Part 2
I stared at the blinking screen of my phone as the cab hummed along the highway toward my apartment.
The Crown Lounge.
It wasn’t a casual diner or a quiet spot to grab a drink with an uncle. It was one of the most exclusive, expensive cocktail lounges in Ashford—a place known for private booths, top-shelf liquor, and heavy-rolling clientele.
My husband, who had just spent the last hour publicly humiliating me for questioning family tradition, was apparently celebrating my departure with a hefty tab on my business account.
I didn’t call him. I didn’t scream or demand an explanation.
Instead, I opened my banking app, pulled up the supplementary credit card management screen, and tapped a single button: Permanently Freeze and Deactivate.
Right beneath it, I selected the option to flag the card for suspected unauthorized spending and review the historical ledger.
That was when the real shock hit me.
Scrolling back through the auxiliary account statements from the past three months—the months leading right up to our wedding—my chest tightened. There were charges at jewelers, luxury car rental agencies, and boutique hotels downtown.
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$3,500 at a high-end men’s boutique.
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$1,200 for a weekend stay at a downtown penthouse suite.
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$5,000 transferred directly through a peer-to-peer payment app to an account bearing a name I didn’t recognize: Chloe Vance.
Chloe Vance.
I sat completely still in the back of the taxi, the pieces of a puzzle I hadn’t even known was broken suddenly slamming together.
Derrick hadn’t just expected me to be an unpaid servant to his family; he had apparently treated my savings and business success as an open wallet to fund a lifestyle he was maintaining behind my back.
By Monday morning, the storm had officially arrived.
I was at my primary boutique office in downtown Ashford, reviewing financial reports with my accountant, when my phone started ringing incessantly.
Derrick.
I let it ring out. Then came a text from my mother-in-law, Margaret:
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You have disgraced my son, walked out on your marital duties, and caused an absolute scandal. Call him immediately and apologize!
Ten minutes later, Derrick burst through the glass front doors of my boutique.
He looked entirely unraveled. His suit jacket was unbuttoned, his tie was loose, and his face was flushed with a mixture of rage and panic. He stormed past the clothing racks, ignoring the startled customer browsing near the entrance, right into my open-plan office.
“Have you lost your absolute mind?!” Derrick shouted, slamming his palms down onto my wooden desk. “You canceled my card in the middle of a business meeting! The manager at The Crown Lounge looked like an absolute idiot when the transaction was declined!”
I didn’t flinch. I slowly set down my pen, leaned back in my chair, and looked at him as if he were a stranger.
“A business meeting, Derrick?” I asked calmly. “At a lounge on a Sunday evening? With whom? Chloe Vance?”
The color instantly drained from Derrick’s face. The aggressive, righteous fury he had walked in with evaporated in a single second, replaced by a cold, deer-in-the-headlights terror.
“What… what are you talking about?” he stammered, stepping back slightly. “Who told you that?”
I opened a manila folder on my desk—one I had printed out with my accountant just an hour earlier—and slid it across the surface toward him.
“Your credit card statement, Derrick,” I said softly. “The $840 charge on Sunday night was sloppy. But the $5,000 transfers to Chloe Vance over the last three months? The hotel bills? The luxury gifts? Those were quite impressive for a man who claimed he couldn’t afford to contribute a single dime to our wedding expenses.”
Derrick stared down at the itemized financial records, his lips parting silently.
“Vanessa… let me explain,” he started, his voice dropping to a desperate, pathetic whine as he reached across the desk. “Chloe is… she’s just an old friend. It doesn’t mean anything! My mother and I were just stressed about the wedding, and—”
“Save it,” I interrupted, my voice sharp and cold enough to cut glass. “You and your mother wanted a traditional marriage where the wife serves the men, cleans up the kitchen, and keeps her mouth shut. Well, congratulations. You’re getting a traditional separation instead.”
“You can’t do this!” he panicked, banging his fist lightly on the desk. “We just got married twenty-four hours ago! The paperwork—”
“The marriage license is valid,” I smiled, standing up from my chair and buttoning my blazer. “Which means my divorce attorney is going to love dissecting every single fraudulent charge, hidden debt, and asset you tried to drain from my accounts. My legal counsel was already notified this morning.”
Before Derrick could utter another word, my store manager stepped into the office, flanked by two private security guards I kept on retainer for high-end inventory deliveries.
“Mr. Holloway,” my manager said politely, gesturing toward the exit. “Mrs. Holloway has asked you to leave the premises. If you refuse, we will have local authorities escort you out for trespassing.”
Derrick looked at me, realizing for the first time that the quiet woman who had cooked for forty relatives and quietly walked away from his mother’s table was never someone he could control.
He turned around, his shoulders slumped in defeat, and walked out of my boutique without looking back.
I walked over to the large floor-to-ceiling window of my office, watching him get into his car and drive away. The sun was shining brightly over Ashford, and for the first time in a very long time, the air felt entirely mine to breathe.