Chapter 3

For the next three days, I acted completely normal.

Or rather, I made sure Julian couldn't detect a thing.

I was waiting—waiting for him to leave more reckless breadcrumbs, waiting for the perfect moment to deliver a fatal blow.

I cooked his meals, chatted casually, and whenever he tested the waters, I gave him a gentle smile that signaled, "I've moved on."

He genuinely believed I had surrendered.

On the fourth evening, he came home surprisingly early, carrying a bouquet of fresh flowers.

"Chloe, I knew you'd come around." He arranged the flowers in a vase, wearing a smug, triumphant grin.

"I talked to Vanessa. Kept it strictly professional. We're just normal colleagues now. You have nothing to worry about."

I smiled faintly and said nothing.

"By the way," he slipped in casually, "you didn't send that report to HR, did you?"

"No."

He let out a long, theatrical sigh of relief and wrapped an arm around my shoulders.

"I knew it. We're husband and wife, a team."

"Don't worry, I handled everything on Vanessa's end. She won't say a word."

"Once this deal closes, I'm guaranteed a VP promotion and a massive bonus. I'll buy us that luxury house in the suburbs."

I leaned against his shoulder, catching the faint trace of high-end perfume lingering on his collar.

A brand I had never worn.

"Julian," I whispered.

"Yeah?"

"Are you sure you cut things off completely?"

"Of course!" He patted his chest proudly. "Has your husband ever lied to you?"

I lowered my gaze, remaining silent.

He was acting strange tonight. Usually, he kicked off his shoes and threw his briefcase onto the entryway bench. Tonight, he had carried it straight into the bedroom, setting it beside his nightstand like it held crown jewels.

Late that night, after his breathing deepened into heavy snores, I quietly slipped out of bed.

He rolled over, and I froze instantly, holding my breath. When his snoring resumed, I picked up his briefcase.

Without turning on the lights, guided only by the dim glow of my phone screen, I unzipped the bag.

Inside was an encrypted flash drive.

Dimming my laptop screen to minimum brightness, I plugged the drive in. The contents made my blood run cold.

It was the unreleased project proposal I had developed. But under the file metadata, the last modifying user ID had been altered to mine.

The realization hit me like a splash of ice water: he was setting me up.

He assumed that by copying the file from my laptop while I slept, he could frame me for the leak without leaving a trace.

What he didn't realize was that our home router was running a custom network monitor I had set up months ago.

My fingers danced across the keyboard, pulling up the router's connection history. A hidden log stared right back at me:

1:05 AM: Unidentified mobile device connected to Chloe's laptop hotspot; file transferred using Chloe's corporate credentials.

He thought he was weaving a trap, completely unaware that he had just handed me the rope to hang him with.

I took a deep breath, unplugged the flash drive, and slipped it back into his briefcase.

Then, I grabbed screenshots of the router log and archived the USB device mounting history from my laptop.

Next, I fired off a message on WhatsApp to Mark, the Head of Information Security and an old, trusted colleague.

The message was short and direct: "Mark, I need you to pull and freeze an audit log from the backend."

"Someone used my employee credentials to perform an unauthorized file export outside office hours. I need the official server-side verification."

Five minutes later, his reply popped up.

"Log located and locked. 1:05 AM. The hardware MAC address matches Julian's phone."

"This audit trail is airtight. It's solid evidence."

"Keep it strictly between us for now," I typed back.

After a brief pause, he replied:

"Understood."

With everything secured, I slid back under the covers next to Julian.

He rolled over, carelessly throwing an arm across my pregnant belly, muttering something incoherent in his sleep.

I didn't pull away.

I was waiting. Waiting for him to tighten that noose around his own neck.