Chapter 4: The Digital Ghost
I dropped the kids at daycare and drove straight to my corporate office, a glass-and-steel monolith in the financial district. I walked past the reception desk, my spine rigidly straight, completely ignoring the sympathetic glances at my frazzled appearance.
I didn’t go to my desk. I went directly down to the basement, to the windowless kingdom of Corporate Security.
Marcus sat behind a bank of glowing monitors. He was a former private investigator who now handled data security and background checks for our firm. More importantly, I had single-handedly saved his job a year prior when a massive marketing leak was falsely pinned on his department. I proved it was a senior executive’s error. Marcus owed me his professional life.
“Sloan,” he said, swiveling his chair around, his eyebrows knitting together in concern. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Everything okay?”
I closed the heavy acoustic door behind me and locked the deadbolt. The click echoed loudly in the small room.
I walked over to his desk and placed the crumpled receipt for The Obsidian Grand next to his keyboard.
“I need a favor, Marcus. A massive, completely off-the-books favor,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “And if you say no, I will walk out of here and never bring it up again.”
Marcus looked at the receipt, then up at my face. He saw the desperation, the barely contained rage simmering behind my eyes. He slowly pushed his glasses up his nose. “The Obsidian. That’s a high-end spot. What exactly are we looking for?”
“This room. This date. The timeframe is 9:45 AM to 2:15 PM,” I instructed, my voice flat, devoid of emotion. “I need the lobby security footage. I need the hallway footage for the fourth floor. I need to know exactly who walked into Room 402 with my husband.”
Marcus exhaled a long, heavy breath. “Sloan, accessing another business’s internal security feeds… that’s highly illegal. They have encrypted firewalls.”
“I know the head of their IT department, Marcus. His name is David Chen. He consults for our firm on the side,” I said, pulling out a sticky note and writing down a phone number. “Tell him Sloan from Marketing needs to collect on the favor from the Q3 audit. He’ll give you a backdoor access ping. Just get in, pull the timestamps, and get out.”
Marcus stared at the sticky note for a long time. The hum of the servers in the room felt deafening. Finally, he nodded. “Give me forty-eight hours. It takes time to scrub the digital footprints so it doesn’t bounce back to us.”
“Thank you,” I whispered.
The next two days were a masterclass in psychological torture.
I went home. I cooked dinner. I bathed the children. I smiled. I listened to Julian complain about how the chicken was overcooked and how I was letting the house fall apart. I stood in the kitchen, gripping the edge of the granite countertop until my fingers ached, nodding in submission.
“By the way,” Julian announced on Friday night, leaning back in his chair and picking his teeth with a plastic flosser. “My fortieth birthday is next weekend. I want a pool party. Catered. Top shelf liquor. Invite the whole firm, my family, everyone. I need to network if I’m going to get back on top.”
Network. The word made bile rise in my throat.
“A catered party is very expensive, Julian,” I said softly, playing my part. “Our savings are…”
“Figure it out, Sloan,” he snapped, his eyes flashing with irritation. “You’re the big corporate breadwinner, aren’t you? Make it happen. I deserve a celebration. I’ve been under a lot of stress lately.”
“Of course, Julian,” I replied, staring at his smug, entitled face. “I’ll make sure it’s a party you never forget.”
On Monday morning, my desk phone rang. It was a single, short beep. The internal line.
“Check your encrypted email,” Marcus’s voice crackled through the receiver. “Password is your maiden name. Sloan… I’m so sorry.”
He hung up.
My hands shook so violently I could barely type the letters on my keyboard. I opened the encrypted zip file. There were two video files inside.
I clicked the first one. Lobby_Cam_04.
The grainy, black-and-white footage flickered to life. The timestamp read 9:52 AM.
The glass revolving doors of The Obsidian Grand spun. Julian walked in. He was wearing the gray peacoat. He walked to the reception desk, paid in cash—probably from the ATM withdrawal I thought went to groceries—and took a keycard.
He didn’t walk to the elevators. He walked to a secluded seating area behind a massive potted fern and waited.
Four minutes later, the revolving doors spun again.
A woman walked in. She was wearing oversized sunglasses and a silk scarf wrapped around her hair. But I didn’t need to see her face. I recognized the expensive, limited-edition Prada handbag. I recognized the flawless, elegant silhouette. I recognized the exact designer wedges she had worn in my living room just days prior.
Selina.
She walked straight to Julian. He stood up. He didn’t just greet her. He wrapped his hand around the back of her neck, pulled her in, and kissed her with a desperate, animalistic hunger that he hadn’t shown me in half a decade.
Selina melted against him, her hands sliding under his coat.
I felt as if a fault line had cracked open right through my chest, splitting me in two. The air left my lungs in a violent rush. I couldn’t breathe. I slapped my hand over my mouth to stifle the raw, guttural sob that ripped up my throat.
I clicked the second video. Hallway_4thFloor.
Timestamp: 10:04 AM.
The elevator doors opened. They stumbled out, their hands roaming frantically over each other’s bodies. Selina was laughing, her head thrown back, exposing the long curve of her neck. Julian pushed her against the door of Room 402, sliding the keycard into the slot. The green light flashed. He pushed her inside and kicked the heavy wooden door shut behind them.
They didn’t emerge for four hours.
I sat in my office cubicle, the silence of the corporate floor pressing against the glass. The tears didn’t come. The sorrow that I expected to drown me completely evaporated.
In its place rose a monstrous, towering inferno of pure, unadulterated rage.
He had drained my bank accounts. He had destroyed my self-esteem. He had neglected his children. And while I was bleeding myself dry to keep a roof over his head, he was spending my money to rent luxury hotel rooms to screw his brother’s wife.
I closed the laptop. I picked up my cell phone.
I didn’t call Julian. I didn’t call Rowan.
I dialed the number of Evelyn Sterling, the most ruthless, bloodthirsty divorce attorney in the state. She was famously known as “The Architect of Ruin” in our corporate circles. She charged a retainer that would make a grown man weep, but I didn’t care. I would sell my own blood to pay her.
“Sterling Law,” a crisp voice answered.
“My name is Sloan,” I said, my voice cold, steady, and vibrating with lethal intent. “I need an emergency appointment with Ms. Sterling. Today. I have absolute proof of infidelity, financial fraud, and I am ready to burn a man to the ground.”
There was a brief pause on the line. “Ms. Sterling has an opening at two o’clock. Shall I pencil you in?”
“Write it in ink,” I replied.
The trap was about to be set.
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