Chapter 4 - Face to Face with Paige
The message arrived at 9:00 AM on Monday morning through an unfamiliar Instagram account. It was a single paragraph, blunt and stripped of the theatrical innocence Paige had used on the phone:
*I need to talk to you. Not with lawyers. Not with Evan. Just you. I’m at the Amélie’s in NoDa. If you want the truth about what Evan promised me—and what he’s been planning for you—you’ll come.*
Megan begged me not to go. She paced the kitchen of her townhouse, waving a spatula like a weapon. "It’s a trap, Claire! She’s probably recording it for Evan’s legal team. Or she’s going to cause a scene and try to make you look like the aggressor!"
"Marcus already filed the formal petition for divorce and an emergency asset freeze on Friday," I said, pulling on a simple beige trench coat. "Evan’s accounts are locked. The firm placed him on administrative leave following the gala. If Paige wants to talk, it’s not because she’s winning. It’s because she’s drowning."
NoDa was damp and overcast when I arrived. The eclectic arts district was quiet on a Monday morning, the brick sidewalks slick with fallen leaves. Inside the French bakery, the air was warm with the scent of melted butter, espresso, and chocolate. The quirky, mismatched chandeliers and velvet chairs gave the space a chaotic, bohemian charm that felt completely alien to the sterile corporate world Evan had inhabited.
I found Paige sitting in a dark corner booth near the back, partially hidden behind a large potted palm.
She looked devastatingly different from the polished, poised assistant who had stood beside Evan at the gala. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen behind heavy dark circles. She wore an oversized gray hoodie, her hair hastily scraped into a messy bun, her hands clutching a paper cup of coffee like it was a life preserver. She looked every bit her twenty-nine years—young, terrified, and out of her depth.
I walked over and sat down on the wooden chair directly across from her. I didn't order coffee. I didn't smile. I placed my black leather bag on the table and waited.
For nearly a full minute, Paige didn't look up. She stared into the dark surface of her coffee, her thumbs tracing the rim of the cup.
"He told me you were cold," she said finally, her voice barely louder than a whisper. "He told me that you hadn't touched him in over a year. He said you were like a roommate who spent his money and criticized his ambitions."
"Evan tells whatever story makes him the victim," I said evenly. "Is that why you asked me here? To compare notes on his creative writing?"
Paige flinched, pulling her shoulders tighter into the hoodie. She looked up, and for the first time, I saw the raw, humiliating terror in her eyes.
"The firm fired me this morning," she said.
A single tear spilled over her lower lid, tracing a clean path through her foundation.
"Pendelton called me into his office at eight o'clock," she continued, her voice trembling. "They had internal audit reports. Evan had been signing off on my mileage reimbursements for six months, claiming I was driving to regional logistics hubs when I was really meeting him at the lake house or running errands for his personal projects. They said it was gross misconduct and misappropriation of firm funds. They escorted me out of the building with a security guard."
I felt no satisfaction hearing it. Only a dull, heavy confirmation of how deep the rot had spread.
"Evan didn't defend you?" I asked.
Paige let out a sound that was half-sob, half-laugh—hollow and bitter. "Defend me? He wouldn't even look at me in the hallway. When I texted him from the parking lot, he told me that I was a liability. He told me that his lawyer advised him to sever all contact with me until the divorce proceedings are over. He said... he said that if I tried to contact him again, he’d consider it harassment."
She dropped her face into her hands, her shoulders shaking as she began to weep openly. A couple sitting three tables away glanced over with mild concern before looking back at their pastries.
"I gave up everything for him, Claire," she sobbed into her fingers. "He told me he was leaving you in January! He said he was waiting until the bonus distributions were finalized so you wouldn't get half of his firm equity. He told me he was going to buy out the partner share in the South End loft so we could move in together once my mother's treatment was stable!"
I sat entirely still, the words echoing in my mind with clinical clarity.
*Waiting until the bonus distributions were finalized.*
Evan hadn't just been having an affair. He had been calculating the financial timing of our destruction for nearly a year. He had planned to manipulate our marital estate, shelter his year-end equity bonus, and blindside me after the holidays with a pre-packaged settlement that would leave me with pennies while he transitioned seamlessly into a new life with his assistant.
"Why are you telling me this, Paige?" I asked, keeping my voice firm, refusing to be drawn into her emotional collapse.
She wiped her nose with a napkin, her face blotchy and red. "Because he’s going to do the same thing to you that he just did to me. He’s going to throw you away and pretend he was the innocent party all along."
She reached into her canvas tote bag beneath the table and pulled out a thick, black leather-bound planner. She slid it across the wooden table toward me.
"What is this?" I asked.
"It’s his personal calendar," Paige said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "The one he kept locked in his desk drawer at the office. When security gave me fifteen minutes to pack my belongings, the guard was distracted looking at my box. I had the spare key to his desk. I took it."
I opened the planner.
The pages were filled with Evan’s neat, architectural handwriting. But these weren't corporate appointments. There were dates, account numbers, and handwritten notes detailing offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands, trust entities registered under his brother's name in Delaware, and specific dates where he had liquidated portions of our joint mutual funds under the guise of 'market rebalancing.'
On the final page, dated three weeks ago, was a note in red ink:
*Settlement strategy: Claire gets the house (underwater mortgage assessment pending), keeps older vehicle. Offer $4k/month transitional alimony for 18 months in exchange for total waiver of firm equity and pension rights. Frame it as generous to avoid forensic audit.*
The room seemed to tilt slightly on its axis. The sheer, sociopathic calculation of it was breathtaking. While I had been making him chicken soup when he had a cold, while I had been folding his laundry and planning our tenth anniversary trip to Italy, he had been sitting at his mahogany desk drafting a financial execution order for my life.
I looked up at Paige. "Why give this to me? If the firm fired you, you could use this to extort him."
"With what money?" she whispered hopelessly. "I have seven hundred dollars in my checking account. My mother’s hospital bills are over eighty thousand dollars, and the insurance company is already disputing the ICU coverage. Evan told me he would pay for her supplemental care. Now he won't even answer my calls. He used me, Claire. He used me to feel powerful and young, and the second the bill came due, he threw me to the wolves."
I closed the leather planner with a quiet, decisive thud.
"He didn't just throw you to the wolves, Paige," I said, sliding the book into my purse. "He threw himself into the trap. And he handed me the key."
I stood up from the table. Paige looked up at me, her eyes pleading, desperate for some kind of absolution, some word of comfort or shared sisterhood in our mutual betrayal.
I offered her none.
"You knew he was married, Paige," I said, looking down at her without anger, but without pity. "You sat in that hospital room for ten days knowing that every hour he spent with you was stolen from another woman's life. You didn't care about my pain until his cruelty touched you."
She flinched as if I had struck her.
"I won't let him ruin you financially," I added quietly. "My attorney will ensure that the firm's HR department reviews Evan's coercive position as your direct supervisor. You were wrong, Paige, but he was in power. That distinction matters legally. But as far as you and I are concerned? We are done."
May you like
I turned and walked out of the bakery into the cool Charlotte morning, clutching my purse to my side. The weight of the leather planner felt heavy against my ribs, but for the first time since this nightmare began, the ground beneath my feet felt entirely solid.
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