Before I went to sleep that night, I ran my hand down Logan’s back and touched the tiny wound he had guarded for nearly a week as if it were open-heart surgery. What stopped me cold wasn’t the fact that the pimple was gone. It was the little brown heart painted around the spot in iodine—and the neat handwritten name beside it: Bianca. “Babe, did you pop that thing on your back yourself?” I asked.
Chapter 2
By the time I got home, the auction clip had gone viral. Maya was waiting in my kitchen with a laptop, a bottle of wine, and the expression she wore whenever someone had finally confirmed her worst opinion of them.
“You’re going to want to hear this,” she said.
She had hired an investigator experienced in corporate forensics. Logan had disabled the visible dash-cam recordings, but he hadn’t realized the system’s audio backup was still syncing to a cloud folder linked to our family account.
Maya pressed play.
Logan’s voice came through the speakers.
“Leave it alone. It hurts.”
Then Bianca laughed.
“Let me get it. I brought the first-aid kit.”
A moment later, Logan hissed.
Bianca giggled again.
“I’m drawing a heart around it. And I’m signing my name. That way, when you go home, you’re still wearing my mark.”
Logan laughed.
“If Chloe sees it, she’ll kill me.”
“Let her. She doesn’t appreciate you. She’s a sick, blind workaholic.”
Maya stopped the recording.
I looked down at my hands.
Six months earlier, before my transplant surgery, I had needed help walking through my own home. I counted steps from the bed to the bathroom. I memorized the edges of furniture. Some mornings I woke terrified that darkness might be permanent.
Logan had promised I was safe with him.
“There’s something worse,” Maya said.
I looked at her.
“Bianca 3.18.”
“I assumed March eighteenth was her birthday.”
“It isn’t. Her birthday is in October.”
My stomach tightened.
March eighteenth.
The date of my surgery.
The day I had been placed under anesthesia while doctors tried to save my sight.
Logan had told me he couldn’t sit in the waiting room because the stress was overwhelming. He said he needed to go downstairs to the hospital chapel and pray.
Maya’s expression softened.
“According to the messages and location records, March eighteenth is when the affair began.”
I did not cry.
Some pain is so clean it cauterizes itself.
“What else?”
Maya opened another file.
The Frosted Cup wasn’t really Bianca’s business. Logan had helped establish the LLC and quietly arranged a corporate “employee wellness” contract through Dreamscape that guaranteed the café $10,000 each month for catering and gift-card services.
“Our company is keeping her café alive,” I said.
“And there are questionable merchandise transfers too.”
I thought of Bianca’s wall of rare collectibles.
Then I thought about the auction.
“How is Logan going to get $300,000 by Friday?”
Maya gave me a long look.
“He doesn’t have it.”
“He’ll try to take it from Dreamscape.”
“You sound certain.”
“I know him.”
I stood and walked toward the window.
“He’s embarrassed. Bianca is watching him. Half the city just watched him promise her that money. He would rather steal than admit he can’t provide it.”
Maya studied my face.
“So we stop him.”
“No.”
She frowned.
I turned back.
“We let him decide what kind of man he wants to be when he thinks no one can see him.”
At Dreamscape the next morning, I met privately with Sarah, our head of HR, and our internal legal counsel. I explained that Logan might attempt a major unauthorized transfer and instructed accounting to flag anything above his approval limit.
We would not permit company money to leave.
But we also would not interfere before we knew what he intended to do.
For two days, Logan stayed behind his office door.
By Thursday afternoon, Sarah called me.
“He submitted an invoice.”
“How much?”
“Three hundred fifteen thousand.”
“For what?”
“A marketing expansion contract with Nova Branding Solutions.”
The company had been formed the previous day.
Its owner was Bianca Moreno.
Logan had created an invoice for $315,000, routed it through Dreamscape’s fourth-quarter advertising budget, then used the digital-signature credentials I had once authorized him to use for minor approvals while I was recovering.
The internal system intercepted the payment before it could leave.
Logan believed it had gone through.
That night, he finally came home.
I was reading in the living room when he walked in smelling of espresso and stale sweat.
“You made your point,” he said. “You humiliated me in front of everybody.”
“I didn’t bid on coffee I couldn’t afford.”
“You froze my card.”
“Yes.”
“You treat me like a child living on an allowance. I’m a vice president of Dreamscape. I helped build that company.”
I closed my book.
“When we met, you were a middle manager at a shipping company. I hired you. I promoted you. I trusted you.”
His jaw tightened.
“You’ve always needed to remind me that everything belongs to you.”
“No. I needed to believe something belonged to us.”
He laughed bitterly.
“You’re cold, Chloe. You’ve become a machine. Bianca needs me. She respects me.”
“She respects access.”
“You know nothing about her.”
“I know my company pays her rent.”
That hit him.
I leaned back.
“Did you find the money for the auction?”
A slow smile spread across his face.
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“A private investor believes in her expansion plan. The transfer clears tomorrow morning.”
For the first time all evening, I smiled sincerely.
“I’m glad.”
He looked unsettled.
“Glad?”
“I hope everything works out exactly the way you deserve.”
He stared at me.
“We’re finished. I’ll have an attorney call you. I want half the house, half the company, and support.”
“We’ll discuss it tomorrow.”
Friday morning at ten, every Dreamscape board member, senior executive, attorney, and finance officer sat around the conference table.
Logan arrived five minutes late carrying a Frosted Cup coffee.
He looked almost cheerful.
“What’s the emergency?” he asked. “Did somebody forget to order printer paper?”
I stood.
Behind me, the presentation screen lit up.
“Yesterday, an unauthorized $315,000 transfer was initiated from our advertising budget to Nova Branding Solutions.”
Logan’s coffee stopped halfway to his mouth.
I displayed the authorization record.
“The request came from Logan Hayes’s corporate account and used my digital signature without authorization.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he snapped. “You gave me that signature.”
“For routine approvals during my medical leave. Not for a six-figure transfer to a shell company.”
The next screen showed Nova Branding’s registration.
Owner: Bianca Moreno.
No one spoke.
Then I displayed the existing corporate payments to The Frosted Cup.
Over the previous six months, Logan had directed more than $80,000 in questionable company spending toward Bianca’s business through inflated catering bills, gift-card purchases, and merchandise transfers.
Logan stood.
“This is personal. She’s doing this because she’s jealous.”
One of the older board members looked at him with disgust.
“No,” he said. “She’s doing this because you used company money.”
Logan turned toward me.
“You set me up.”
“I protected the company. You created the invoice.”
His face changed as he finally understood.
“The transfer,” he whispered.
“Never left Dreamscape.”
“No.”
I checked my watch.
“It’s 10:17. The auction payment deadline is noon.”
Logan lunged toward the table.
Two security officers stepped through the door.
“Chloe, please. Bianca will be sued.”
“She made the bid.”
“You know she can’t pay.”
“That was my question at the auction.”
He looked around the room as if searching for one person willing to rescue him.
I addressed the board.
“I move that Logan Hayes be terminated for cause, effective immediately, and that all evidence be referred to law enforcement.”
“Seconded,” someone said.
The vote was unanimous.
Logan began to cry.
“Chloe. We’ve been married five years.”
I walked close enough that only he could hear me.
“March eighteenth.”
His face went blank.
“You remember that date, don’t you?”
He swallowed.
“I was lying on an operating table wondering whether I would ever see clearly again. You were with Bianca.”
“Chloe—”
“She drew a heart on your back because she wanted me to find her mark.”
His mouth opened, but nothing came out.
I stepped away.
“I found it.”
