Chapter 3 - The Champagne Slip Dress
The air in my apartment was cold, carrying that flat, recirculated chill of a high-rise HVAC system that hadn't been adjusted since I'd packed my overnight bag two days ago. I dropped my leather portfolio onto the entryway console, the sound sharp against the quiet. The sun had barely crested the horizon, casting pale gray light across the hardwood floors and the minimalist furniture I'd spent three years selecting. Every surface looked untouched, sterile, like a model home waiting for buyers who would never show.
I unlocked my home office, powered down the laptop screen saver, and plugged the encrypted external drive Marcus had given me into the USB port. The legal freeze was already working its way through the lower courts, but Marcus had warned me the night before that Richard's corporate defense would likely lean on liquidity obfuscation. Richard always maintained a buffer—a series of subsidiary accounts held under corporate partnership umbrellas that he treated like personal petty cash.
The screen flickered, loading the database mirror I'd secretly backed up during my stint on the Foundation's oversight board.
I scrolled past the standard quarterly reports, past the board minutes, and dove straight into the discretionary PR expenditures for the past eighteen months. Richard didn't just run his real estate development firm; he managed an ecosystem of high-end lifestyle branding, luxury sponsorships, and exclusive hospitality partnerships. It was a world of private clubs, VIP galas, and tailored contracts where money flowed through gray channels of consulting fees and retainer agreements.
There she was.
The name popped up under a recurring monthly disbursement labeled Aesthetic Strategy and Crisis Communications Consultation: Celeste Vance.
I pulled up the corporate directory, cross-referencing her credentials. She wasn't an employee of the main holding company. Her firm, Vance Media Group, was a boutique agency headquartered downtown, operating out of a sleek suite just three blocks from the jewelry store where Richard had cornered me. The retainer fee was astronomical—twenty-five thousand dollars a month, billed directly to the corporate account as an operational expense.
I clicked deeper, opening the PDF invoices attached to the latest wire transfers. Each invoice was signed off digitally by Richard's executive assistant, but the memo lines bore a specific internal routing code. I opened a separate folder containing high-resolution photographs from the annual Meridian Charity Gala six months ago—an event I had skipped due to a migraine.
In the background of a photograph featuring Richard at the head table, standing beside him in a low-cut champagne satin slip dress, was Celeste. Her posture was relaxed, familiar, leaning just close enough to his shoulder to signal an intimacy that extended far beyond a standard client-consultant relationship. The dress in the photo matched the exact fabric, cut, and sheen of the garment she had been wearing when she stood silently in the back of the luxury jewelry store, watching Richard lose his composure over a silver diamond ring.
The puzzle pieces clicked into place with the cold precision of a mechanical lock. She wasn't just managing his public image; she was embedded in the very financial infrastructure Richard used to bleed the company's liquid assets for personal indulgences. The corporate spending wasn't just aggressive expansion—it was a personal slush fund, and the board had likely been kept in the dark by design or complicit through neglect.
My fingers moved swiftly across the keyboard, exporting transaction logs, tax ID verifications, and wire transfer receipts into a secure, encrypted folder on my portable drive. If Richard's legal team attempted to claim those disbursements were legitimate business expenses during tomorrow's injunction hearing, this paper trail would prove otherwise. It mapped out every dollar funneled into her firm while our shared assets remained stagnant.
My phone buzzed on the desk—a silent notification from Marcus. Documents verified by the clerk. Judge Miller signed the temporary asset preservation order at 7:30 AM. They can't touch the subsidiary accounts now.
May you like
I ejected the drive, slipped it into the inside pocket of my coat, and walked out to the kitchen to pour a cup of black coffee. The apartment felt smaller now, its walls closing in with the weight of what was coming. Richard was about to wake up to a frozen empire, and the woman in the champagne slip dress was about to find out how quickly a corporate retainer could dry up when the checks stopped clearing.
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