---- Chapter 2 Chapter 2 Aimee Ramirez POV: The anonymous office was my sanctuary and my war room. It held nothing of our shared life, only the tools of my trade: a bank of monitors, a server humming quietly in the corner, and a whiteboard covered in algorithmic equations only | could decipher. This was the real me, the architect who built the company's digital fortress. Kyle was the face, the salesman. | was the code. And code, as he was about to learn, is law. | spent the night not weeping, but working. | pulled up the company's foundational documents, the corporate charter | had drafted in a caffeine-fueled haze five years ago. My fingers flew across the keyboard, navigating firewalls and backdoors | had built into our own systems. And there it was. Clause 1138, Section B. The poison pill. A seemingly innocuous piece of legalese about shareholder responsibilities in the event of a "moral turpitude" crisis. It was a time bomb | had planted at the very beginning, a relic of a younger, more paranoid me who had read one too many stories of female founders being pushed out by their male partners. | had almost forgotten it was there. Kyle, with his focus on deal-making and public relations, had certainly never known. ---- It stipulated that in the event one co-founder's personal actions threatened the company's public standing-say, by impregnating an employee and attempting a sham divorce-the other co-founder had the right to trigger an immediate, internal audit and asset lockdown, pending a full board review. It was a corporate nuke, and Kyle was about to hand me the launch codes. My phone buzzed, dragging me from my work. It was Kyle. | let it go to voicemail. He called again. And again. Finally, a text appeared. Aimee, where are you? | came back and you were gone. This isn't like you. Call me. Another text, minutes later. Stop being hysterical. We need to talk. This affects the company. The company. Always the company. | took a deep, steadying breath and called him. He answered on the first ring. "Aimee? Thank God. What the hell is going on? | came home to an empty apartment." "| needed some air," | said, my voice a carefully constructed imitation of weary resignation. "You needed air? You walked out on our anniversary, you won't answer your phone-| thought something had happened to you!" The manufactured concern was almost convincing. ---- "Something did happen, Kyle," | said, letting a tremor enter my voice. "You asked me for a divorce." He sighed, the sound staticky over the line. "We went over this. It's a business decision. | need you to think like my partner, not like my wife right now." "That's a difficult distinction to make." "| know it is," he said, his tone softening into that infuriatingly patient voice he used when | was being 'emotional. "Look, I've been thinking. There's a way to make this even cleaner. There's a clause in our personal asset portfolio, a joint trust. It requires both our signatures to liquidate any part of it. Karma... she has some old family debts. A legal issue. It's messy. If | can clear it for her, it gives me leverage. It makes our eventual separation from her much simpler." My blood ran cold. He wasn't just asking for a divorce; he was asking me to finance his affair. To use the money we had earned together to clean up his mistress's life. "You want me to sign over our money to her?" | asked, my voice a whisper. "Not to her. To me. It's a temporary transfer. Think of it as collateral. Once | have her locked down, the money reverts back to the trust. It's the smart play, Aimee. It protects us. It protects the company." This was it. The key. The poison pill was armed, but | needed ---- his verifiable transgression to turn the key. His attempt to divert our joint funds for this purpose was a clear violation. "|... | don't know, Kyle." | let my voice break. | needed to sound weak, cornered, persuadable. "I'll send the papers over via courier in the morning," he said, his voice firm, leaving no room for argument. "To the penthouse. Just be there. Sign them. For us." "And the divorce papers?" "Sign those too. We'll file them together. A united front. It's the only way this works." He paused. "l do love you, you know. You're just going to have to trust me." The call ended. | stared at the dark screen of my phone, a cold, predatory smile spreading across my face. Trust him? Oh, | would. | would trust him to be exactly the arrogant, underestimating fool he had always been. And he would trust me to be the pliable, emotional wife he thought he knew. One of us was about to be proven fatally wrong.