Ian, on the other hand, the Ian McCrory, my biggest competitor, my outright nemesis, reaches through the molasses of the moment as my hands are zip tied behind my back, forcing my breasts out, my feet teetering on the platforms of my shoes, my soul slithering out of my body.
“I’m getting lawyers on this. Whatever’s going on, I’ve got you, Hastings,” he says grimly, the stark emotion in his voice cutting through the horror of what unfolds.
“You what?”
“I’ve got you.”
And those are the last words anyone says to me as police officers remove me from the restaurant, my perp walk the ultimate free-fall from Peak Hastings to Freak Hastings.
Less than an hour has passed since we signed the contract for my nine-figure deal.
The only pen in my life now is going to be a holding pen.
2
One month later
“Honey, I am so glad to have you back, but what on Earth have you done to your hair?”
My mother’s hug should be reassuring, but it feels like yet another way I’ve failed. It’s been a month since I was hauled out of Essentialz in handcuffs, with my Chinese colleagues, Ian McCrory, and what felt like half the world watching.
A month is a lifetime and a blink.
“I dyed it.”
“I can see that.” She cradles my face in her hands like I'm a wig mannequin and she's checking out the newest line. “But that color is so dark. You're a beautiful, natural blonde! It's almost chestnut now. What's the shade called?”
“Evaded Felony.”
She frowns. “Huh. Does Madison Reed carry that?”
“Mom.”
“Between that dark hair and those boxy sunglasses, I'd have never guessed it was you!”
“Good. That's the whole point.”
“Why would you… oh.” Her face falls. “You don't want anyone to know who you are.”
“I don't want to be who I am, Mom.”
Here’s what I’ve learned in the last thirty-two days: My husband, Burke Oonaj, is a festering boil on the back of a rat. He is pond scum, and he can take his “Don't tell them anything” text, print it, roll it into a tiny little ball, and shove it up his ass so far that it hits his prostate and then jabs his throat, where he chokes to death.
I, ladies and gentlemen, am a sucker. I’ve been taken. I’ve been fooled.
Me, Hastings Monahan.
While I was closing a nine-figure deal, turns out Burke was handling nine figures of money, too.
Just illegally.
Burke was committing financial crimes left and right, using me as leverage whenever he could. The man convinced investors to fund companies that didn’t exist, to make wire transfers to offshore banks, to invest in gold that was as real as the paint on a Buddha statue in a Manhattan gift shop.
And so much more, all of it deeply illegal and cravenly predatory.
I have seven figures in revolving lines of credit for accounts that I never opened, all using my social security number.
Every penny of savings, 401(k), personal defined benefit pension plans: You name it, it’s all wiped out.
I am not a stupid woman. I have safeguards on everything. What I didn’t plan for was the complete, utter, malignant sociopathy of a man who spent more time manscaping at a spa than he ever did learning computer security protocols.
Even worse than all that, it turns out, I’m not really married to him.
Oh, I have the marriage license to prove it. I have the big wedding Mom and Dad paid for to prove it. I have photo albums, and a minister who filed our marriage license with the state of Massachusetts after we got married at the local country club five years ago–all proof.
What I don’t have are the names of his other wives.
That’s right, other wives.
I have no idea who his first wife is—and by “first wife,” I don’t mean in serial, I mean in parallel. Somebody in the world is legally married to Burke Oonaj.
But it's not me.
I’ve spent the last five years acting as if I were, which means I’ve spent much of my adult life living a lie.
A lie I never agreed to.
“We kept it just the same for you, sweetie.”
“Kept what?” I ask Mom, who is stroking my hair absentmindedly, like I'm a pet ferret.
“Your room! Of course, you could take Mallory’s old room if you’d like. She doesn’t, you know, need it.” The drop in her voice as the words come out with painstakingly earnest horror almost makes me laugh.
Almost.
The stairs of my childhood home are carpeted. Not a stylish carpet runner over wide, polished oak treads. Oh, no. Wall-to-wall carpeting, all the way up the stairs and into most of the bedrooms.
It’s quaint.
Mom and Dad aren’t hurting financially, but their home is nothing like the life I’ve been accustomed to since I moved out to the Bay Area after graduation. In Massachusetts, everything old is treasured.
In the Bay Area, everything smart that can be monetized is king.
Or, in my case–queen.
Memory makes me kick my shoes off, toes sinking into the thick carpet as we go upstairs. I’m laden with baggage, literally and figuratively. Everything I’m allowed to own is in the three pieces of luggage I carry upstairs. One big backpack with a newly scrubbed tablet, one large checked item of luggage, and one carry-on – a cooler filled with precious cargo. My purse is tucked inside the backpack.
This is all I own.
This is all I’m allowed to own, by court order.
Following behind Mom, I make the right turn into my bedroom and stop short. She wasn’t kidding. This room is exactly as I left it when I moved out after college, twelve years ago.
“See, honey? We even kept your Lisa Frank notebooks and pens and all the paraphernalia. You used to love this stuff!”
I drop the backpack, careful not to crack the tablet. I shove the large suitcase up against the end of the bed. The carry-on fits nicely into the corner near the closet as I turn and take in the room. Sure, I've been home plenty of times in the last twelve years, but I haven't really paid attention to anything in the house.
This is it. This is what I’ve become.
This, and seven hundred dollars in a single bank account that I had to open on my own, attached to a secured credit card that uses five hundred of that to provide a five-hundred-dollar spending limit, is all I have.
Everything else is gone.
It’s been seized by the federal government, taken by state agencies, or is part of lien after lien coming after anything Burke touched.
My lawyer tried to argue that because it was revealed that we were not technically, legally married, those assets needed to be separated so that I could preserve mine, but RICO charges don’t work that way. Burke was part of something enormous, and I was suspected of being a part of it. A financial scandal that journalists will still be talking about ten years from now.
Hopefully, I’ll just be a footnote. A footnote on a footnote.
Unfortunately, the name Hastings Monahan stands out. This is the first time I have ever wished my name were Jane Smith.
No offense to Jane Smiths.
“You must be so tired,” Mom says, looking at me nervously.
I don’t know what to say to her. This is the first time since I graduated from college that I’ve been dependent on my parents. Even when I would come into town, I would stay at hotels, so I literally haven’t slept in this room in twelve years.