Chapter 4 - The Illusions of Power

By dawn, Richard launched his counter-strike.
I woke up to twenty missed calls and a barrage of venomous text messages. *“You humiliated our family. You’re cut off. Return to the estate right now and beg Amanda’s forgiveness, or you will leave this marriage with nothing but the clothes on your back.”*
Right on cue, notifications from my banking apps popped up on my phone screen: my joint credit cards had been suspended, and Richard had attempted to lock me out of our primary checking account.
I smiled thinly over my mug of green tea. He genuinely believed that cutting off a trust-fund allowance would bring me crawling back on my hands and knees. What he didn't know was that six months ago, I had redirected my personal business consulting income into a private, sovereign account that neither he nor his mother could touch.
At 9:00 AM, my doorbell rang. It was Marcus, carrying two large binders and a warm paper cup of espresso.
"Good morning, avenger," Marcus said, stepping inside. "I checked the registry. The Vance family just hired Howard Sterling to handle your potential divorce."
"Sterling?" I chuckled. "Eleanor loves vanity. Sterling is expensive, arrogant, and relies entirely on intimidating people into quiet, unfair settlements. He doesn’t look into the weeds."
"Exactly," Marcus smiled, pulling out several documents. "Which works entirely in our favor. Sterling just sent a cease-and-desist letter, threatening to sue you for assault and emotional distress on Amanda’s behalf, demanding you surrender your marital assets in exchange for them dropping criminal charges."
I walked over to my desk and picked up a high-speed flash drive. "They really want to play the criminal assault card? Good. Let's make sure the police see everything."
"You have the security feed?"
May you like
"Eleanor’s vanity was her undoing," I said smoothly. "She hired a celebrity videographer to livestream the entire birthday party to their VIP social circle. I intercepted and saved the raw, unedited master feed before their PR team could scrub it."
***