Chapter 5
But the agent continued.
“And there’s something else you should know.”
He turned a tablet toward Anne.
On the screen was a scanned document.
Her signature.
Or what was supposed to be her signature.
The blood drained from her face.
Lucas had forged Anne’s approval on several documents tied to the Denver deal. Not just business recommendations. Liability waivers. Vendor certifications. Financial attestations.
If the deal had gone through, and the fraud had surfaced later, **Anne could have been destroyed with him**.
Her career.
Her name.
Her freedom.
Everything.
Anne looked at Lucas, and the last piece of her love died quietly.
“You weren’t just cheating on me,” she whispered. “You were setting me up.”
Lucas’s face twisted. “I was going to fix it.”
“No,” Anne said. “You were going to leave me holding the knife.”
Felicia backed away from him as if he were contagious.
Then came the twist Anne never saw coming.
Agent Cross looked at Felicia. “Ms. Warren, thank you for cooperating.”
Anne turned sharply.
Felicia’s tears vanished.
The terrified secretary straightened her cream coat, wiped beneath one eye, and exhaled shakily.
Lucas stared at her. “Felicia?”
Felicia looked at Anne, then at the agents.
“I’m sorry,” she said, but not to Lucas.
To Anne.
Anne couldn’t speak.
Felicia reached into her handbag and removed a small recording device.
“I found the forged documents two months ago,” she said quietly. “Lucas told me if I exposed him, he’d blame everything on Anne. So I contacted investigators.”
Lucas lunged forward, but an agent caught his arm.
“You planned this?” Lucas shouted.
Felicia’s face trembled, but her voice held. “No, Lucas. You planned it. I just stopped you.”
Anne stared at the woman she had believed was her replacement.
Felicia swallowed. “I knew he’d only risk traveling with me once the Denver deal was close. I didn’t know Anne would be on the flight. But when she stood up…” Her eyes filled again. “I realized she deserved to know the truth before he destroyed her.”
Lucas was led away shouting Anne’s name.
This time, she did not turn around.
Six months later, Anne stood in a Denver boardroom beneath a wall of glass overlooking the city. The supplier board had cleared her name completely. Lucas’s company collapsed under investigation. Lucas pleaded guilty to fraud, forgery, and conspiracy.
Felicia testified against him.
And Anne Perry, the wife he had called insecure, became the woman who rebuilt the entire logistics division from the wreckage he left behind.
The final contract was awarded to Anne’s company directly.
On the day she signed it, Richard Vale smiled and said, “You saved us from a disaster.”
Anne looked at the pen in her hand, then at the skyline beyond the glass.
“No,” she said softly. “I think the disaster saved me.”
That evening, she removed her wedding ring for the last time.
She did not cry.
She placed it in the bottom drawer of her desk, beside the printed copy of Lucas’s final message from prison.
**I still love you.**
Anne had read it once.
Then she wrote three words beneath it in black ink.
**I love me.**
May you like
And for the first time in years, when she looked at her reflection in the darkened window, she did not see the woman Lucas had betrayed.
She saw the woman he had failed to destroy.
