The coffee shop suddenly felt like a trap.
The familiar warmth of the morning sun streaming through the windows turned
harsh and glaring, and the cheerful chatter of other customers became an
incomprehensible buzz that made my skull ache. Marcus's words echoed in my head
like a warning bell I couldn't silence: "Don't go to your apartment."
"Marcus, you're scaring me." I
gripped the phone tighter, stepping outside onto the sidewalk. The driver
looked at me expectantly through the windshield, but I held up one finger,
needing to understand what the hell was happening before I could decide where
to go. "What do you mean, don't go home? What's wrong?"
"Just get here. Now." His voice
cracked again, and Marcus never cracked. In fifteen years of friendship and
business dealings, I'd seen him handle million-dollar lawsuits, corporate
espionage, and hostile takeovers without so much as a tremor in his voice.
Whatever this was, it was bad enough to break a man who specialized in
unbreakable composure.
The twenty-minute ride to Marcus's office
felt like an eternity. I tried calling Elena three times, each call going
straight to voicemail. Her voice, warm and musical, asking me to leave a
message because she was "probably off changing the world somewhere."
The same greeting she'd had for two years, the one that used to make me smile
every time I heard it.
Now it made my stomach churn.
Roman's phone did the same thing. Straight
to voicemail, his confident voice promising to call back "as soon as I'm
done making us richer." We'd recorded those messages together one lazy
Sunday afternoon, laughing as we tried to outdo each other with increasingly
ridiculous greetings until Elena threatened to hide our phones if we didn't
stop acting like children.
The memory felt like a lifetime ago.
Marcus's building was in Midtown, a
gleaming tower of glass and steel that housed some of the most powerful legal
minds in the city. I'd been here countless times, usually for contract
negotiations or merger paperwork, always leaving with a sense of satisfaction
at another business victory secured.
Today, walking through the marble lobby
felt like approaching a funeral.
Marcus met me at the elevator, his usually
immaculate appearance disheveled. His tie was crooked, his silver hair mussed
like he'd been running his hands through it, and his face was the color of old
parchment. When the elevator doors closed behind us, he didn't speak, just
stood there with his hands clasped behind his back like he was preparing for an
execution.
"Marcus." My voice came out
hoarser than I intended. "You're starting to really fucking scare me
here."
He looked at me then, and I saw something
in his eyes I'd never seen before: pity. Pure, undiluted pity, the kind you'd
give to a man who'd just been told he had six months to live.
"Alex," he said quietly,
"how much do you trust Elena?"
The question hit me like a physical blow.
"What kind of question is that? She's my wife. Of course I trust
her."
"And Roman?"
"He's my brother. Why are you…"
"Because," Marcus interrupted,
his voice barely above a whisper, "they've been systematically destroying
you for the past six months. And as of yesterday, they've succeeded."
The elevator reached the fortieth floor,
but I couldn't move. The words didn't make sense, couldn't make sense, because
they described a reality that simply didn't exist. Elena loved me. Roman would
die before betraying me. These were the two fundamental truths my entire life
was built on.
"You're wrong," I said
automatically. "Whatever you think you know, you're wrong."
Marcus didn't argue. He just led me down
the hall to his corner office, where folders were spread across his conference
table like evidence at a crime scene. Which, I realized with growing horror,
they essentially were.
"Sit down," he said gently.
"I don't want to sit down. I want you
to explain what the hell you're talking about."
"Alex. Please. Sit down."
Something in his tone made my knees give
out. I collapsed into the leather chair across from his desk, my hands suddenly
shaking so badly I had to clasp them together to make it stop.
Marcus picked up the first folder.
"Three months ago, you gave Elena power of attorney over your personal
accounts while you were in negotiations with Takahashi. Standard procedure for
when you're traveling extensively."
I nodded. We'd done it before, during
other long business trips. Elena needed access to pay household expenses, to
handle any emergencies that might arise. It was practical, sensible, the kind
of thing married couples did for each other all the time.
"She's been using that access to
systematically drain your personal assets," Marcus continued, his voice
clinical now, like he was reading from a medical report. "Small amounts at
first, transferred to accounts I've traced back to shell companies registered
in the Cayman Islands. But in the past two weeks, while you were finalizing the
merger, the transfers became much larger."
