmate Andrew Halston (#482019) had submitted a formal request for an administrative transfer to a minimum-security work camp in Spartanburg. Attached was a mandatory victim impact statement form. As the primary victim of his commercial espionage and fraud, my input would determine whether the parole board granted his transfer or kept him in the high-security facility in Columbia.

Also enclosed in the envelope was a short, handwritten note on state-issued stationery:

Maren,

I don't expect you to forgive me. I know you hate me. But if you have any human decency left from the days when we loved each other, sign the transfer waiver. The factory work here is killing me. My hands are blistered, my back is ruined, and the other inmates treat me like dirt. Just sign the form. Give me a chance to breathe.

— Drew

I read the note twice.

There was no apology. No genuine remorse for trying to forge medical records, no regret for attempting to steal forty million dollars, and no shame for trying to frame an innocent woman. Even after eighteen months behind bars, Drew still believed that his discomfort was an injustice, and that I owed him mercy simply because he existed.

I picked up my pen.

On the victim impact line, I didn't write an essay of vengeance. I didn't write words of bitterness. I simply wrote three sentences with absolute clarity:

The inmate demonstrates a persistent lack of accountability, continuing to view legal consequences as personal persecution. For the safety of the public and the integrity of justice, I recommend that Andrew Halston serve the full duration of his sentence under standard state correctional guidelines without special dispensation.

I signed my name: Maren Ellis Bennett.

I sealed the envelope, handed it to Maya for registered mailing, and threw Drew’s handwritten note into the recycling bin.

He was no longer a ghost. He was no longer a trauma. He was simply a line item in a state filing cabinet—a closed chapter in a book I had long since finished reading.

When Owen walked into the office twenty minutes later holding two boarding passes for Boston and a bouquet of white calla lilies, I smiled at him, my soul lighter than it had ever been.