Chapter 2 - The Grieving Widow’s Mask
The next four days were a blur of black dresses, suffocating flowers, and whispered condolences.
Garrett played his part perfectly.
To the outside world, he was the shattered father. He stood by the casket, accepting handshakes from Sterling Global executives, wiping away solitary, perfectly timed tears.
I watched him from behind my dark veil.
I watched him accept comforting pats on the shoulder from the very colleagues he had been scheming with.
He thought I was broken. He thought the grief had rendered me mute, helpless, and completely dependent on him.
He was half right.
I was broken. But the sharp edges of my broken heart were slowly forging into a weapon.
On the night of the funeral, Garrett came into the master bedroom. He poured himself a glass of expensive scotch.
“Claire,” he said, his voice dripping with practiced empathy. “We have to be strong. For Ethan. And… for the company. Your father is stepping down next month. He needs me to take the CEO position now more than ever.”
I stared at him.
My son wasn’t even in the ground for twenty-four hours, and Garrett was thinking about the corner office.
“You’re right,” I said softly, staring blankly at the wall. “Dad needs you.”
Garrett let out a breath of relief, coming over to massage my shoulders. I fought every instinct in my body to scream, to stab him with the letter opener on the desk.
Instead, I stayed completely still.
“We’ll get through this, Claire,” he whispered.
“Yes,” I replied, my voice hollow. “We will.”
The moment he left for his "grief counseling" session the next morning, I drove straight to my father’s estate.
My father was waiting in his study, a thick manila folder resting on his mahogany desk.
“I didn’t want to show you this yet,” my father said gently. “But you need to know.”
I opened the folder.
It wasn’t just photos of Garrett and Melissa entering luxury hotels.
It was bank statements. Offshore accounts. Shell companies.
“He hasn’t just been cheating on you, Claire,” my father said, his voice turning into ice. “He’s been embezzling from Sterling Global. For over a year. He’s been using my company’s money to buy his mistress penthouses, cars, and jewelry.”
I looked at the dates on the transfers.
One of the largest withdrawals was made at 11:30 p.m. on the night Ethan died.
Seventeen minutes before my son took his last breath.
I closed the folder. My hands stopped shaking.
“Don’t fire him, Dad.”
My father raised an eyebrow. “Claire, I can have him arrested by noon.”
“No,” I said, looking out the window at the gray sky. “Prison is too good for him right now. He wants the CEO seat. He wants the empire.”
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I turned back to my father.
“Let’s give it to him. Let’s give him everything he’s ever wanted. And then, we cut the floor out from under him.”
