Chapter 6 - The Parasite’s Instinct
When a man who has built his life on stolen foundations suddenly finds the ground collapsing beneath him, his first instinct is never to fix the damage—it is to find someone else to pay the cost.
Derek didn't go to a lawyer after he left my porch. He went straight to Christine’s high-rise apartment in South Loop—the sunlit, two-bedroom corner unit that my mother’s stolen inheritance money had been paying the twelve-thousand-dollar-a-month rent on for the past year.
I knew this because I had hired a private investigator named Frank—a retired Chicago police detective with a sour face and a camera equipped with a lens long enough to read a text message from across a street.
Frank’s video feed was streaming directly to my laptop as I sat in my warm living room, drinking tea in my old pale blue robe—the one I had retrieved from the master bedroom hamper and thoroughly washed twice with bleach.
The camera showed Derek bursting into Christine’s apartment.
He looked wild, frantic, his coat flapping open as he paced across her polished hardwood floors. Christine was standing near her kitchen island, wearing a silk robe—a brand-new one, expensive, pink silk—holding a glass of white wine.
Through the parabolic microphone Frank had aimed at her top-floor balcony window, the audio came through with terrifying, crystal-clear intimacy.
"She knows, Christine!" Derek’s voice was high, sharp, strained to the breaking point. "She has the Silver Birch statements! She has the escrow transfers from Harbor Pointe! She gave me twenty-four hours to sign over everything or she’s going to the prosecutors!"
Christine didn't drop her wine glass. She didn't gasp.
She took a slow, deliberate sip, set the glass down on the quartz counter, and looked at Derek with a strange, cold detachment that I recognized instantly.
It was the same look she had given me at the top of my stairs three days ago.
"What do you mean she has the statements?" Christine asked, her voice calm, almost bored. "Those were encrypted files on my personal laptop."
"I don't know how she got them!" Derek shouted, grabbing his head with both hands. "She’s an editor! She spends all day digging through documents! We were stupid, Christine! We underestimated her! We need to pull every cent out of the Delaware account right now, transfer it to an offshore account in Cayman, and pay off her civil demands before—"
"We?" Christine interrupted softly.
Derek froze. His hands slowly fell from his head. "What?"
Christine folded her arms across her chest, leaning back against her pristine kitchen counter.
"There is no 'we' in Silver Birch, Derek," she said, her tone smooth and flat as marble. "Silver Birch is a consulting firm. I provided advisory services for your firm's market expansion. Every payment I received was authorized by you, as senior project director. If you mismanaged your firm’s escrow accounts to pay my consulting fees, that’s an internal compliance issue between you and your partners."
Derek stared at her, his face turning an unhealthy, blotchy purple. "Are you out of your mind?! That money was used to buy this apartment! It paid for your lease! It paid for your car! I did all of it for you!"
"You did it to impress me," Christine corrected him, her voice cutting like glass. "Because you wanted a younger, prettier woman on your arm to show off to your golf buddies. You told me you were a millionaire, Derek. You told me your wife was a penniless anchor holding you back from real wealth."
She stepped closer to him, her eyes narrowing into cold, predatory slits.
"It turns out you were the anchor," she said softly. "You don't have money. You have debt, a fraud charge hanging over your head, and a wife who just wiped the floor with you. And now you want me to give back the money I earned just to save your skin?"
"I gave you everything!" Derek screamed, lunging toward her.
Before he could lay a hand on her, the door to Christine’s master bedroom opened.
A man stepped out.
He was tall, broad, fiftyish, with slicked-back grey hair and a bespoke tailored suit that oozed money.
Marcus Vance.
Derek’s real estate attorney. The man from his golf club who had drafted our original trust documents.
Derek stopped dead in his tracks, his breath hitching in his throat. "Marcus...? What... what are you doing here?"
Marcus didn't look flustered. He walked over to the kitchen island, picked up Christine’s wine glass, took a sip, and looked down at Derek with mild, pitying contempt.
"You're a very sloppy manager, Derek," Marcus said smoothly. "Christine called me three hours ago when the sheriff’s deputies served you. She realized very quickly that you were about to drag her down into your sinking ship. So we’ve made alternative arrangements."
"Alternative arrangements...?" Derek whispered, looking between his best friend's lawyer and his mistress.
"Silver Birch has retained my firm for corporate asset protection," Marcus said. "And as of forty-five minutes ago, Christine has signed over all consulting documentation to my office. If you try to touch those accounts, Derek, I will personally file an injunction against you for corporate extortion."
May you like
Marcus walked over to the apartment door, opened it, and gestured toward the hallway.
"You should leave now," Marcus said quietly. "You have a settlement meeting with your wife tomorrow morning. I suggest you sign whatever she gives you. Because if she goes to the State's Attorney... Christine and I will be the state's primary witnesses."
