Chapter 2 Account He Forgot to Hide

CHAPTER TWO — The Account Marcus Forgot to Hide

POV: Elena

By the time we got home from the gala, it was almost midnight.

Marcus had spent the entire evening doing what he did best: charming potential investors and making everyone laugh. He was effortlessly pulled from one affluent social circle to the next. Couples we’d known for decades, colleagues from the hospital, and directors from his creative agency stopped us constantly for pictures, offering endless compliments about how wonderful we looked together. I smiled so much that my cheeks physically ached by the time we finally slipped out the door.

And all evening, despite the noise and the flashing cameras, I caught myself watching him. It wasn’t because I actively distrusted him—not yet—but because that strange, micro-panicked jump in his pulse and the way he had instinctively angled his phone away from me in the car had settled into the back of my mind. It felt like a tiny, deeply embedded splinter I couldn't quite reach.

By one in the morning, Marcus was fast asleep beside me. He lay with one arm thrown carelessly across his pillow, breathing deep, even, and undisturbed. I, on the other hand, was wide awake.

The pale moonlight spilt through the heavy curtains, cutting silver lines across the dark bedroom. After another ten minutes of tossing and turning, pretending I might actually drift off, I gave up, threw off the duvet, and silently slipped out of bed.

The house was completely quiet as I padded downstairs on bare feet. In the kitchen, I noticed Liam had left a half-empty soda can on the pristine counter despite my constant lectures about attracting ants. I smiled faintly, shaking my head as I rinsed it out, then put the kettle on for chamomile tea—my usual, time-tested cure for sleepless nights and overactive minds.

I sat down at the expansive dining room table with my laptop, fully intending to answer a backlog of hospital administration emails to tire my eyes out. But almost without a conscious thought guiding my fingers, I navigated to our banking portal instead.

Instinct. Nothing more.

Twenty years of shared history had turned our finances into a predictable, boring routine of mortgage payments, tuition savings, and diversified investments. Marcus handled his creative agency accounts while I managed the vast majority of our day-to-day household expenses. There had never been a single reason not to trust each other completely. I scanned the recent transactions half-mindedly, skimming past the usual line items—groceries, utility payments, insurance—until one specific entry stopped me cold.

Forty thousand dollars, transferred out of our secondary savings account exactly three weeks ago. The description field read simply: Studio Expansion.

I frowned, a cold knot tightening in my stomach. Marcus had mentioned wanting a bigger editing suite months ago, but absolutely nothing had come of it. I knew that for a fact because I had sat through his endless, exhausting complaints about local zoning permits, inflated contractor quotes, and bureaucratic delays that were going nowhere.

Then I remembered the commercial lease paperwork he’d asked me to look over three months back after a client had accidentally copied him into a separate email chain. I still had the digital file saved in our shared cloud drive.

I opened my local documents folder and pulled it up. Marcus Hale Creative. Current lease agreement. No pending expansion. No additional square footage is listed. No approved renovation permits. There was absolutely no amended contract or rider anywhere in the entire digital history.

I read the bank statement twice, then a third time, because forty thousand dollars wasn’t pocket change. People forgot fifty dollars sitting in a drawer. Nobody forgot forty thousand dollars moving out of a joint account.

My tea had gone completely cold by the time I leaned back in the chair, staring at the bright screen. I tried to tell myself there was a logical explanation. Maybe he’d invested in a new piece of high-end camera equipment, maybe he’d simply forgotten to mention the sudden progress to me, or maybe there was a perfectly reasonable explanation waiting on the other side of a quick conversation tomorrow morning. But the same clinical part of my brain that noticed elevated heart rates and abnormal lab work hated unanswered questions more than it wanted comfort. I clicked deeper into the primary account records, tracing the digital paper trail.

And then, my breath caught.

A corporate visa statement wasn't unusual on its own, except the billing and mailing address attached to this specific card wasn't our home. It was registered to Marcus’s private studio downtown.

I opened the hidden digital statement and found another card entirely. It wasn't the platinum account we shared for business expenses. This was a completely separate account number with vastly different spending habits stacked one after another, month after month. High-end restaurants. Luxury boutique hotels. Renowned jewellery stores. Large, extravagant purchases, all quietly mailed directly to the studio where I would never accidentally see them in the morning mail.

For a long, paralyzing moment, I just sat there in the dark. The refrigerator hummed steadily behind me, and the central air conditioner kicked on somewhere upstairs, my fingers turning numb against the plastic keyboard as the true shape of reality began to settle in. Marcus had an entirely secret credit card, and he had deliberately kept the statements far away from this house.

I swallowed hard, the betrayal tasting like ash, but I instantly caught myself. Questions first, diagnosis later. That had always been my absolute rule in the emergency room, and I had to apply it here. No emotion. Just data.

I pulled out my phone and started taking rapid, clear screenshots—the massive forty-thousand-dollar transfer, the hidden billing address, the jewellery store charges—one image after another. I built the digital file the exact same way I would build a patient's medical chart. These weren't emotional accusations, and they weren't final conclusions. They were just unyielding, objective facts. Money didn't lie. People did.

I was saving the very last screenshot to my hidden folder when I heard the faint, unmistakable sound of footsteps on the stairs. They were slow, even, and familiar. My heart skipped a violent beat before my mind could even supply his name.

Marcus.

I snapped the laptop shut with a sudden jerk. Too late. I was only half a second too late. As his feet hit the bottom step of the staircase, I saw his eyes shift instantly toward the large hallway mirror.

And in the crisp reflection right behind me, I knew he’d already seen the glowing screen.