MY HUSBAND KICKED ME IN THE RIBS AT HIS COMPANY GALA WHILE HIS MISTRESS LAUGHED— BUT HE HAD NO IDEA WHO REALLY OWNED EVERYTHING HE CALLED HIS…

The fallout in the hallway was swift. Jasmine didn't even make it to the ground floor before her reality completely disintegrated.

Down in the lobby, the news of the hostile takeover had already spread through private corporate messaging apps like wildfire. When the elevator doors opened, fifty employees—engineers, junior analysts, marketing coordinators whom Jasmine had spent four months terrorizing with imperious demands and threats of termination—stood watching in absolute silence.

Her mascara was running in black streaks down her cheeks. Her designer blazer was rumpled. One of her expensive heels had snapped as she bolted down the marble corridor.

She tried to hold her head high, clutching her luxury coat around herself, marching toward the revolving glass exit doors.

"Excuse me, Miss Rivers," a cold voice called out.

Two uniformed private investigators from Vance Security intercepted her at the threshold. Behind them stood two uniformed officers of the New York Police Department.

"What now?" Jasmine screamed, her voice echoing off the glass atrium. "I don't work here! I have nothing to do with Camden Tatum! Let me leave!"

"You are free to leave, Miss Rivers," the lead investigator said, his face impassive. "However, the three-carat diamond tennis bracelet on your wrist, the Cartier Love ring on your finger, and the Birkin bag on your arm were purchased using corporate expense line item 884-B—titled 'Client Acquisition Services'—authorized by Camden Tatum without board approval."

"These were personal gifts!" she shrieked. "He gave them to me!"

"Stolen corporate property cannot be gifted under New York law," the NYPD officer stated plainly. "You have two choices, ma'am. You can remove the jewelry and surrender the handbag right here on the lobby floor, or we can arrest you for criminal possession of stolen property valued in excess of fifty thousand dollars."

The employees in the lobby pulled out their smartphones. The soft, rhythmic clicks of digital camera shutters sounded like a swarm of locusts.

"Don't film me!" Jasmine wailed, shielding her face with one arm while frantically unclasping the diamond bracelet with the other. "Turn those cameras off!"

Nobody turned them off.

Within minutes, she had stripped off the rings, unclasped the bracelet, and dumped the contents of her luxury handbag into a brown paper evidence bag provided by the security team. Clutching her phone, her makeup ruined, wearing only one working shoe, Jasmine Rivers pushed through the revolving doors into the pouring Manhattan rain—penniless, utterly humiliated, and immortalized on corporate social media forever.

Back in the boardroom on the thirty-second floor, Camden had heard the commotion echoing up through the intercom system.

He looked at me with sunken, bloodshot eyes. "She’s gone, Vicki. The viper is gone. It was all her. She poisoned my mind. She made me resent you. But we can fix this. We can go to marriage counseling. We can take a sabbatical to Tuscany. I’ll give up the chairmanship! I’ll just be your husband! I swear to God, Vicki, I’ll never look at another woman again!"

I stood up slowly from my chair.

"You still don't understand, do you, Camden?" I walked around the table until I was standing three feet from where he sat cowering. "This was never about Jasmine Rivers."

He blinked, confused. "What?"

"Jasmine was just a symptom of what you truly are," I said, looking down at him. "A weak, insecure, parasitic little boy who needed to kick a woman in the ribs just to convince himself he was a giant."

I tapped the button on my phone.