Chapter 3 3

Veronica slammed her red marker against the whiteboard.

"He plays the perfect husband on TV, and then he does this in your own house. He makes me sick."

She leaned both hands on her desk and stared at Keely. "Who is she? That Russian model from the gala who kept touching his arm?"

Keely set her glass of club soda down. "Darlene Sutton."

Veronica froze. The red marker slipped from her fingers and hit the desk with a loud clack.

"Darlene?" Veronica gasped. "The secretary who cries when the printer jams? She looks like a terrified mouse."

Keely let out a cold laugh. "Exactly. Haden is a narcissist. He needs someone who is completely dependent on him to feel powerful."

Veronica took a deep breath. She forced herself back into lawyer mode.

She pointed to the whiteboard. "New York is a no-fault state. But the rules change for billionaires. There is a hidden morality clause in your prenup."

Veronica tapped the board. "If we can prove Haden transferred a massive amount of marital assets to his mistress, we can pierce the trust fund firewall."

She sat down and hacked into the public financial reports of the Jones family subsidiaries.

"Let's see what he bought her," Veronica muttered. The screen filled with endless rows of numbers and charts.

Keely stood up. She walked behind Veronica's chair. Her eyes scanned the data.

Her Wharton dual-degree kicked in. Her brain processed the numbers faster than the computer could load them.

Less than two minutes later, Keely pointed to a small line of text in the bottom right corner. Her eyes hadn't been reading line-by-line; instead, her brain was rapidly scanning the data structures for pattern recognition. She was looking for a specific anomaly her Wharton professor used to call a 'financial black hole'-a microscopic, illogical shift in cash flow. She caught that familiar signal almost instantly.

"There," Keely said. "Line 47. Market research fees. The cash flow is wrong."

She moved her finger across the screen. "And here. These two accounts are cross-invoicing to hide the deficit."

Veronica jerked her head up. She looked at Keely like she was a stranger.

"How did you spot that?" Veronica asked. "Did you take an accounting class while getting your nails done?"

Keely kept her face blank. "Call it intuition."

She tapped the screen again. "Follow the money. Where does it end up?"

Veronica typed furiously. She traced the routed funds.

"Cayman Islands," Veronica whispered. "It's an offshore account."

Keely narrowed her eyes at the registration details.

This was not about buying a girl a diamond necklace. This was a systematic drain of assets.

Haden was not just a cheating husband. He was a thief.

The air in the room dropped ten degrees. Keely's eyes turned to ice.