The Wife He Used As a Scapegoat

　　~ Isabella ~

　　I clicked the blue mouse button and waited for the screen to refresh.

　　The spreadsheet filled the monitor with long columns of green numbers. Wolfe Enterprises had just made four billion dollars in profit for the third quarter. It was a new record for our company.

　　I leaned back in my leather chair, taking a slow, cautious breath to settle the soft flutter in my lower stomach. Many years ago, Nathan and I sat in a tiny basement room in Brooklyn. We had one squeaky folding table, two plastic chairs, and three hundred dollars left in our bank account. We ate cold five-dollar pizza every night while we typed code until three in the morning. My back used to ache from those hard seats, and the air always smelled like burnt coffee and old cardboard.

　　Now, I sat on the top floor of a ninety-story tower in Manhattan. The floor under my shoes was polished dark marble. The desk was heavy oak. But the best part was that Nathan and I had built it together. We were partners in business, and we were husband and wife.

　　A light knock sounded on my office door.

　　"Come in," I called out.

　　Nathan walked inside. He wore a sharp dark blue suit with a red tie. He was smiling, holding one hand hidden behind his back.

　　"You're sitting in the dark again, Bella," he said, stepping over to my desk.

　　"I like the screen light better," I said, pointing at the monitor. "Look at these numbers, Nathan. We beat our target by twelve percent."

　　Nathan didn't look at the screen. He looked right at me. "The numbers can wait five minutes. Do you know what day it is?"

　　I checked the corner of my computer display. "Tuesday, October fourteenth."

　　"It's our eighth anniversary," Nathan said. He brought his hidden hand around and placed a small velvet box on top of my notebook. "Happy anniversary, Bella."

　　I picked up the box, but instead of opening it immediately, I rested my fingers over his wrist. "Nathan, we promised no big gifts this year. But... I actually have something for you, too."

　　He raised an eyebrow, a slight smile playing on his lips. "You did? You were in back-to-back meetings all day yesterday."

　　I reached into my top desk drawer, pulled out a white envelope tied with a simple satin ribbon, and slid it across the oak wood. "Open yours first."

　　Nathan chuckled, setting his small box down to untie the ribbon. He unfolded the paper inside. It wasn't a financial report or a contract. It was an ultrasound photo, clear and dark, with a tiny, distinct shape nestled in the center, stamped with yesterday's date.

　　The room went completely still. Nathan's breath hitched in his throat. His fingers trembled against the paper, his blue eyes widening as he stared at the image, then up at me, then back down at the paper.

　　"Bella..." His voice cracked, stripped of all corporate composure. "Is this... are you...?"

　　"Eight weeks," I whispered, feeling a hot, sudden sting of tears behind my eyes. "We're having a baby, Nathan."

　　Nathan dropped the paper, stood up, and pulled me out of my chair into his arms. He held me tightly, burying his face in the crook of my neck, his hands resting gently against the small curve of my back. I could feel the rapid, violent thud of his heart against my chest.

　　"A baby," he murmured into my hair, holding me like I was made of fragile glass. "Our baby. Bella, this... this is everything. We built an empire, and now we get to build a family."

　　He pulled back, his eyes gleaming, and cupped my face in both hands. He kissed me deeply before remembering the small velvet box on the desk. He picked it up with shaking hands and pressed it into my palm.

　　"Open it," he whispered, his voice thick with emotion.

　　Inside, resting on red cloth, was a silver pen. It was heavy, smooth, and shiny. Engraved on the side were small, neat letters: Hart & Wolfe — Day One.

　　"It's a copy of the cheap plastic pen you used when we signed our first office lease," Nathan said, wiping a thumb under his eye. "I wanted to remind us where we started. But now... now everything we sign with this is for them."

　　I held the pen tight against my chest, feeling the sheer weight of our love and everything we had sacrificed to reach this floor, this life, this moment.

　　"Now," Nathan said softly, kissing my forehead, "let's go down to the boardroom and show my father and sister that the future belongs to us."

　　Ten minutes later, we walked down the glass hallway. My hand rested naturally over my stomach, an instinctive shield against the world outside our quiet bubble.

　　The main boardroom had a huge glass table in the center. Twelve black leather chairs sat around it. Nathan's father, Arthur Wolfe, sat at the head of the table. He was sixty-two years old, with straight gray hair, a dark suit, and cold gray eyes that rarely blinked. Beside him sat Victoria, Nathan's twenty-eight-year-old sister. She wore a bright yellow jacket and spent every second staring at her smartphone.

　　"You're late," Arthur said before we even pulled out our chairs. He checked his heavy gold watch. "Two minutes late, to be exact."

