Chapter 3 - The Price of Treason
Jennifer was on her feet now, backing toward the panoramic window overlooking the dark bay. The rain pelted the glass behind her like gravel. Her polished, charity-circuit composure was entirely shredded.
“Jack, please,” she whimpered, her hands pressed against her throat. “David came to me. He said he had an investment strategy that could diversify our holdings outside of the family trust. I didn’t know—”
“You didn’t know?” Jack didn’t even look at her. He kept his eyes locked on David, who was breathing through his mouth, looking between the heavy mahogany door behind us and the three-story drop into the freezing water outside. “You didn’t know he was using my freight routes out of Tacoma to move unregistered cargo for the Vance family? Or did you just assume the extra eighty thousand dollars appearing in your Zurich account every month was a dividend from the Seattle Children’s Hospital foundation?”
Jennifer’s mouth snapped shut. She looked at David with genuine horror. She hadn’t known that part. David had used her social vanity and greed to secure Jack’s blind spots, selling passage to Jack’s blood rivals while sleeping with his wife.
David tried to find his footing. He pulled his shoulders back, attempting the smooth, board-room posture that had charmed venture capitalists and municipal planners for a decade.
“Mr. Thompson,” David began, his voice wavering only slightly. “This is a misunderstanding. Whatever Clare gave you, it’s incomplete. She’s an emotional woman. We’ve been having marital difficulties, and she’s lashing out by fabricating—”
I didn’t wait for Jack to answer. I took two steps forward, closing the distance between myself and the man I had slept beside for twelve years.
“Account 4092 at Pacific Crest Bank,” I recited, every number burned into my retina from weeks of midnight spreadsheets. “Routing number ending in 881. You transferred two hundred and fourteen thousand dollars on October twelfth under the line item ‘Landscape Architecture.’ That money went to a blind trust held in Jennifer’s maiden name. On October fourteenth, three shipping containers cleared Pier 12 without manifest inspections under your corporate seal.”
David stared at me as if a houseplant had suddenly started speaking fluent Latin.
“You don't know anything about logistics,” he stammered, desperation bleeding through his teeth. “You make lemon tarts, Clare!”
“I was a senior forensic auditor for Ernst & Young before you told me my career was ‘inconvenient’ for your social climb, David,” I said, my voice dropping to an icy register that surprised even myself. “I spent eight years finding money that cartels tried to bury in Swiss snowbanks. You used the same password for your illicit shell company that you used for our Netflix account.”
Jack let out a dry, short bark of laughter. It was the only sound in the room besides the pounding rain.
“Brutal,” Jack murmured.
He stepped up beside me. Standing next to him was like standing next to a loaded furnace; the heat of his suppressed violence radiated through his immaculate suit. He looked down at David like an entomologist studying an aggressive beetle.
“Here is what is going to happen, Martinez,” Jack said softly. “You are going to surrender your phone, your watch, and the keys to the vehicle currently parked in my garage downstairs. Then you are going to walk out the rear service exit. You will not return to your house on Lake Union. You will not contact your partners. If you attempt to access any account containing so much as a nickel that originated from my docks or your wife’s savings, you will not make it to breakfast.”
David’s chest heaved. “You can’t just—this is America! I have legal rights! Clare is my wife, our assets are community property—”
Jack took half a step forward. He didn’t draw a weapon. He didn’t raise a fist. He simply leaned down until he was eye-to-eye with David.
“You slept with my wife on my property while stealing from my family,” Jack whispered. “The only community property you have left is the dirt you’re going to be buried under if you speak another word in front of me.”
David broke. The polished executive, the man who had patronized me over breakfast and sneered at my opinions for a decade, simply collapsed inward. He fumbled his phone and keys out of his pocket, threw them onto the table, and bolted toward the secondary service door without looking back once. Not at Jennifer. Not at me.
The door slammed shut.
Jennifer sank onto the sofa, sobbing quietly into her palms.
Jack didn’t spare her a glance. He turned to me, picking up the *Garden Ideas* folder.
May you like
“You’re soaked through, Mrs. Martinez,” he said, extending an arm toward the main exit. “My car is downstairs. Let’s go find out just how much of my money your husband gave away.”
***
