**Three days before their divorce, Dante Moretti thought his wife was being dramatic—until he woke up wearing her face.**

By Tuesday afternoon, the penthouse was quiet again. Mrs. Higgins had left, and Elena had locked herself in my private study with access to the corporate mainframes.

I was sitting at the marble kitchen island, scrolling through Elena’s personal laptop. She had given me access to her encrypted files under strict supervision, warning me not to look at anything unrelated to the financial discrepancy.

The screen glowed with personal bank statements, charity logs, and architectural sketches.

Elena was an artist by training—a fact I had completely forgotten, or perhaps never truly registered when she dropped her portfolio to marry me. Her digital folders were filled with breathtaking charcoal drawings of Boston architecture, coastal landscapes, and abstract expressionist studies.

One folder caught my eye: Project Genesis.

I clicked on it.

Inside were dozens of documents dating back three years—not personal art, but meticulous financial audits of small tech startups in Kendall Square.

My brow furrowed. I opened the most recent file, dated October 1st.

It was a detailed breakdown of a shell company named Vanguard Holdings LLC.

The registered owner of Vanguard Holdings wasn't an external competitor. It wasn't an anonymous offshore entity.

It was Marcus Vance—my chief financial officer, my most trusted corporate advisor, and the man who had stood beside me in every major merger for the last decade.

The door to the kitchen swung open, and Elena walked in, still wearing my suit jacket, though she had rolled the sleeves up to her elbows. She looked tired, the dark circles under my eyes reflecting the sheer mental strain of navigating my corporate network.

"Did you find something?" she asked, pouring herself a glass of water.

I turned the laptop screen toward her. "Marcus."

Elena stopped, her hand tightening around the glass. She walked over, leaning over the marble island to study the screen. "You found it."

"He set up Vanguard Holdings three years ago," I said, my voice shaking slightly in Elena’s throat. "He’s been siphoning operational funds through minor expense accounts under fifty thousand dollars to avoid SEC reporting thresholds. The forty-eight thousand transfer... it wasn't you. It was Marcus testing the transfer protocol before moving a larger block of capital."

"And he framed me," Elena said quietly. "When you noticed the missing forty-eight thousand last week, Marcus didn't hesitate to point the finger at my personal account. He knew you were already looking for an excuse to blame me for something before the divorce."

I felt a cold rage build in my chest—not at Elena, but at myself. For blind, arrogant trust in a man who had been robbing me blind while I sat in my ivory tower judging my own wife.

"We need to confront him," I said, standing up abruptly. "We need to go down to the office, pull the physical server logs, and—"

"Stop," Elena interrupted, holding up a hand. "Look at yourself—or rather, look at me. If you walk into the corporate headquarters looking like a grieving, stressed-out housewife accusing the CFO of embezzlement, Marcus will have security throw you out before you reach the elevator. And if I walk in looking like a volatile, erratic version of you, the board will declare us both unstable and freeze the entire executive suite."

She was right. Every instinct I had as Dante Moretti—charging in, demanding answers, using sheer intimidation—was completely useless in this scenario.

"Then what do we do?" I asked, looking up into my own fierce, intelligent hazel eyes housed within my own face.