He slid a bank statement across the table.
I stared at the numbers, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. My personal
checking account, which should have had close to two million dollars, showed a
balance of $847.
"That's impossible," I
whispered. "There has to be a mistake."
"Your investment portfolio was
liquidated yesterday morning," Marcus said, sliding another document
toward me. "Forty-seven million dollars, converted to cryptocurrency and
transferred out of the country within hours. The authorization came from
Elena's power of attorney."
The room was spinning. I gripped the edge
of the table, trying to anchor myself to something solid, something real.
"She wouldn't. Elena wouldn't do this. There has to be an
explanation."
"There is an explanation,"
Marcus said quietly. "Roman's been helping her."
The second blow was somehow worse than the
first. If Elena betraying me was unthinkable, Roman doing it was physically
impossible. Roman, who'd cried at my wedding. Roman, who still called me when
he had nightmares about the car accident that killed our parents. Roman, who'd
worked eighteen-hour days beside me to build our company from nothing.
"Show me," I said, my voice
barely audible.
The next folder contained screenshots of
text messages, phone records, bank transfers. All of it painting a picture so
devastating I couldn't process it all at once. Elena and Roman, coordinating
transfers. Elena and Roman, planning my financial destruction while I was
halfway around the world, believing I was securing our future.
"The pharmaceutical patents," I
said suddenly, a new horror occurring to me. "The company…"
"Yesterday afternoon, while you were
in your final meeting with Takahashi, Roman filed papers transferring majority
ownership of Kane Industries to a holding company he controls," Marcus
said. "He used the corporate restructuring provisions you signed last
year, the ones designed to protect the company in case something happened to
you."
My mouth went dry. "The merger…"
"The Takahashi merger went through.
But the profits won't be going to you. Legally, you're now a minority
shareholder in your own company. Roman effectively owns everything you've
built."
I stared at him, waiting for the
punchline, for him to tell me this was all some elaborate joke or
misunderstanding. But Marcus wasn't laughing. He was looking at me like I was
already dead.
"There's more," he said softly.
"More?" I couldn't imagine what
could be worse than losing everything I'd spent years building.
He slid a final folder across the table.
"Alex, I'm so sorry."
Inside were photographs. Security camera
footage, timestamped from various dates over the past year. Elena and Roman in
what looked like hotel rooms, restaurants, my own home when I was traveling.
Not just business meetings. Not just friendly conversations between in-laws.
Elena in Roman's arms. Elena kissing
Roman. Elena and Roman in bed together, in what I recognized as the guest room
of our apartment, the room directly across the hall from where I slept when I
was home.
The world didn't just tilt sideways, it
shattered completely.
I don't know how long I sat there, staring
at those images. Time seemed to have stopped functioning normally, stretching
each second into an eternity of comprehension and disbelief. When I finally
looked up, Marcus was watching me with the careful attention of someone
expecting a complete breakdown.
"How long?" I asked.
"We think it started about two years
ago. The financial planning began six months ago, but the personal
relationship..." He trailed off, unwilling to say it out loud.
Two years. Two years of Elena kissing me
goodbye when I left for business trips, then falling into my brother's arms
before my plane had even taken off. Two years of Roman asking about my travel
schedule, ostensibly to coordinate business operations, but actually to plan
his time with my wife. Two years of me thinking I was the luckiest man alive.
"Where are they now?" My voice
sounded strange, like it was coming from somewhere outside my body.
"Elena filed for divorce yesterday
evening. She's claiming irreconcilable differences and asking for half of your
remaining assets." Marcus paused. "Roman's scheduled a board meeting
for this afternoon to announce your removal as CEO due to 'financial
mismanagement and personal instability.'"
"My removal." I laughed, a sound
that came out broken and sharp. "From the company I built. The company I
named after our parents."
"Alex…."
"They think I'm still in Japan,"
I said, suddenly understanding. "They think they have more time to cover
their tracks."
Marcus nodded. "Your flight wasn't
supposed to land until this afternoon. They don't know you came home
early."
I stood up abruptly, the chair scraping
against the floor. The photos scattered as I knocked against the table, images
of my wife and brother's betrayal fluttering to the ground like autumn leaves.
"I need to see them," I said.
"I need to hear this from them."
