PART 1
“Darling, you forgot to end the video call.”
Gavin Prescott spun around so fast in his chair that he almost knocked over his laptop. More than thirty windows from Summit Crest Group’s monthly meeting were still open on the screen, which meant thirty employees were seeing exactly the same thing as me.
Camila, his assistant, was sitting on his lap, her blouse buttoned incorrectly and a diamond necklace glimmering around her neck. I recognized the necklace immediately because two months earlier I had seen it in a jewelry store in Beacon Hill and told Gavin that I loved it, though it cost $110,000.
“It is crazy to spend that much,” he had replied back then. “You do not work anymore, Nora, so why do you need something like that?”
That night we had plain soup for dinner because he insisted that we had to be careful with every single penny for the mortgage, but now that very necklace was wrapped around another woman’s neck. Camila jumped off his legs in a panic.
“Nora, it is not what it looks like,” she stammered.
Gavin slammed the computer shut and glared at me. “What are you doing here?”
He did not ask if I was okay, nor did he apologize, but instead he got angry with me. I simply held up the thermal bag I was carrying in my hands.
“You said you would be out late tonight, so I brought you dinner,” I said, setting the bag down by the door. “I will go now.”
I walked toward the elevator, but Gavin caught up with me before the doors could close.
“We can explain everything,” he pleaded.
“I saw your assistant sitting on top of you,” I replied coldly.
“It was just an accident,” he claimed.
“I also saw the necklace,” I added.
His face changed instantly. “It was a company performance bonus.”
I laughed at the absurdity of his statement. “Does Summit Crest Group give out $110,000 bonuses in the form of a high end diamond necklace?”
Camila appeared behind him, frantically trying to adjust her blouse. “Gavin and I are just boss and assistant, nothing more.”
“Is sitting on his lap also part of your official contract?” I asked her.
Gavin stepped between us to protect her. “That is enough, Nora, because you do not have to humiliate her like this.”
That single phrase hurt me far more than the scene itself because he was still protecting her over me.
“How long has this been going on?” I asked as the elevator doors opened.
No one answered me right away.
“Gavin, tell me the truth,” I demanded.
He lowered his gaze to the floor. “It has been two years.”
I felt the ground disappear beneath my feet because our daughter Mia was only three years old when it all started. That was the exact same year Gavin convinced me to quit my job at a financial consulting firm, telling me that he did not want a nanny to raise our daughter and promising to take care of me completely while I stayed home. Since then, he gave me $1800 a month for food, school expenses, transportation, clothing, and everything else Mia needed, forcing me to stretch every single bill to make ends meet.
“What about Camila’s apartment?” I asked, realizing another painful truth.
Gavin froze completely, and his silence was answer enough.
“How much do you pay for her place?” I pressed.
“It is thirty two hundred dollars a month,” he muttered.
My throat closed up because I had spent three years feeling guilty every time I bought a cup of coffee outside, while she lived in an apartment that cost almost twice as much as everything he provided for his own wife and child.
Gavin tried to grab my arm. “Let us go home together so we can fix this.”
“There is something else you cannot fix,” I said, stepping back.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
I pointed to the laptop he had closed too late. “The meeting was still connected while you two were together.”
His face lost all its color. “Did someone manage to record it?”
“I am sure someone did,” I replied softly.
Camila put her hand over her necklace in horror as thirty employees had just discovered in seven seconds what had taken me two long years to figure out. Alejandro believed that the video was the worst thing that could happen to him that evening, but he had no idea that later that night I would open a folder I had not touched in three years and discover that the dependent wife he treated like dirt had far more power than he ever imagined.
PART 2
I picked up Mia from her kindergarten in the Sunnyside neighborhood and said nothing about what happened. At five years old, she simply asked if her dad was going to have dinner with us tonight, and I told her he was busy, which was the final lie I ever told to protect his image.
At home, I waited until Mia fell asleep before going into the room that used to be my home office before Gavin turned it into a storage unit. Underneath several boxes of old toys, I found a dark blue folder containing my father’s legal documents.
My father, Gregory Hayes, had passed away four years ago, and right after I got married, he had invested his lifetime savings into a tech firm called Apex Vanguard. Before he died, he transferred all his shares into my name, but I had ignored them for years until tonight.
I called Charles Montgomery, the family wealth advisor who had worked closely with my father.
“Mrs. Hayes, it has been a very long time,” Charles said warmly.
