By the end of the week, I had quietly moved into a private villa I’d purchased under my own company’s name months before. I hadn’t told anyone about it, not even my friends. It overlooked the sea, peaceful and isolated.
Meanwhile, word spread that Charles’s firm had “internal financial complications.” Investors pulled out. Vanessa’s pregnancy announcement, meant to draw sympathy, only fueled gossip about the affair. Clients withdrew their contracts.
I didn’t answer calls. For all anyone knew, I’d gone abroad. But behind the scenes, I was busy.
Charles had always been arrogant, assuming I knew nothing about the business. But I’d sat quietly through years of meetings, absorbing everything about who his partners were, which ones could be persuaded, which ones despised him. Using that information, I contacted two of them privately.
I proposed an acquisition—quiet, discreet, entirely legal. Within a month, I owned 40% of his company through intermediaries. The irony was delicious: the man who once dismissed me as “just his wife” now unknowingly worked for me.Continue reading…