"Alex, I don't think that's a good
idea. Not yet. You need time to process this, to plan your next move."
But I was already walking toward the door.
I could hear Marcus calling my name, could hear him getting up to follow me,
but everything felt muffled and distant, like I was moving underwater.
The elevator ride down felt like descent
into hell.
I tried my credit card at the taxi stand
outside Marcus's building. Declined. Tried another one. Declined. A third card,
one I kept for emergencies, the one connected to an account that should have
had fifty thousand dollars in it. Declined.
The taxi driver looked at me with growing
impatience as I fumbled through my wallet, finding nothing but useless plastic
and a few crumpled twenty-dollar bills. Enough for a cab ride, but not much
more.
"Seventy-fourth and Park," I
said, climbing into the backseat.
The ride to my building, to what used to
be my building, took forever and no time at all. I kept checking my phone,
hoping for a message from Elena or Roman, some explanation that would make all
of this make sense. But there was nothing except Marcus, calling repeatedly,
probably trying to talk me out of whatever he thought I was about to do.
The Meridian Tower rose sixty floors into
the Manhattan sky, a monument to architectural ambition and obscene wealth. I'd
bought the penthouse five years ago, back when success felt like destiny
instead of cruel irony. Elena had loved it immediately, spinning around in the
empty rooms and talking about all the ways we'd make it home.
Now, standing on the sidewalk looking up
at it, I felt like a stranger.
The doorman I'd exchanged pleasantries
with for five years looked uncomfortable when he saw me approaching. "Mr.
Kane," he said carefully. "I'm sorry, but I have instructions…"
"Instructions?" I interrupted.
"What kind of instructions?"
"From building management, sir. Your
access to the penthouse has been... suspended. Pending resolution of some legal
matters."
Legal matters. Elena's divorce filing,
probably. Or Roman's corporate coup. Maybe both.
"That's my home," I said, though
even as I said it, I wondered if it was true anymore. If Elena had orchestrated
all of this, how long had anything in my life actually belonged to me? "My
name is on the deed."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Kane. I really am.
But I have my orders."
I stood there for maybe ten minutes,
staring up at the building I couldn't enter, at the life I couldn't access, at
the home that was no longer mine. Other residents walked past me into the
lobby, people I'd nodded to in elevators and smiled at in the mailroom, and
none of them met my eyes.
They knew. Somehow, they all knew.
The process server appeared as if from
nowhere, a thin man in a rumpled suit who approached me with the cautious gait
of someone delivering bad news.
"Alexander Kane?"
I turned, already knowing what was coming
but powerless to stop it.
"You've been served," he said,
pressing an envelope into my hands. "Divorce proceedings filed in New York
County. You have thirty days to respond."
The envelope felt heavier than it should
have, weighted with the destruction of everything I'd believed about my life. I
stared at Elena's name on the legal documents, her signature on papers that
would end our marriage, and tried to remember the woman who'd promised to love
me in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, until death do us part.
That's when I heard the first camera
click.
They came from everywhere at once, photographers
with long lenses, reporters with microphones, a small army of media vultures
who'd somehow learned that Alexander Kane, the pharmaceutical mogul, was having
the worst day of his life in public.
"Mr. Kane! How do you respond to
allegations of financial mismanagement?"
"Is it true your wife is filing for
divorce?"
"What's your reaction to being
removed from your own company?"
The questions hit me like physical blows,
each one revealing another layer of humiliation I hadn't even known was coming.
Not only had Elena and Roman destroyed me, but they'd made sure the world would
watch it happen in real time.
I pushed through the crowd of reporters,
my twenty-dollar bills barely enough for another cab ride to nowhere in
particular. Behind me, cameras flashed and voices shouted questions I couldn't
answer because I was still learning the questions myself.
As the taxi pulled away from the Meridian
Tower, I caught a glimpse of myself in the window reflection, a man who looked
like Alexander Kane but felt like a stranger, holding divorce papers and the
shattered remains of a life that had never been as real as I'd thought.
The merger documents were still in my
briefcase, signed and sealed, representing billions of dollars that would now
flow to my brother instead of to me. Twelve hours ago, I'd been taking pictures
of sunrises and texting love messages to my wife.
Now I didn't even know who my wife
actually was.