Chapter 6 - Sloane’s Secret Rendezvous
The following Tuesday afternoon, I was sitting in Dana’s downtown office reviewing the property liens Vance had placed on Julian’s luxury sports cars when Dana’s assistant buzzed the intercom.
"Dana? There’s a young woman in the reception area. She doesn't have an appointment, but she says her name is Sloane Evans. She says she won't leave until she speaks to Mrs. Keene."
Dana and I exchanged a stunned glance.
"Did she come with Julian?" I asked.
"The receptionist says she came alone in a taxi," Dana replied, her finger hovering over the intercom button. "Do you want security to escort her out?"
I thought about it for five seconds. The instinct to slam the door on the woman who had carried my husband’s child behind my back was sharp, visceral. But I wasn't fighting an emotional war anymore; I was executing a strategic dismantling.
"Bring her into the secondary conference room," I told Dana. "And make sure the audio recording system is turned on."
Three minutes later, Dana and I walked into the glass-walled conference room.
Sloane Evans was sitting at the far end of the long mahogany table. In the harsh fluorescent light, she looked nothing like the polished, glowing mistress Julian had paraded on his private social media accounts. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a messy, hurried ponytail. She wore no makeup, revealing dark purple circles beneath her swollen, bloodshot eyes. Her hands rested protectively over her visibly rounded stomach, trembling against the fabric of her oversized beige sweater.
When I entered, she scrambled to stand up, but her knees seemed to wobble. "Mrs. Keene."
"Sit down, Ms. Evans," I said evenly, taking the chair directly opposite her. Dana sat to my right, a legal pad and pen ready. "You have five minutes. Explain why you're here before I have the sheriff serve you with the asset recovery subpoena."
Sloane swallowed hard, tears immediately spilling over her eyelashes. "I didn't know."
"Save the tears," Dana cut in harshly. "You’ve been living in an eighty-thousand-dollar-a-year penthouse leased through an offshore entity, driving a Range Rover leased under our client’s corporate account, and accepting wire transfers totaling two million dollars. Don't play the innocent schoolgirl."
"I knew he was married!" Sloane cried, her voice cracking as she leaned forward, gripping the edge of the polished table. "I’m not lying about that! I know what I did was horrible. I know you hate me, and you have every right to despise me! But I swear to God on my unborn baby’s life, I did not know the divorce papers were fake!"
She pulled a battered leather journal from her purse, along with a stack of printed text message threads.
"When I told Julian I was pregnant five months ago, I told him I would walk away if he wasn't going to be an active father," Sloane sobbed, pushing the papers toward me. "He told me he had been separated from you for two years. He said you were living separate lives in the main house, that you were only staying together for the family business tax benefits. Then, three weeks ago, he brought me that signed court judgment. He swore the judge had finalized everything. He gave me that ring and booked the chapel in Napa."
I didn't touch the papers. "Why come to me now? Why aren't you with him?"
"Because he’s insane," Sloane whispered, her voice dropping into a terrified hush. "Yesterday, after the judge froze his accounts, he came to the penthouse. He wasn't sad. He wasn't remorseful. He was furious. He started tearing the place apart looking for the deed to the property and the corporate debit cards."
She pulled back her sleeve. Across her pale wrist was a faint, purple-red bruise in the shape of fingers.
"He told me that if I didn't sign the shell corporation assets over to his mother’s personal trust by Friday, he would tell the district attorney that I was the mastermind who forged your signature," Sloane said, trembling violently. "He said he would claim I stole his laptop and orchestrated the wire transfers myself to extort him. He told me I would give birth in a county jail cell."
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Dana leaned forward, her eyes narrowing with intense legal focus. "Did he put that threat in writing?"
"No," Sloane said, wiping her face with a damp tissue. "He said it to my face. But I have his old iPad. He forgot it on the nightstand when he left to meet his mother at the country club. Mrs. Keene... the emails on that iPad go back three years. It wasn't just your trust money. He has offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands that he never disclosed in your joint tax filings. Accounts worth over six million dollars."
