Chapter 3

Memories flooded back, like ice water dumped over my head.

A year ago, the first time I helped him move money, he said it was just for three days.

Three days later, the money still hadn’t come back, and he said the other side was dragging its feet.

A week later, he said to wait a little longer.

A month later, he said that transaction had gone wrong and asked me to help him move another batch of money to plug the hole.

I asked him how big the hole was, and he said five million.

I asked who the five million was going to, and he said it was for a new project.

I asked what the new project was, and he stammered that it was still being discussed.

I should have been suspicious then.

But I wasn’t.

Because I trusted him.

For three years of marriage, I quit my job and worked full-time helping him manage the company accounts.

He said a couple running a business together needed trust, so I changed the password for the bank token to his birthday.

He said it was safer to keep the financial seal in his safe, so I gave it to him.

He said the outside books needed to look better and asked me to make some “adjustments,” so I did.

I did that for three years.

In those three years, the company’s annual revenue grew from five million to twenty million.

In those three years, the total amount of transfers I handled exceeded thirty million.

In those three years, I never took a single paycheck, because he said, “Aren’t all the money at home yours anyway?”

Until three months ago, when I found out there wasn’t even ten thousand left in my own account.

All the money was in the company accounts.

All the money was in his hands.

And the woman outside had been living in a villa, driving a BMW, using money I had helped him earn.

I went to confront him, and he said, “Lily, stop making a scene. She’s pregnant. I have to take responsibility.”

I asked him if he took responsibility when I was pregnant too.

He froze and said, “When were you pregnant?”

I said two years ago, then I lost it, because I had been working nonstop on that three-million transfer you made me handle, and I ended up in the hospital from exhaustion, and the baby was gone.

He looked at me and said, “That’s all in the past.”

In the past.

One sentence from him turned the child I lost into something he could just brush aside.

That day I walked out of his company, stood by the road, and cried for ten minutes.

Then I wiped my tears, hailed a cab, and went to a law office.