Outside the parlor, the predawn air carried a faint chill.
"Grandson, beautifully done! Your fortune is blazing now. Those three bastards will have blood on their hands within a week!"
Great-Grandpa roared with laughter.
I pulled my jacket tighter and spoke through gritted teeth. "So what do I do about Beverly? Do I go home and catch her in the act?"
"Catch her doing what? That little weasel pulled his pants up and slipped out the fire escape half an hour ago!"
Great-Grandpa's tone went cold.
"That woman is poison, and she's smarter than you think. If you go home and make a scene now, all she has to do is deny everything, flip it around on you for gambling all night, and use that as grounds to file for divorce. You'd walk away with nothing."
"Why do you think she had Caspar and the others keep you pinned down tonight? Because she just finished moving two million dollars out of your company account this evening!"
I'd just started the engine. The moment those words landed, my foot slammed the brake. A vein pulsed at my temple.
"Two million? That's the payment I owe my crew next week!"
Great-Grandpa let out a sharp, bitter scoff and continued:
"That's not all. She also took out an accidental death policy on you, and guess who the sole beneficiary is? Her. This woman never planned to build a life with you. She's been scheming to devour everything you have and leave you in the ground."
When I heard all of that, something inside me went cold. Went dead.
Seven years.
I'd been with her since college graduation. We sold trinkets from a folding table on the sidewalk. We lived in a basement apartment with no windows.
Then I started the construction company, drinking myself half to death at client dinners night after night until I was vomiting blood from a stomach ulcer. All of it so she could have that sprawling downtown condo, so she could live like a rich man's wife.
And she took the money I'd nearly killed myself to earn, brought other men into our bed, and spent it on them.
She even wanted me dead.
"Great-Grandpa, what do I do?" My jaw was clenched so hard I felt a molar crack.
"Go home! The USB drive with the transferred assets is sewn into the lining of that designer handbag of hers! And the videos she filmed with those men are on a burner phone hidden in a secret compartment under her vanity! Get the evidence first, then make her wish she'd never been born!"