Chapter3

The next morning at breakfast, I slid a freshly printed document across the table, stopping it beside Nicole’s Hermès bag.

She was touching up her lip gloss in a mirror. The corner of her eye caught the papers, and her hand paused.

“This is a leveraged funding plan.” I lifted my black coffee and spoke evenly, like I was delivering a routine Wall Street earnings report. “The hillside villa in Beverly Hills is worth ten million. But you overlooked California tax law. If you buy it directly under your own name, it will trigger luxury property taxes and high-income surtaxes. That alone will require nearly two million in additional cash.”

Nicole set down the lip gloss and turned to stare at me. A flicker of caution crossed her eyes, but there was far more naked greed.

“What are you proposing?” she asked, arms folded.

“A fake divorce.” I looked straight at her and gave her the words she had been dying to hear.

Nicole’s pupils tightened slightly, but I didn’t give her a chance to interrupt. I kept laying out the logic, step by flawless step.

“You’re now StarLight Media’s rising A-list prospect. Your personal credit rating has already been pushed to the top tier. Apply for a ten-million-dollar bridge loan from Citibank under your name. Then transfer the money legally into my account as part of the divorce settlement and as funds held in trust for the purchase. I’ll use cash to buy the Beverly Hills property outright and avoid every tax audit aimed at public figures.”

I tapped the file on the table.

“Once things cool down, the house gets transferred back to your name. You save two million, and you end up with a clean luxury estate.”

Nicole stared at the agreement. Her breathing grew heavier.

The plan hit every anchor point of her desire with perfect precision. On one hand, she wouldn’t need to liquidate any assets herself. She could simply use her celebrity status to borrow from the bank. On the other hand, once we divorced, she could finally get rid of me, the “pathetic salaried nobody,” and walk straight into the arms of the capital tycoon she wanted.

In her eyes, I was just a desperate man trying to save a marriage by helping her buy a house. Worse, I was even carefully helping her dodge taxes.

“You’re agreeing that easily?” she asked, studying me with suspicion, as if trying to find even the slightest crack in my calm expression.

“If you don’t want to do it, you can withdraw anytime.” I picked up the pen on the table and made a move to take back the documents.

“Wait.” Nicole pressed a hand over the agreement at once, afraid I might actually change my mind.

She flipped straight to the last page. When she saw the clause clearly stating that ten million dollars would be transferred into the husband’s account, a mocking curve rose at the corner of her mouth.

She didn’t hesitate for even a second. Pulling out the pen, she signed her name at the bottom.

Ten in the morning. Citibank VIP wealth management room, Los Angeles.

“Ms. Nicole, I have to warn you.” The gray-haired account manager looked at the risk alert on his screen, his face tense. “This ten-million-dollar bridge loan is unsecured credit. Although your S-tier artist contract with StarLight Media serves as backing, transferring the entire amount directly into the account of your husband right after signing divorce papers... this doesn’t fit normal risk control logic. The exposure is extremely high.”

“What risk?” Nicole cut him off impatiently, adopting the arrogant posture of a Hollywood star. “My commercial value is increasing every month. This money is an act of generosity toward my ex-husband and a lawful reallocation of my private assets. Your bank just needs to release the funds. Don’t tell me how to handle my affairs.”

The manager gave me a helpless look. I sat on the sofa, maintaining exactly the right amount of silence.

“Release the funds now,” Nicole said, delivering her final ultimatum. “Otherwise I’ll move every account I have to JPMorgan tomorrow.”

Under crushing business pressure, the manager finally hit Enter.

Ding.

The phone in my pocket vibrated.

That was the sound of ten million dollars falling cleanly into the trap.

The money came wrapped in Nicole’s own signature, along with high interest and punitive default clauses. It had become the heaviest shackle of her life.

We stepped out of the bank. The California sunlight was almost blinding.

“The money’s in.” Nicole put on her sunglasses, hiding the satisfaction in her eyes. “I’m heading to Rodeo Drive this afternoon to try on a custom gown for tomorrow night’s premiere. You’d better move fast on the house. Don’t keep me waiting.”

“As you wish.” I gave a slight nod and turned toward a café at the corner.

I watched her climb into the StarLight Media van, then pushed open the café’s glass door and took a seat in a secluded corner.

I opened my laptop with a privacy screen and connected through a stack of encrypted dark-web proxies. The monitor filled with a flood of code that ordinary people would never understand.

The ten million dollars remained in my account for less than five minutes.

I launched the high-frequency trading script I had prepared in advance. In an instant, the funds were split into tens of thousands of micro-transactions, routed through dozens of shell company accounts in the Bahamas and the British Virgin Islands, repeatedly hedged and laundered, then finally merged into a fully invisible offshore trust in the Cayman Islands.

No enforcement agency would ever be able to trace where the money had gone.

From a legal standpoint, it was a lawful transfer of assets Nicole had made to me voluntarily under the divorce agreement.

And now, for all practical purposes, it had vanished from the financial system of the planet.

Three in the afternoon.

When I walked out of the apartment carrying an unmarked black duffel bag, there was no trace of me left inside.

Every object that carried fingerprints had been destroyed. The computer hard drives had been physically shattered and dumped into different garbage trucks. I had even cleaned the bathroom drains to remove any hair that might remain.

What I left Nicole was an empty wardrobe, a double bed with no warmth in it, and a ten-million-dollar debt that would begin generating brutal late fees next month.

As the sun dropped toward the horizon, I flagged down a taxi and headed for a hidden data facility on the outskirts of Los Angeles.

Inside that cold room packed with servers, I would watch from the perspective of a god as this woman, tomorrow night at her own premiere, walked in wearing a glittering crown and stepped, one pace at a time, into the hell I had built for her with my own hands.