My husband forgot to end the video call, and thirty employees watched his assistant sitting on his lap, wearing the $110,000 necklace he had refused to buy me.
When he said, “It’s not what it looks like,” I quietly left the dinner I had brought him on the table and walked away.
That night, I opened a folder my late father had left behind. What I found inside was something my husband had never imagined.
PART 1 “Darling… you forgot to end the video call.” Damian Cross spun around so quickly in his chair that he nearly knocked his laptop onto the floor.
More than thirty windows from the monthly Crosswell Global executive meeting were still open across the screen.
Thirty employees were watching exactly what I was seeing. Vanessa, his assistant, was sitting on his lap.
Her blouse was partly undone. And around her neck was a diamond necklace I recognized immediately.
Two months earlier, I had seen it inside a jewelry store in Back Bay, Boston.
The price was $110,000. “That’s an absurd amount of money,” Damian had told me.
“You don’t work anymore, Elise. Why would you possibly need something like that?”
That same evening, we ate simple soup because he insisted we had to be careful with money.
Now that necklace was around another woman’s neck. Vanessa jumped off his lap.
“Elise, this isn’t what it looks like.” Damian slammed the laptop shut.
