“Mom. Dad. Could you give me a minute with Jesse?”
They stood immediately, and Bill laid a comforting hand upon her shoulder as he passed, imbuing her with his strength as he led Sue back towards the kitchen.
“Elly—”
“You’re not going to talk right now, Jesse, you’re going to listen.”
She settled into the chair caddy-corner to his own and laid the file in her lap. “I figured out the affair almost immediately.” She began. “I’ve known for months. I suspected after Elliston. But I confirmed my suspicions the day after you sent her the flowers.” Eliana couldn’t even enjoy the shock on his face, given what she’d learned at dinner. This was meant to be hergotchamoment. Her brilliant dressing down. But after all the revelations of the day, all the drama and emotion—Eliana just wanted it to be done and over with.
“I originally wanted to simply remove myself from the situation. I wanted to get away and start over. But it kept getting worse. The more I dug, the more I learned. The extent of your betrayal. The affair. The lies. The debt. The secrets. The hits just kept coming, and after a while, it became clear that me leaving wouldn’t hurt you at all. Not in the way that I would hope it would. Because it’s never beenmethat you loved. It’s the concept of me. The perfect wife with the perfect children in the perfect home, paid for by the perfect job.” Eliana scoffed. “So I’m taking it all.”
She held a hand out, the first file extended between them. “Go ahead,” she said, giving it a shake.
Jesse’s hands trembled as he opened the folder, his eyes widening as he read. “How?”
“That’s not important.” She shrugged as he perused the hefty severance package, allocating two full weeks of pay for each year of service. “But as you can see, there will be enough to cover about half of the debt you’ve accrued. How you pay the remaining is your problem, as it'syourdebt.”
“This termination letter is dated today.” Jesse frowned, staring down at William’s signature at the bottom—marking the end of the prestigious career he’d spent so many years building from the ground up.
“Yes, that was my decision to make.” Eliana nodded. “Be careful, the ink may still be wet.”
“This doesn’t make sense,” Jesse said, his voice rising as he flipped through the pages, realizing that what he held was true and binding. “How could you have done this?”
“Your comment about the penthouse back in Elliston made me suspicious, but it wasn’t until we got to looking at the charges you’d accrued and the chargebacks you’d filed to your business that we realized you couldn’t have gotten away with it on your own. What manager would approve an up-charge like that? Especially in such an easily disproven lie. So imagine our surprise when we discovered your boss wasn’t as innocent as he would like everyone to believe.” Eliana clicked her tongue. “A partnership, of sorts. And if there’s one thing you can count on a criminal to do—it’s to put his own interests first.” She snorted, glancing down at the papers. “We weren’t in hisoffice for five minutes before he caved and began drafting these up.”
She paused, taking a moment to relish his look of devastation. “You were never going to be able to pay off those debts, Jesse. It’s the simple truth of the matter. And now you can. At least partly. At the expense of the career you valued so much more than your family. I could’ve done worse, you know. I could’ve told him to forgo the severance—but I did you a favor here, solely for the sake of our daughters. You won’t be blacklisted, so you can find another job with your degree, but you’ll be starting back at the beginning. Letting your character and reputation speak for themselves.” Eliana smirked. She knew how he was perceived. Only willing to help others to the extent in which they could return the favor. He’d be doing a lot of brown-nosing without his company to back him.
“You can’t do this.” Jesse shook his head, his voice rising in volume with each word he spoke. “This will hurt us all if I don’t have a job! How will we pay the bills? How will we eat? What about the mortgage?”
“That’s actually a great segue, thank you.” Eliana nodded graciously. “We’re selling the house. We should be able to pay both the primary and equity loans back quickly after the house is sold.”
“But where will we live?”
“Abby, Zoey, and I will be renting a townhome in the city. Where you sleep is your own business.”
“You can’t just take them?—“
“You know,” Eliana interrupted. “Before tonight, I’d planned to split custody. A fair, fifty-fifty split. But tonight has been . . . enlightening. And, well, I’m adapting.” She took a breath, meeting his eyes and speaking her truth. “I don’t trust you. I don’t trust your judgment as a father todo what is best for our girls. And until that changes, I want full custody. And you’re going to give it to me.”
“No.” Jesse shook his head, slamming the file shut and pushing it away onto the coffee table. “Fuckno. I’m not giving up my daughters. You may be able to take my job, but you can’t force me to give the girls up.”
“I wouldn’t have to,” Eliana said, handing over the second file with all the printouts Clem had helped her gather with the assistance of her elusive cousin. It was all very technical and legal, but satisfaction flared to life in Eliana’s chest when she saw the realization dawn on Jesse’s face as his eyes scanned their length.
“How?” He breathed again, staring down at the extensive proof of his fraud. Dozens of prints of his mindless expenses matched to the falsified receipts he’d submitted, the numbers damning in their clarity. There were messages with William, some of them bordering on the threshold of threatening. Even the dummy account he’d turned a blind eye to. The document submissions traced directly back to the IP of his work office, easily implicating him in his employer’s fraud. All of it laid out in black and white, every penny of his theft.
“It doesn’t matter how,” Eliana calmly stated. “The point is that I have it, and it won’t even matter if you turn on them. We have just as much evidence to take you down with them. Do you know what the statute of limitations is for embezzlement, Jesse? Five years. I havefive yearsto turn this in if I want.Iam the one who will be controlling the narrative from here on out.”
Eliana paused, brushing at her skirt as she gathered her thoughts. “So. Here’s what’s going to happen. You and I will divorce. Immediately. The papers are ready, and we’re going tomorrow to sign. We’ll just need to modify the change incustody arrangements, but I will call and discuss those changes with my lawyer tonight. I will not put any limitations on your access to them, but they will live withme,and I will retain full authority on decisions regarding their welfare. The divorce will be uncontested, and if we’re lucky, final in a matter of thirty days without needing us to appear in court.”
She took a slow breath, releasing it on a sigh. “You will leave tonight. I will speak with a realtor, and we will get the house listed by next week. Any profits from the sale of the house will be split evenly between us. I will not ask for your money, not that you have any, and you will not ask for mine. We’re going to live separate lives. And you will not fight me on any of it—because if you do, you will find yourself doing so from behind bars. Do you understand?”
Jesse was slumped low in his chair by the time she finished. “I can’t believe you would do this to us,” he said, looking up at her with wounded eyes that only served to spark her ire higher. What right did he have to look hurt?
“You haveneverbeen there for me in the ways that matter. You’ve never behaved as a husband or a father truly should. I made so many excuses, but you were just for show. A gaudy accessory I grew accustomed to wearing. And you’ve gone out of fucking style.” Eliana climbed to her feet, staring down at the shell of a man she no longer recognized. “I hope you remember the fact that you brought all of this on yourself. That everything that happened today, everything I’ve said, was the direct consequence ofyourdecisions. Your life is not the only one facing an upheaval. And if you ever want to have shared custody again, I encourage you to remember who is actually innocent in this situation, and the impact your actions had and will have onthem.”
Her words took the last of the wind from Jesse’s sails, his gaze distant. “You’ll send me the lawyer’s details?”
“Yes, we can fine-tune the more specific details in the office tomorrow. But I want it done quickly, and I don’t want the girls dragged through court.”
