Chapter 5 - An Unlikely Visitor
The knock came at 8:00 p.m. that evening.
It wasn't Landon. Marcus, the security guard, called up through the house phone first. “Mrs. Vance, there is a young woman at the gate. She says her name is Sloane Bennett. She claims she isn't here to cause trouble, but she insists on speaking with you for five minutes. She says she has something you need to see before Landon’s legal team files their response tomorrow.”
I stood in the kitchen, a steaming mug of peppermint tea between my palms. Every instinct honed by twelve years of caution screamed at me to tell Marcus to send her away, to have her escorted off the road.
“Does she look agitated, Marcus?” I asked.
“She looks like she’s been crying for twelve hours, ma'am. And she’s alone. She took a rideshare here.”
I closed my eyes, took a slow, deep breath, and set the mug down on the marble island. “Let her through the pedestrian gate. Escort her to the front patio. Do not let her inside the house.”
Five minutes later, I walked out onto the stone patio overlooking the dark Pacific horizon. The marine layer was rolling in, cold and damp, bringing the smell of kelp and salt air.
Sloane was standing near the outdoor fireplace, clutching a black leather shoulder bag against her chest like a shield. She looked unrecognizable from the glamorous, confident woman who had smirked across the terrace at Azure Palms on Saturday night. Her eyes were swollen, red-rimmed, and sunken; her hair was pulled back into a hasty, messy ponytail; and she was wearing an oversized trench coat that seemed two sizes too big for her slight frame.
When she heard my footsteps, she whipped around, her whole body tensing as if she expected me to strike her.
I stopped ten feet away, keeping my arms crossed over my chest. Marcus remained standing twenty yards back near the garden path, silent and watchful.
“You have five minutes, Sloane,” I said. My voice was colder than the ocean wind. “Choose your words carefully.”
Sloane swallowed hard, her throat bobbing. She didn't offer a snide remark, nor did she look at me with defiance. Instead, she reached into her bag, pulled out a thick, plastic-bound legal binder, and set it down on the outdoor teak table between us.
“I didn't come here to ask for your forgiveness,” Sloane said, her voice shaking slightly, though she fought to keep it level. “I know what I am to you. I’m the woman who slept with your husband. I know there’s nothing I can say that won't make you hate me, and you have every right to.”
“I don't hate you, Sloane,” I said evenly. “Hate requires an emotional investment. To me, you are simply the symptom of a disease my husband was hiding. Why are you here?”
Sloane flinched at the word *symptom*, but she nodded, accepting the cut. “He fired me today at eleven o’clock. Right before the process server walked into the lobby.”
“I know.”
“He told me I was a liability,” she whispered, her eyes filling with bitter tears. “He told me that I threw myself at him, that I blackmailed him into the Phoenix trip, and that if I said a single word to Arthur Sterling, he would use the firm’s legal retainers to sue me for breach of non-disclosure and corporate defamation. He told me he would ruin my career before it even started.”
“That sounds like Landon,” I murmured. “He is exceptionally talented at convincing women that his crimes are their fault.”
Sloane looked up at me, genuine bewilderment in her eyes. “Did you know he had a secondary LLC registered in Delaware? *Vance Horizon Holdings*?”
My heart gave a sudden, hard thud against my ribs. “What?”
“He registered it fourteen months ago,” Sloane said, opening the binder and flipping through pages covered in corporate filings, tax identification numbers, and banking routing codes. “He told me he was building an independent consultancy firm—that he was preparing to leave Sterling & Vance, take the highest-billing clients, and launch a boutique agency in Newport Beach. He told me I was going to be the managing partner.”
She pushed the binder toward me.
“Harper... he wasn't just planning on leaving Sterling & Vance. He was transferring assets out of your joint accounts into that Delaware entity for over a year. He told me you were legally incapacitated by severe clinical depression, that you hadn't left the house in two years, and that he was moving funds into a trust to ensure your ‘medical care’ before filing for an uncontested dissolution.”
A cold, electrical shock rippled through my veins.
*Clinically depressed. Legally incapacitated.*
While I was hosting dinner parties for his associates, managing the household, running my boutique consulting firm, and kissing him goodnight, Landon was fabricating a narrative of a shattered, broken wife to justify draining our marital estate into a Delaware shell company.
“Why are you giving this to me?” I asked, looking from the documents up to her pale, haunted face. “If you gave this to Arthur Sterling, you could have protected your severance.”
“Arthur fired Landon today at 2:30,” Sloane said with a hollow laugh. “The board voted unanimously to strip him of his shares for ethical misconduct and financial fraud. Arthur offered me a settlement package if I signed a non-disclosure agreement and walked away quietly.”
“Then why come here?”
Sloane looked down at her hands, her fingers twisting the strap of her bag. “Because when you stood at that table in Scottsdale... you didn't scream at me. You didn't call me names. You looked at me like I was a fool. And you were right. I was arrogant, and I thought I was special. I thought I was the brilliant, beautiful partner he had been waiting for. But when he fired me this morning... the look in his eyes was the exact same look he gave you on that terrace. Complete, cold disposal.”
She looked back up at me, tears spilling freely down her cheeks now.
“He didn't love me, Harper. And he didn't love you. Landon only loves what people can give him. I’m leaving California tomorrow. I’m moving back to Chicago to stay with my sister. But I wasn't going to let him keep that money while he leaves you with the ashes of twelve years.”
I stared at the binder on the table. The wind whipped a stray lock of hair across my forehead.
“You think this redeems you?” I asked quietly.
“No,” Sloane said softly, shaking her head. “Nothing redeems me. But at least it proves I wasn't the only one he lied to.”
She turned and began walking back down the path toward the pedestrian gate.
“Sloane,” I called out.
She paused, looking back over her shoulder in the dim garden light.
“Don't let another man build a cage for you and call it a corner office,” I said.
May you like
Sloane stood still for a moment, her shoulders rising and falling on a ragged breath. She gave a single, tight nod, and then disappeared into the night.
---
