She pulled free.
“Don’t touch me.”
Several nearby diners looked over.
Ryan lowered his voice.
“You knew I was married.”
Ashley stared at him.
“You told me your marriage was finished.
You told me you were only waiting for paperwork because she couldn’t handle the truth.”
I felt something inside me go strangely still.
Not because the statement hurt.
I had already read months of messages.
But there was something different about hearing the fictional version of my marriage spoken aloud by the woman who had been sold it.
Ryan turned to me.
“This is between us.”
“No,” Victoria said.
“Some of it is.”
She tapped the financial records.
“Some of it is not.”
Ryan ignored her.
He leaned toward me.
“You want a divorce? Fine.
You want money? Fine.
But bringing lawyers into my business because you’re jealous is reckless.”
I almost admired how quickly he rearranged reality.
He had brought another woman to my family’s hotel.
He had lied about where he was.
He had apparently used my signature on financial documents.
And somehow, within minutes, he had transformed himself into the victim of my jealousy.
“I knew about Ashley before you checked in,” I said.
That silenced him.
Ashley stopped gathering her purse.
Ryan’s face hardened.
“How long?”
“Long enough.”
“And you said nothing?”
“No.”
He gave a short, humorless laugh.
“So this was some kind of trap?”
“No.
The affair gave you somewhere to go.
Your paperwork gave me a reason to investigate.”
Victoria opened the third folder.
That folder contained the timeline.
Not just individual transactions, but the pattern connecting them.
Dates.
Authorizations.
Account movements.
Copies of communications.
Instances when Ryan told me he was traveling while financial activity occurred elsewhere.
Instances when he had asked me casual questions about passwords, signatures, account access, and old corporate documents under the pretense of household planning.
Looking back, the questions seemed embarrassingly obvious.
At the time, they had felt ordinary because they came from my husband.
Trust has a way of making suspicious things look domestic.
Ryan skimmed two pages and pushed them away.
“This proves nothing.”
Victoria nodded once.
