Gold digger.
Trailer bride.
You should’ve known your level.
June wanted revenge.
I wanted coffee.
“Clara,” she said while pacing my tiny apartment, “they are destroying you.”
I sat quietly at my kitchen table, still wearing the diamond earrings Adrian had once gifted me. They were fake. I had discovered that three months earlier.
“Let them talk,” I replied.
June froze. “That’s your strategy?”
“No.” I opened my laptop slowly. “That’s their confession warming up.”
The Vales had never bothered asking what kind of accounting work I actually did. To them, I was just a low-paid office girl who wore modest dresses and rode public transportation.
They didn’t know I was a forensic accountant.
They didn’t know the Securities Commission had hired my firm to quietly investigate Vale Holdings after three whistleblower complaints mysteriously disappeared.
They didn’t know Adrian had personally invited me into their home, their dinners, their private conversations, and their guarded confidence.
And they absolutely didn’t know I had recordings of Mrs. Vale laughing about “moving dead money through charity accounts.”
At noon, Adrian called.
I answered on speakerphone.
