My Husband Said He Was Stuck At Work On The Night Of Our Anniversary Dinner

Renata opened a second folder in front of me. “For the past fourteen months, your husband has been moving money out of his firm through accounts opened in your name,” she said quietly. “Nearly one point four million dollars. If we hadn’t caught it, every one of those transfers would have pointed directly at you.” I couldn’t breathe. My signature was on pages I had never seen.

Across the room, an officer was reading Damien his rights while the blonde woman backed away from the booth, clutching her stomach. Julian leaned toward me. “Show her the last one,” he told Renata. She slid a single page onto my tablecloth. A life insurance policy on me, worth two million dollars, issued last month. I read the beneficiary’s name twice. It wasn’t Damien. It was the pregnant woman in the booth.

Adrian Vale
Adrian Vale studied English literature. He is a novelist. He writes atmospheric literary fiction, quiet, character-driven stories about people who drift out of their own lives and the strange, lingering things that find them afterward.

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