Chapter 6
THIS IS MINE
After slipping into the building behind someone on their way out to walk their dog, I make my way up to the condo. The door is cracked open. An inch, maybe two—warm light spilling into the hallway, music playing low inside, like you do when you’re expecting someone.
My hand is on the door before my brain catches up. I push it open and step inside and the concrete floor is cool through my shoes and the air smells like vanilla candle and expensive perfume and my stomach folds in half.
A woman comes around the corner from the kitchen—silk robe, bare feet, wine glass in hand. Dark hair past her shoulders, loose and shining. Her face is already softening into a smile, mouth opening, and the single word that comes out splits me down the center.
“Randall?”
“No.” My voice sounds like someone else’s. “His wife.”
The wine glass stops halfway to her lips. Her eyes go wide and her body locks and she is staring at me with the blank shock of a reality that won’t click into focus.
She is beautiful. The thought hits me like a fist to the sternum.
Up close—not on a phone screen, not in a curated grid—she is stunning.
Mid-twenties, cheekbones that could cut glass, a body that hasn’t carried six years of late-night wine and lying awake wondering why her husband stopped reaching for her.
My throat closes. Something hot and poisonous floods my chest and my hands are shaking and every cell in my body is screaming this is what he wanted, this is what you weren’t, this is what your grandmother’s cabin bought him.
The waterfall marble countertop is three feet to my left. I press my palm flat against it—cold, smooth, the veining pattern I’ve memorized from listing photos right here under my fingers. My nails scrape the stone.
The herringbone backsplash. Brendan Frye’s precision in every grout line.
The kitchen island, angled the specific way she wanted it—whatever she wants, Brendan said—and I am standing in the middle of every Instagram photo I’ve screenshotted and every dollar my grandmother left me, and my vision is going red at the edges.
“Who are you?” Her voice is high. Tight. “You can’t just—”
“Bridgette Logan.” I open the folder on her marble countertop. “Randall’s wife. His wife.” I pull the LLC filing and slide it across the marble. “Millstone Holdings. Your boyfriend’s shell company. Registered to my home address.”
Her eyes drop to the page. Her free hand presses against her mouth.
“Bank transfers.” Gail’s transaction log, highlighted entries. “Four hundred and thirty thousand dollars from the sale of my grandmother’s lake cabin. Hidden account. LLC. This condo. This renovation. Every tile, every cabinet—paid for with money he stole from me.”
“He told me he was separated.” Barely a whisper. Her wine glass is shaking.
“Last Thursday he held my hand across our kitchen table and told me our money was in a growth fund.” My voice cracks and I bite down on the inside of my cheek until copper floods my tongue.
“He made up a financial advisor. The advisor doesn’t exist. The fund doesn’t exist. Every dollar of my grandmother’s inheritance is in your walls. ”
A key in the front door lock.
My whole body goes electric.
The door swings open. Shoes on concrete. A jacket tossed toward the chair.
“Babe, I got out early—”
Randall comes around the corner and the words die in his open mouth. His eyes hit me—my face, the pearls, the folder spread across the marble—and the color drains from him so fast his skin goes gray. His gaze snaps to Sienna. Back to me. To the documents.
“Bridgette.” My name like a gasp. His hand comes up, palm out. “Bridgette, listen to me. I can explain—”
“You can explain a shell company and four hundred thousand dollars in hidden transfers?”
“It was a mistake.” He steps forward and his voice drops into that low, warm register—the one that works on clients, on me, on every person who has ever trusted this man with money or love or the truth. “I made a terrible mistake, and I know that, and I am going to fix this—”
“Separated?” Sienna’s voice cuts across the kitchen like a blade. She slams her wine glass on the counter so hard the base cracks. “You told me you were separated, Randall. You told me she didn’t—you said the marriage was over. You said it was paperwork.”
“Sienna—”
“Is she lying?” Sienna jabs her finger at the documents. Her hand is trembling. “Is any of this a lie? The LLC? The bank account? Any of it?”
Randall’s mouth opens. Closes. His eyes are doing the thing I’ve watched a thousand times across dinner tables—calculating, scanning for the angle that makes this go away. But there’s no angle. There’s a forensic paper trail on the marble and two women staring at him and nowhere left to hide.
“I can fix this,” he says again, and his voice is cracking now, the smooth surface splitting apart, and underneath it is something small and frantic. “Both of you—just let me—”
“You can’t fix this.” My voice drops and the rage I’ve been holding for two months fills every syllable.
“You killed my post-nup. You pressured me into selling the cabin. You opened a hidden bank account three months before the ink was dry. You created an LLC, bought this condo, renovated it to her specifications, and you came home to me every single night and told me the money was safe. For when we have kids, Randall. You said that to my face.”
His jaw is working. The vein on his neck is throbbing.
“The divorce was filed this morning. Fraud claim attached—hidden accounts, the shell company, two years of systematic financial deception. Every transfer documented. Every lie.”
“Bridgette, please.” His voice breaks. Actually breaks, the way mine has been breaking for two months. “You don’t know what this will do to—”
“I know exactly what it will do.” My eyes burn and the tears press against the backs of my eyelids and I will not cry on this concrete floor. “I’m going to take everything. Starting with this condo.”
Sienna’s head snaps toward me. “This is my home—”
“Don’t.” The word comes out quiet and terrible and Sienna’s mouth closes.
“Don’t try me. He pressured me into selling my grandmother’s cabin—a cabin I loved with my whole heart, a cabin my grandmother left to me—and he took the money and bought this for you.
This is not your home. This is stolen property. And it’s mine.”
The kitchen is silent. Sienna is pressed against the counter with her arms wrapped around herself and mascara tracking down her cheeks.
Randall is standing in the doorway with his hands at his sides and his face stripped of every mask and the expression underneath is one I have never seen—the raw terror of a man who has lost control of every variable at the same time.
I close the folder. Press it against my chest. The pearls are hot against my throat, my grandmother’s hands in every bead.
“You built this.” My voice is quiet and shaking and completely destroyed. “Every step. Every lie. Two years of holding my hand and looking in my eyes and telling me for when we have kids.”
My chin trembles. I clench my jaw until it stops.
“I hope it was worth it. I’m going to take back what you stole.”