　　"Good morning to you too, Dad," Nathan said. His tone was warmer than usual, a subtle glow lingering in his posture as he pulled out my chair for me first. "We were handling a personal matter."

　　Arthur set down his white ceramic cup with a sharp clink. He turned his eyes toward me. "Isabella, I hope you checked the tax numbers twice this time. We cannot afford mistakes."

　　"I checked every line three times, Arthur," I said, keeping my voice calm and steady. "The reports are completely clean."

　　Victoria let out a short, loud sigh. She tossed her phone onto the glass table with a heavy thump. "Anyone can make numbers look good on paper, Isabella. Some people are just lucky."

　　"It's not luck, Victoria," I said, keeping my back straight, protective of the tiny life growing inside me. "It's hard work."

　　"Well, my brother works ninety hours a week," Victoria smirked, crossing her arms tight. "But I suppose you do what you can, considering where you came from."

　　"Victoria, that's enough," Nathan warned, his hand landing firmly over mine on the glass table. "Bella ran the entire financial structure for this deal. Show some respect."

　　Arthur raised one thick gray eyebrow. "Your sister is simply reminding us that Wolfe Enterprises is a family legacy, Nathan. We must protect our name above everything else."

　　"The family legacy is in good hands," Nathan said, looking directly at his father with a dangerous kind of pride. "In fact, it's growing."

　　Arthur narrowed his eyes, but I caught Nathan's hand, giving him a silent squeeze. Not yet. Not in front of their judgment.

　　The meeting dragged on for forty-five minutes. Nathan presented our growth plans for the European market, while Arthur and Victoria sat in silence, watching us like hawks.

　　When the meeting ended, I returned to my office, locking the door behind me to enjoy a second of quiet. I sat down at my oak desk, placing the silver pen beside a photo of Nathan and me.

　　I woke up my computer to do my usual afternoon check on our global banking logs. We had thirty different bank accounts across Europe to pay for cargo ships and international warehouses.

　　I scrolled down the list of recent transactions and stopped.

　　My eyes caught a line near the bottom of the screen. On October twelfth, at two in the morning, a transfer of fifty thousand dollars went out from our central Swiss account. The receiving company was listed as Logos Trading Ltd.

　　I frowned. I knew every partner company we worked with. I had memorized all sixty-four of them. I had never heard of Logos Trading Ltd.

　　I clicked on the transaction detail. A second later, two more lines appeared below it:

　　October 13: $75,000 to Logos Trading Ltd.

　　October 14: $120,000 to Logos Trading Ltd.

　　Total missing: two hundred and forty thousand dollars.

　　"What is this?" I muttered to myself.

　　I picked up my black desk phone and dialed the extension for IT and Security.

　　Tom answered on the second ring. "IT Department, Tom speaking."

　　"Tom, it's Isabella," I said, holding the receiver tight against my ear. "I'm looking at the Swiss bank logs right now. I see three wire transfers to a company called Logos Trading. I didn't authorize these."

　　I heard Tom clicking buttons on his keyboard. "Hold on, Isabella. Let me pull up your screen logs."

　　He paused for ten seconds.

　　"Oh, yeah," Tom said smoothly. "We ran a major system update on the financial servers last night at midnight. The main server was recalibrating its data index."

　　"Would recalibrating create fake transfer logs?" I asked, my hand instinctively resting over my lower stomach.

　　"It causes display ghosting sometimes," Tom explained. "Don't worry about it, Isabella. By four o'clock, the sync will finish and those weird ghost lines will disappear."

　　"Okay," I whispered, forcing myself to relax. "Thanks, Tom."

　　I hung up the phone. A system display glitch made sense. We had installed brand new encrypted servers two weeks ago.

　　I picked up my silver pen, opened a file folder, and prepared to sign the local marketing budget.

　　Click.

　　My computer screen suddenly went completely dark.

　　the bright spreadsheets vanished. The power light on the monitor flickered once, twice, and then went dead black.

　　"Tom?" I called out, reaching over to shake my computer mouse. "Did you reboot my system?"

　　The mouse did nothing.

　　Then, a bright crimson box flashed right in the center of the dark monitor.

　　The red box blinked rapidly on and off. The bright red light cast a harsh glow across my hands, my desk, and the silver pen. Inside the box, bold white letters appeared, spelling out a message line by line:

　　CRITICAL ALERT: ENCRYPTION PROTOCOL BROKEN.

　　UNAUTHORIZED NODE ACCESS DETECTED.

　　SOURCE: UNKNOWN / UNTRACEABLE.

　　My heart hammered against my ribs, a cold spike of adrenaline washing over me. I pressed my palm flat over my belly, protectively, as the flashing red light painted the dark room in blood.

　　Something is wrong.