Chapter 4 - THE BLACKMAIL DRAFT
My hands were shaking as I pulled my iPhone from my coat pocket and stepped back into my private office, locking the heavy glass door behind me.
A notification was flashing on my screen. An anonymous email, sent three minutes ago to my personal address.
The subject line was blank.
I tapped the screen.
Attached was a high-resolution PDF document and three photographs.
My breath hitched in my throat as I opened the first photo.
It was a picture of Ethan and Madison. They were standing in a dimly lit, high-end restaurant in Paris—a trip Ethan had supposedly taken six months ago for an international banking conference. His arm was wrapped tightly around her waist, his lips pressed against her neck. She was laughing, holding a glass of vintage champagne, wearing a diamond pendant I recognized immediately.
It was my mother’s pendant. The one that had 'disappeared' from my jewelry box last autumn.
I swiped to the next file. It was a scanned copy of a medical intake form from a private clinic in Geneva, dated eight months ago.
Patient Name: Madison Bell.
Procedure: Termination of Pregnancy.
Guarantor/Payer: Ethan Ward.
My chest felt as though it were being crushed by a hydraulic press. I sank into my executive chair, gripping the edge of my desk until my knuckles turned paper-white.
He hadn't just been cheating on me. He had gotten his assistant pregnant, paid for her secret abortion in Switzerland, and brought her into our firm as his personal assistant.
Why? Why bring her here? Why keep her close?
I opened the PDF document attached to the bottom of the email.
It was an draft of an anonymous SEC whistle-blower complaint, prepared by an attorney in New York. The draft outlined a massive, multi-million-dollar embezzlement scheme operating within Whitman & Reed Capital.
According to the audit trails attached to the complaint, over fourteen million dollars had been systematically siphoned out of my late father’s private trust over the last two years. The funds had been routed through offshore shell companies in the Cayman Islands and Liechtenstein.
The signatory on the offshore accounts wasn't Ethan.
It was me.
My forged signature was stamped across every single wire transfer authorization. My private tax ID had been used as the primary corporate anchor.
Ethan hadn't just stolen my family’s fortune. He had framed me for the crime.
If the SEC launched an investigation today, I wouldn't just look like a bitter, paranoid wife accusing her husband of poisoning a rival. I would look like a corrupt corporate executive who had embezzled millions from her own father's company and was now trying to frame her husband to cover her tracks.
And Madison... Madison had known. She had been holding the whistle-blower complaint over Ethan's head. She was blackmailing him.
That was why he brought her to the firm. That was why he kept her close. She had the leverage to ruin him completely.
And this morning, Ethan had tried to solve two problems with one thermal container.
He had meant to poison me—killing my baby, causing a 'spontaneous hemorrhage' that would be passed off as another tragic miscarriage, and leaving me incapacitated or dead while he assumed full control of Whitman & Reed Capital.
Instead, I had handed the poison to the woman who was blackmailing him.
A soft tap sounded on my office window.
I jumped, shutting the laptop screen instantly.
Ethan was standing on the other side of the glass wall, looking through the pane. He didn't look angry anymore. He held his phone in one hand, tapping the screen lightly against his palm.
He knew I had read the email.
He raised his eyebrows slightly, offering me that same boyish, sociopathic smile, and mouthed three words through the glass:
Sign the trust.
May you like
My phone chimed with a text message from his number.
ETHAN: The SEC draft goes live at 5:00 p.m. unless you sign the spousal release form transferring your father's remaining trust voting rights to me. Do it, Claire. Save yourself the orange jumpsuit. You have four hours.
