Chapter 3

***

Her father's office still smelled the way it always had, leather and old coffee.

Richard Sinclair stood by the window when she walked in. He already looked like he was expecting to lose an argument.

"Ivy." He didn't move to hug her. Sit down."

"I'd rather stand."

He nodded slowly, like he'd expected that too, and turned back to the window instead of facing her directly. "How much do you already know?"

"I know Adrian has a son with another woman and that he has been lying to me all these years." Ivy kept her voice level. "And I know you told him not to tell me, or you knew and said nothing, or some version of both, because I called you and you didn't even sound surprised."

Her father was quiet for a while. When he finally turned around, he looked older than she remembered.

"It's complicated, Ivy."

"Don't do that, Dad." Her voice cracked slightly.

"Don't do this thing where you make this sound like a business decision. I need you to just tell me the truth. All of it."

Her father sat down heavily behind his desk.

“Sinclair Group has been running on a credit line from Vance Capital for a little over two years. A credit line, revolving, renewed every ninety days at Adrian's discretion. If that line closes, we can't make payroll past the second quarter. Three hundred and forty employees, Ivy. Pensions and contracts. We can't unwind fast enough to protect anyone."

"So you knew?" Her voice had gone very quiet. "You knew what he was, and you let me marry him anyway. And now you're telling me I can't leave him because you need his money?"

"I didn't know about the affair." Her father's jaw tightened. "I swear to you, I didn't know about the child. But I've known for a while that Adrian isn't the man either of us hoped he'd be. And I let it go on longer than I should have, because I told myself it wasn't costing you anything."

"It's costing me everything! My peace, my sanity, everything, Dad."

"I know." He said it so quietly. "And I'm asking you, as your father, not as a businessman, to give me time. Just a few months, long enough to restructure, find another lender, get us clear of him. Ivy, if you leave now, he'll pull the funding out of spite before you even file the paperwork, and I will lose the company my father built and every person who works for it."

Ivy looked at him for a minute. This man who had always been the safest person in every room of her childhood could sell her off this easily? She felt her chest fold in on itself quietly.

"So I'm supposed to just stay?" she said, trying to hold back tears. Smile at his dinners, sit across from him every night and pretend I don't know about the little child he has outside our marriage?”

"I'm not asking you to forgive him." Her father's voice cracked on the last word. "I'm asking you not to destroy everything at once while I find a way to fix what I can."

Ivy didn't answer. She picked her bag up off the chair and walked out of the office, and by the time she reached her car in the parking garage, she understood she was alone in this.

Whatever came next, whatever exit she found, she was going to have to build it herself, quietly, without her father's help and without Adrian ever seeing it coming.

That night, she opened her laptop and searched for divorce attorneys with a specialty in high-asset, high-profile cases. 

She found one, two towns over, far enough from anyone in Adrian's circle to recognize the name, and she called first thing the next morning before she could talk herself out of it.

The receptionist put her through faster than she expected. The attorney, a sharp-voiced woman named Denise Mildred, listened to the outline of the situation without interrupting once.

"Alright," Denise said finally. "First thing we're going to want to do is get a clear picture of your assets before we file anything. Do you have independent access to any accounts, or is everything joint?"

"Joint, mostly. There's a savings account in my name, but it's small. Most of it runs through our joint accounts."

"Okay. I want you to log into your banking app right now, while we're on the phone, and just confirm the balances for me. Sometimes people are surprised by what's actually sitting there."

Ivy pulled up the app, thumb hovering, and felt the first genuine flicker of hope she'd had in two days.

The screen loaded, then it loaded again.

‘This account has been temporarily restricted. Please contact your branch for further assistance.’

She tried the second account. The same message. Then the third.

"Denise," Ivy said slowly, her voice suddenly not as steady as it had been a moment ago. "I think something's wrong."

"What's wrong?"

"All three of our joint accounts. They're frozen." Ivy stared at the screen like it might change if she looked at it long enough. "How is that even possible? I didn't do anything. I haven't told him I was calling a lawyer."

There was a pause on the line, brief but heavy.

"Ivy," Denise said. "I need you to think back. In the last forty-eight hours, has anything happened that might have tipped your husband off that you'd found out about the affair?"

Ivy's mind went straight back to the kitchen incident.

"He knows," she said quietly. "He's known since the night I confronted him."

"That's what I was afraid of." Denise's voice was calm and professional. "Because accounts don't freeze themselves overnight, and they definitely don't freeze this fast unless someone with serious legal resources moves on it immediately. Which means your husband didn't just find out you are aware."

"Then what?"

"He's been ready for this

conversation for a while," Denise said. "Long before you ever found that phone.”