Julian: Welcome home.
I drove directly to the office of Raymond Vance, my father’s lifelong estate attorney. He spread the financial ledgers across his desk, his expression darkening with every page.
“Genevieve, this goes beyond marital misconduct,” Raymond said gravely. “Julian executed unauthorized corporate transfers totaling nearly $15 million from Vance Global’s parent trust directly into Victoria’s shell company. If we present this to the board of directors, he will not only be removed as CEO—he will face a federal indictment.”
“Block my private shares immediately,” I replied. “And file for an emergency asset freeze against his accounts.”
Raymond looked at my pale face and the visible bandage peeking out from the collar of my coat. “Are you sure you want to go to war so soon after surgery?”
“The day I needed his signature to survive, he turned off his phone to marry another woman,” I said softly. “I’m not negotiating for love anymore, Raymond. I’m reclaiming my life.”
Three days later, Julian was lounging at a oceanfront resort in Cabo with Victoria when his phone finally began ringing incessantly.
It was his chief financial officer.
“Julian, we have a catastrophic emergency,” the CFO panicked over the satellite line. “A federal judge just issued an emergency freeze on our primary operating accounts pending a forensic audit. Genevieve’s legal team submitted board-level documentation of unauthorized capital flight!”
Julian laughed nervously. “Genevieve? She’s in the hospital!”
“She checked out three days ago,” the CFO snapped. “And she cleaned out the Lake Forest house.”
Julian called the hospital directly. The floor manager confirmed the date and time of my emergency surgery.
“We attempted to reach you sixteen times, Mr. Vance,” the nurse informed him coldly over the line. “The patient was forced to sign her own emergency consent form while hemorrhaging.”
According to staff members who overheard the call in Cabo, that was the exact moment Julian dropped his phone onto the sand.
He flew back to Chicago that very night.
He walked into a silent, echoey, completely empty mansion, finding only my note resting on the bare floorboards of the foyer.
He tried calling me frantically, but my number was disconnected, my social media wiped, and my location secured inside a private penthouse owned by my family’s real estate trust.
A week later, he managed to reach my legal team’s direct line.
“Genevieve, please!” Julian pleaded when Raymond put him on speaker. “Let me explain! I made a mistake!”
I leaned toward the microphone. “Which part was the mistake, Julian? The fake wedding, the fraudulent mortgage on my father’s house, or the $10 million you handed to Victoria?”
“I was confused—”
“No, Julian. Forgetting an anniversary is a mistake. You made calculated, criminal choices for three years.”
“I won’t sign the divorce papers!” he shouted, his voice cracking.
I let out a soft, humorless laugh that made my chest ache. “Julian… you already had a public wedding with another woman. You don’t get to decide my future anymore.”
I hung up.
That same afternoon, Victoria marched into Julian’s corporate suite, demanding he use his personal funds to save her design firm from the asset freeze.
Julian stared at her with hollow, bloodshot eyes. “Where is the $10 million I transferred to your account?”
Victoria turned pale. “Julian, the lawyers froze it! You have to fix this!”
Before he could answer, his door opened, and a process server handed Victoria a federal subpoena for financial fraud and corporate conspiracy.
Panicked, Victoria placed a trembling hand over her stomach and delivered the line she thought would save her:
“You can’t do this to me, Julian… I’m pregnant.”
PART 3
Julian stared at Victoria for three full minutes.
Victoria stood before his desk in her designer dress, her eyes brimming with tears, holding her hand over her abdomen.
“Six weeks,” she whimpered. “It’s yours.”
Eleanor, my assistant, had placed a discreet recording device inside Julian’s executive office through an IT staffer loyal to my father. I listened to the audio from my penthouse that evening.
Julian didn’t embrace her. He didn’t smile. He didn’t celebrate.
“Why didn’t you tell me before the trip to Cabo?” Julian asked, his voice dead and devoid of warmth.
“I wanted to be certain!” she cried.
“And what do you expect me to do now?”
Victoria took a step back, shocked by his coldness. “I’m your wife!”
“Not legally,” Julian said quietly.
That was the bitter, humiliating reality. Julian had thrown a multi-million-dollar social wedding complete with press coverage, photographers, and high-society guests, but our divorce had never even been filed. His lavish wedding to Victoria was a criminal act of bigamy and a public farce.
Victoria began to sob uncontrollably. “You promised me you would take care of everything after the ceremony!”
“Everything changed,” Julian replied flatly.
“Because of Genevieve?!”
Julian went dead silent. And that silence broke Victoria completely.
She realized the man she had helped betray me for three years was not going to ruin his corporate reputation, lose his family fortune, or go to prison for her.
Two weeks later, Raymond Vance presented the completed forensic audit to me. Victoria’s shell company had received over $15 million in illegal transfers from Vance Global’s parent trust. Part of it had gone into real estate development, but millions had been spent on personal luxury goods, sports cars, and offshore accounts registered to her relatives.
“We have enough to remove him from the board of directors permanently,” Raymond informed me.
“Not yet,” I replied, looking out the penthouse window toward the skyline of downtown Chicago. “I want it done at the annual shareholders’ gala.”
During those two months, I didn’t spend my days brooding. I focused on my physical rehabilitation with the help of Dr. Gabriel Vance—a brilliant 34-year-old cardiothoracic specialist who had been a former protégé of my late father.
