After my husband texted that he was on a business flight to Chicago, I found a photo from his 26-year-old associate showing my anniversary watch on a first-class flight to Mexico.

The door to the conference room opened again, and this time, the entire room shifted.

Vanessa Hayes walked in.

She was dressed in a conservative, dark gray pantsuit, her hair pulled back into a severe, professional bun. The porcelain smile was gone; her face was pale, scrubbed clean of heavy makeup, and her hands were clamped tight around an encrypted external hard drive.

Behind her walked her personal legal counsel—a prominent criminal defense attorney from St. Paul.

Richard shot out of his chair. "Vanessa?! What the hell are you doing here?!"

"Sit down, Mr. Miller!" the prosecutor barked.

Vanessa didn't look at Richard. She kept her eyes focused entirely on Clara.

"Mrs. Miller," Vanessa said, her voice shaking slightly before finding its footing. "I came here voluntarily. I have signed a full proffer agreement with the County Attorney and the firm's compliance board."

"You traitorous little snake!" Richard lunged forward, but his attorney grabbed his arm and dragged him back into the chair. "I gave you everything! I made you!"

"You lied to me," Vanessa whispered, turning her gaze toward him for the first time, her expression filled with pure loathing. "You told me you were divorced two years ago. You told me the house on the lake was yours. You told me your wife was an institutionalized addict who was draining your accounts."

Clara raised an eyebrow, looking down at her manicured nails. "An institutionalized addict? How creative, Richard. You always did have a gift for fiction."

Vanessa placed the hard drive directly in front of Eleanor Vance.

"This drive contains the complete mirror of his personal cloud server," Vanessa said clearly. "Every text message he sent me instructing me to move funds between the Cabo Horizon accounts. Every audio recording of him boasting about how he used his wife's medical credentials to falsify compliance disclosures for his logistics shell companies. And the encrypted key to his secondary account in Zurich."

Richard’s breath came in ragged, wheezing gasps. "Vanessa... don't do this. I loved you."

Vanessa let out a hollow, bitter laugh that echoed off the glass walls.

"You didn't love me, Richard. You loved having a twenty-six-year-old mirror to reflect your pathetic vanity. You used my name on those Delaware shell corporations so that if the hammer fell, I would take the criminal liability while you claimed you were misled by your junior associate."

She turned back to Clara, her posture crumbling slightly.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Miller. I know that doesn't mean anything to you now. But I won't go to prison for him. I won't let him ruin my life the way he tried to ruin yours."

Clara looked at the younger woman. There was no rage in Clara's face, only a profound, dismissive pity.

"You made your choices, Ms. Hayes. You were happy enough to drink the champagne when you thought I was paying for it. But the state will decide what happens to you. Now, take your seat and let my lawyer finish the work."

Eleanor Vance smiled—a cold, predatory grin that signaled the end of the hunt.