Chapter 2
At precisely 9:10 the following morning, my phone rang.
The caller ID showed Alistair.
The moment I answered, he didn’t bother with a greeting.
There wasn’t even a simple hello.
He exploded into a furious panic, shouting that three of the company’s largest investors had abruptly withdrawn from a multimillion-dollar agreement to finance a luxury high-rise development in Miami.
Before I even had time to process what he had said, the situation grew even worse.
Barely fifteen minutes later, his personal secretary called me in obvious distress.
Her voice trembled as she explained that two of Apex Construction’s biggest corporate clients had canceled their contracts without warning, the steel supplier had refused to ship another pound of material unless every invoice was paid in cash upfront, and the bank had frozen the company’s eighty-million-dollar line of credit.
Only minutes after that, my phone rang again.
It was Alistair.
This time, the arrogant confidence that had always filled his voice was completely gone.
In its place was pure fear.
Raw.
Desperate.
“Did your father call you today?” he asked, barely able to hide the panic in his voice.
“No,” I answered calmly. “He didn’t.”
“Tell him to call me immediately!” he shouted before abruptly ending the call.
When I arrived at Apex Construction a short time later, the atmosphere inside the building felt completely different.
Groups of employees stood gathered in the hallways, speaking in nervous whispers.
No one seemed to be working.
Everyone looked frightened.
Inside his office, Alistair barely resembled the man I had married.
His face had gone completely pale.
His tie hung crooked around his neck.
His desk had disappeared beneath stacks of legal notices, demand letters, and financial documents requiring immediate payment.
“This... this can’t possibly be a coincidence,” Alistair muttered to himself, staring blankly at the mountain of paperwork.
“Someone is deliberately destroying me.”
Before anyone could respond, the company’s chief financial officer walked into the office carrying a thick black folder retrieved from the company’s archived records.
“There’s something you need to see,” he said quietly.
“You should read the documents from the financial rescue package we received five years ago.”
I frowned in confusion.
Financial rescue package?
I had never heard a single word about any bailout.
Throughout our entire marriage, Alistair had proudly claimed he built Apex Construction entirely on his own.
He always insisted that every dollar, every contract, and every success came solely from his own determination and hard work.
But the documents inside that black folder told a completely different story.
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Five years earlier, Apex Construction had been on the verge of total collapse.
The company had effectively run out of money.
