My Husband Used My Money to Build His Mistress

Carly showed up at my condo two days later wearing Brandon's merch like a trophy.

The hoodie was oversized, the kind we sold for sixty-eight dollars a pop, Brandon's face screen-printed across the chest. She had a bracelet on her wrist too, thin gold with a little charm shaped like a microphone. I recognized it. I'd seen the receipt for it in an expense report three weeks ago, filed under "fan appreciation gift."

"I just came to see how you're doing," she said, stepping past me into my own living room without waiting to be asked. "This whole thing must be so hard for you."

"Sit down, Carly."

She sat like she owned the couch. Pickles took one look at her and stalked off toward the bedroom, tail flicking. Smart cat.

"I know this isn't easy," she said, tilting her head, doing the voice — the soft, breathy, wounded-bird voice she used on camera. "But maybe it's time you step aside. Gracefully. For everyone's sake."

I didn't answer right away. I walked to the coffee table, picked up the binder I'd left there that morning, and set it down in front of her. It landed with a small, heavy thud.

"What's this?"

"Open it."

She did, slow, still smiling, like she thought it might be flowers pressed between the pages. It wasn't. It was itemized payment records — forty-one gifts, forty-one line items, every dollar traced back to subscriber donations that legally belonged to Halo the second they hit Brandon's account.

Her smile didn't fall all at once. It went in pieces, like ice cracking under weight. "This doesn't mean anything."

"It means every piece of jewelry on your body right now was purchased with fan money that Halo owns under contract. It means you have forty-eight hours to return every dollar, or I file a criminal misappropriation report with your name on it." I sat down across from her, calm, hands folded. "Not Brandon's. Yours."

Her hand went to the bracelet like she wanted to hide it. "You're bluffing."

"I don't bluff. Ask around."

She pulled out her phone and called him right there, voice cracking into something real for the first time since she'd walked in. Twenty minutes later, Brandon was pounding on my door.

He came in already yelling. "What is wrong with you? You're going to have her arrested? Over a bracelet?"

"Over forty-one gifts bought with money that isn't hers," I said. "Or yours. You should've read your contract, Brandon."

"You're doing this because you're jealous." He was closer now, chest heaving, the vein in his neck standing out the way it used to before a bad stream. "You always do this. You always have to control everything."

"I'm not controlling anything. I'm reading it back to you."

"Just let it go. Let her keep the stuff. It's nothing to you." He grabbed my arm, not gentle. "Tell her it's fine."

"Let go of me."

"Tell her—"

I pulled back. He pushed. It wasn't hard, not really, not the kind of thing that would leave a mark, but I wasn't ready for it, and I stumbled into the marble console behind me. My hand went to my collarbone on instinct, the way it always did, and I felt the chain snap against the table's edge.

The locket hit the floor. It made a sound I will never forget, a small, sharp crack, like something inside the house had broken instead of something on my body. It split into three pieces on the marble. My mother's face, half-covered in gold, staring up at the ceiling.

Nobody moved. Carly stopped talking. Brandon's hand was still half-raised in the air like he didn't know what to do with it now that it had already done its damage.

I knelt down. I picked up the pieces one at a time, slow, like they might still cut me. Then I stood, and when I spoke, my voice came out so quiet I almost didn't recognize it as mine.

"Get out of my house."

I didn't say it again. I didn't need to. Something in the room understood that the negotiation, whatever it had been, was over.

They left. I sat on my own floor for a long time after that, the locket pieces in my palm, and I did not cry. I want that on the record too.

By the end of the week, Lucian Armstrong's signature was on a Halo contract that broke every record we'd ever set, announced across every trade site within the same hour. My assistant boxed up Brandon's things — his hoodies, his gaming chair, the cologne he never used but kept for photos — and had them delivered to his studio with no note. I filed the divorce papers myself, in person, because some things you don't delegate.

And through Evan, I sent Brandon one more document. Not a demand. A record. One point four million dollars, invested and itemized down to the cent, three years of my money holding up a career he thought he'd built with his own two hands.

I didn't ask him to pay it back.

I just wanted him to see it.