Chapter 2 - The Wife They Thought Had Stopped Counting
Victoria came downstairs seventeen minutes later wearing a silk robe and an expression of careful confusion.
By then Erin had locked herself in the nursery with Noah.
Ryan stood outside the door.
“You took company property.”
Erin held Noah against her shoulder.
“You brought it into our house.”
“It's confidential.”
“Then call your lawyer.”
Silence.
Erin looked down at the sleeping baby.
“Or call the police and explain why you're trying to recover an audit file after shoving your wife into a kitchen counter.”
Ryan moved away from the door.
He did not call anyone.
That mattered.
Erin had not always been the exhausted woman Ryan now treated like household staff.
Before marrying him, she had been a senior forensic accountant at a Baltimore consulting firm.
She could reconstruct money trails from incomplete vendor ledgers, expense reports, payroll records, and the small inconsistencies executives assumed nobody would notice.
When Ryan's father died three years into their marriage, Ryan became chief financial officer of Mercer Biomedical Distribution, the privately held company his parents had built outside Bethesda, Maryland.
Victoria remained board chair.
Ryan asked Erin to leave consulting.
At first it was temporary.
His father was dead. The company needed him. Victoria was grieving. Their house needed managing.
Then temporary became two years.
By the time Erin became pregnant with Noah, Ryan had begun introducing her at company dinners as “the one who keeps me fed.”
Erin laughed the first few times.
Eventually she stopped.
She carried the black file downstairs after sunrise.
Victoria was sitting at the breakfast table.
Her eyes went directly to the folder.
“Where did you get that?”
Erin noticed she did not ask what was inside.
“Ryan left it downstairs.”
Victoria looked at her son.
“I thought that account was closed.”
Ryan's head turned sharply.
Victoria immediately corrected herself.
“I mean the audit issue.”
Erin said nothing.
Ryan stepped between them.
“Mom, go back upstairs.”
Erin almost smiled.
Victoria Mercer was sixty-four, had controlled a company with more than four hundred employees after her husband's death, and had never gone anywhere because her son told her to.
Yet she obeyed.
Before leaving, she looked at Noah.
Not Erin.
“Whatever you think you saw,” she said, “don't make decisions that hurt that child.”
Erin felt something colder than anger.
“What decision did you make for him?”
Victoria walked away.
Erin left the house an hour later with Noah, a diaper bag, three changes of clothing, her laptop, and the audit file.
Ryan did not stop her.
He stood in the foyer holding the divorce papers.
“My attorney will contact you.”
Erin opened the front door.
“Good.”
She looked at the folder beneath her arm.
“Mine will want to know why you were planning a divorce before your auditors discovered money under your mother's name.”
Ryan stared at her.
May you like
Erin had guessed.
His reaction told her the guess had landed somewhere dangerous.
