Teaming Up With My Husband's Mistress to Destroy the Scumbag

"How do I get out of it?" Chloe repeated. Her voice cracked, stripping away the polished, victorious veneer she had walked in with.

"You work for me," I said.

"Work for you?" She scoffed, a defensive, brittle sound. "I'm carrying his child. I'm going to be his wife."

"You're going to be an accessory to wire fraud," I corrected. "Unless you become my asset."

Chloe gripped the edge of my desk. "I didn't commit fraud."

"You signed as a guarantor for a syndicate loan. The Maronis don't care about your ignorance. They care about their money." I rolled my chair back. "I need Julian in a federal penitentiary before he liquidates my company's offshore accounts. You need a way out of a two-million-dollar debt."

"I can just leave," she threatened, though she didn't move an inch. "I can pack my bags and go to my sister's in Ohio."

"The Maronis operate in Ohio," I said flatly. "They operate everywhere. Running only makes them angry."

I unlocked the bottom drawer of my desk. I bypassed the stacks of corporate letterheads and pulled out a standard Non-Disclosure Agreement. Next, I retrieved a pre-signed cashier's check.

I slid both items across the mahogany surface.

Chloe stared at the paper. "What is this?"

"Your exit strategy."

She leaned closer, reading the numbers. "One hundred thousand dollars? Are you joking?"

"It's a bearer check. Untraceable. Cash it anywhere."

"A hundred grand won't cover two million, Eleanor."

"It covers a new identity in a state that doesn't ask questions. Or it covers a very good lawyer." I tapped the NDA. "I handle the syndicate. You handle my husband."

Chloe crossed her arms over her chest, guarding her stomach. "Why are you doing this? You could just finalize the divorce and let the Maronis have him."

"Because he embezzled from my father's company before I froze his accounts," I replied. "I need him to confess to the theft on tape to recover the funds legally. The syndicate debt is just my leverage to make you cooperate."

"What if the Maronis find out I'm working with you?"

"They won't. They don't care about you, Chloe. You're just a name on a piece of paper to them. Bring me the confession, and I'll make sure Julian takes the fall for the entire debt."

"And if I fail?"

"Then you better hope that hundred thousand gets you far away."

Chloe chewed on her bottom lip, ruining her perfect red lipstick. "Handle him how? He's erratic. He hasn't slept in three days."

"Perfect. Sleep deprivation makes people talk."

I opened a small, black velvet box sitting next to my keyboard. Inside rested a heavy gold brooch, dominated by a massive, synthetic ruby. It was gaudy. Loud. Exactly Julian's taste.

"Take it," I instructed.

Chloe frowned, making no move to touch the jewelry. "A brooch? I don't wear vintage."

"You do today. Pin it to that designer coat." I pointed the cap of my red marker at the stone. "It contains a high-frequency micro-transmitter. Audio only."

Her eyes widened. She took a step back, bumping into the leather visitor's chair. "You want me to wiretap him?"

"I want you to be the exact woman he thinks you are," I said. "Greedy. Shallow. Utterly obsessed with the ring on your finger."

"I'm not shallow!"

"Then prove it by surviving." I leaned forward. "You go back to the penthouse. You complain about the wedding budget. You ask about the Paris trip. You demand to know why his credit cards are declining. You make him talk about his finances."

"He'll know," she insisted, shaking her head frantically. "He's paranoid right now. He checks the apartment for bugs."

"He checks the walls," I countered. "He doesn't check the woman he bought. He thinks you're too simple to betray him. Prove him right about the simple part, and wrong about the loyalty."

"How does it work?" Chloe asked, eyeing the ruby as if it were a live grenade.

"It's voice-activated. The moment you step into the penthouse, it starts recording. It transmits directly to a secure server."

"What if he asks where I got it?"

"Tell him you bought it at a vintage boutique on Fifth Avenue. Tell him you charged it to his black card."

"He'll scream at me."

"Let him scream. Angry men make mistakes."

Chloe stared at the ruby. Her jaw set into a rigid line. She weighed the options. Loyalty to a man fleeing the country, or a hundred thousand dollars in untraceable cash.

She lunged forward and grabbed the silver fountain pen from my desk set.

She didn't bother reading the fine print on the NDA. She slashed her signature across the bottom right corner. *Chloe Mercer.*

"Done," she snapped, tossing the pen down. It clattered against the wood.

I pushed the check the rest of the way across the desk.

Chloe reached for it at the exact same moment I let it go.

Our fingertips brushed.

She flinched at the contact. She looked at me, really looked at me, searching my face for some sign of weakness. A tremor of sympathy. A hint of shared grief over the same lying man.

She found nothing.

Her skin felt clammy, vibrating with a frantic, nervous energy. Mine remained entirely steady. A cold, transactional current passed between us. No sisterhood. Just a mutual understanding of survival. We had established a twisted baseline of trust, built entirely on mutual self-interest.

Chloe folded the check in half. She shoved it deep into her limited-edition leather tote bag, snapping the gold clasp shut. She loved money, but she loved her own neck more. That made her reliable.

I reached across the desk and picked up the glossy ultrasound scan.

"Hey," she protested, her hand darting out.

"You signed the NDA," I reminded her, pulling the image out of her reach. "This never happened. The baby is yours. The mess is his."

"You don't have to destroy it."

"I'm cleaning my office."

I fed the scan into the paper shredder beside my chair. The machine whined, the steel teeth grabbing the glossy paper and chewing the gray mass into tiny, meaningless strips.

Chloe watched it disappear. She grabbed the velvet box, snapped it shut, and shoved it into her coat pocket.

"If he hits me, I'm going to the cops," she warned.

"If he hits you, you take the hundred grand and run," I corrected. "Get out of my building, Chloe."

She turned around and marched out of the office. The heavy oak doors shut behind her, sealing the quiet back in.

The shredder blades ground to a halt.

Silence reclaimed the room.

Then, the screen of my personal cell phone illuminated. It vibrated violently against the glass tabletop, buzzing like an angry hornet.

I glanced down.

The caller ID flashed in bright white letters.

*Julian.*