Chapter 6 - The Freezing Out of Corporate Accounts
By Wednesday morning, the shockwaves of our legal assault had thoroughly decimated Ethan’s carefully constructed illusion of success.
I sat at my home office desk, sipping black coffee while reviewing real-time analytics for my beauty and fashion brand. Sales were up twelve percent week-over-week. New wholesale orders from national boutique chains were rolling in like clockwork. My business was thriving—unencumbered, independent, and entirely mine.
Meanwhile, Ethan’s corporate life had imploded in spectacular fashion.
According to Victoria’s morning briefing, Ethan’s employer—a major Chicago communications firm—had placed him on immediate administrative suspension pending an internal audit of Apex Strategy Group. The discovery that a senior employee was running a clandestine shell company using corporate resources for personal enrichment was grounds for immediate termination with cause.
And that meant no severance. No unemployment benefits. No corporate health insurance to cover Madison’s impending maternity bills.
At 10:30 a.m., my doorbell rang.
I walked downstairs, cautiously checking the smart doorbell camera.
Standing on my front porch wasn't Ethan or Diane. It was Madison Cruz.
She looked younger than I expected—maybe twenty-four or twenty-five, with long blonde hair pulled back into a messy ponytail, wearing an oversized maternity sweater that couldn't hide her very pregnant belly. She looked exhausted, her eyes red-rimmed and swollen from crying.
I unlocked the heavy front door and pulled it open just a few inches, leaving the security chain latched.
Madison flinched, staring up at me with a mix of terror and profound desperation.
"Claire?" she whispered, her voice trembling. "Can we... can we please talk?"
"You're standing on my front porch, Madison," I said, my voice entirely neutral. "You tell me what we have to talk about."
Tears spilled over her lower lashes, rolling down her cheeks.
"I know what Ethan did," she choked out, clutching her stomach with one hand. "I swear to God, I didn't know he was forging your signature on the HELOC papers. He told me you and he were already separated! He told me you had a pre-nup that gave him rights to half the property! He promised me we were going to start a clean life together in Lincoln Park!"
I stared at her for a long, hard moment.
"And you believed him?" I asked quietly. "You believed a married man who spent four years living in his wife's house while secretly funneling money behind her back?"
"I was stupid!" she sobbed, burying her face in her free hand. "I was twenty-three, working a junior marketing job, and he played the successful corporate strategist! He promised me the world, Claire. And now... now he's fired. The bank accounts are frozen. The landlord gave us forty-eight hours to vacate our apartment because the rent check bounced. And he's sitting in his mother's basement screaming at the walls like a maniac!"
A grim, humorless realization washed over me.
Ethan hadn't loved Madison any more than he had loved me. She was just another asset to him—another tool to project the illusion of success to a world that had always viewed him as ordinary.
"I'm sorry you got played, Madison," I said, my voice softening just a fraction. "Truly, I am. But you came to the wrong address. I am not your enemy. Ethan is. And if you have any survival instinct left, you'll take whatever evidence you have of his financial manipulation, hand it over to my attorney, and run as far away from him as you possibly can."
May you like
Madison stared at me, trembling, before nodding slowly.
"Thank you, Claire," she whispered, turning around and walking slowly down the front steps toward the street, swallowed up by the gray Chicago morning.
