After her father’s death, she never told her husband what he left her, which was fortunate, because three days after the funeral, he showed up with a big smile, along with his brother and a ‘family advisor,’ talking about ‘keeping things fair’ and ‘allocating the money.’ She poured herself coffee, listened, and let them think she was cornered’until he handed her a list and she realized exactly why she had remained silent.(5/8)

He sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand.

“I don’t know what I did to deserve you.”

The irony was so thick Sarah almost laughed.

Instead, she squeezed his hand and gazed at him with adoring eyes.

“You don’t have to deserve love, Alex. It’s just something I give you because you’re mine.”

Alexander’s expression grew tender, and for a moment he looked like the man she’d fallen in love with.

“I love you so much, Sarah.

More than you’ll ever know.”

The scary thing was that Sarah almost believed he meant it.

Alexander was such a good liar that he’d probably convinced himself his feelings were real—even while he planned to divorce her and steal her inheritance.

After Alexander left for work, Sarah called Janet Williams immediately.

“Janet, we need to move up our timeline. Alexander spent the night with Rebecca, and I just found out he was married before. He’s done this exact same thing to another woman.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

“Married before?

That wasn’t in any of the background checks we ran.”

“Tom Mitchell found the records. Alexander was married to Jennifer Walsh in Seattle from 2019 to 2021. She divorced him for adultery but couldn’t prove it, so she got almost nothing in the settlement.”

“My god,” Janet said.

“This means Alexander isn’t just cheating. He’s running a con. He targets women, marries them, builds their trust, then destroys them financially when he’s ready to move on.”

Sarah felt cold all over.

“Which means Rebecca probably isn’t his exit strategy,” Sarah said.

“She’s just his next mark.”

“Exactly,” Janet agreed. “Once Alexander divorces you and gets what he thinks is half your inheritance, he’ll probably marry Rebecca and start the whole cycle over again.”

Janet’s voice sharpened.

“Unless Rebecca ends up in prison for tax evasion first.”

“True,” Sarah said. “But Janet—this new information changes our strategy.

We’re not just dealing with a cheating husband anymore. We’re dealing with someone who’s made a career out of financial fraud through marriage.”

Sarah thought about Jennifer Walsh alone in Montana, probably still recovering from the emotional and financial devastation Alexander had left in his wake.

How many other women had there been?

How many lives had Alexander destroyed while perfecting his technique?

“I want to contact Jennifer,” Sarah said suddenly.

“That’s actually not a bad idea,” Janet replied. “If Alexander has a pattern of this behavior, Jennifer’s testimony could be valuable in your divorce proceedings, and she might have insights into how Alexander operates that could help us.”

“Can you find her contact information?”

“I’ll have Tom track her down.

But Sarah, are you sure you want to talk to her? It might be painful to hear about Alexander’s previous marriage.”

Sarah thought about it.

It would definitely be painful to learn more details about Alexander’s capacity for deception. But it might also be empowering—to connect with someone who’d survived what she was going through.

“I need to know what I’m really dealing with,” Sarah said.

“If Alexander has done this before, I want to understand his playbook so I can make sure he never does it again.”

“All right,” Janet said. “I’ll set it up.”

Then Janet’s voice turned brisk.

“In the meantime, we’re moving forward with the original plan, but we’re accelerating the timeline. Instead of waiting a week, we’re going to execute everything this Friday.”

“This Friday?” Sarah repeated.

“That’s only three days away.”

“I know it’s fast, but Alexander is escalating his behavior. Spending the night with Rebecca means he’s getting sloppy, which could work in our favor. But it also means he might be planning to make his move sooner than we expected.”

Sarah felt a thrill of anticipation mixed with terror.

In three days, Alexander’s world would explode.

In three days, he would finally understand what it felt like to be betrayed by someone you trusted completely.

“Janet,” Sarah said quietly, “when this is all over, I want to help Jennifer Walsh and any other women Alexander might have hurt.

I want to make sure he never gets the chance to do this to anyone else.”

“That’s very generous of you, Sarah. And with your father’s resources, you’ll be in a position to make a real difference.”

After hanging up, Sarah sat in her father’s study and thought about Jennifer Walsh. Somewhere in Montana, there was a woman who’d been through exactly what Sarah was experiencing now—a woman who’d loved Alexander, trusted him, built a life with him, only to discover it was all a lie.

But unlike Jennifer, Sarah had resources.

She had her father’s wealth, his strategic mind, his protective instincts working for her. Even after his death, she had a team of professionals helping her fight back.

Alexander had picked the wrong woman this time.

Instead of another victim, he’d found his match.

And in three days, he was going to find out just how badly he’d miscalculated.

Jennifer Walsh had a warm voice with a slight Montana accent that made Sarah feel instantly comfortable. When Janet’s office arranged the phone call, Sarah had been nervous about talking to Alexander’s ex-wife.

But Jennifer sounded genuinely pleased to hear from her.

“I wondered if this day would come,” Jennifer said after Sarah explained who she was.

“When I heard Alexander had gotten married again, I hoped maybe he’d changed… but I had a feeling he hadn’t.”

“He never mentioned being married before,” Sarah said, still struggling to process the information.

“I’m not surprised,” Jennifer replied. “Alexander is very good at rewriting his own history to fit whatever story he needs to tell.”

Jennifer’s voice grew sad.

“When we met, he told me his last girlfriend had cheated on him and broken his heart. Made me feel so special that he was willing to trust me with his love again.”

Sarah’s heart clenched.

Alexander had told her almost the exact same story.

“How did you find out about the affair?” Sarah asked.

“I caught him texting another woman at two in the morning,” Jennifer said.

“When I confronted him, he swore it was just a friend from work going through a rough time.”

She exhaled slowly.

“I believed him, because I wanted to believe him. But something in my gut told me to pay attention.”

“After that, I started noticing things—late nights, new clothes I hadn’t seen him buy, credit card charges at places we’d never been together.”

“How long did it take you to get proof?” Sarah asked.

“Six months,” Jennifer said. “Six months of feeling crazy.

Of second-guessing myself. Of letting him convince me I was being paranoid and jealous. When I finally hired a private investigator, I found out the affair had been going on for over a year.”

Sarah closed her eyes, thinking about her own six months of confusion and self-doubt.

“What was the worst part?” she asked.

“The lies,” Jennifer said without hesitation.

“Not just about the affair—about everything. I found out later that Alexander had been planning to divorce me almost from the beginning of our marriage. He’d been slowly moving money around, talking to lawyers, building a case for why he deserved half of everything I’d worked for.”

“Everything you’d worked for?” Sarah asked.

“I owned a small marketing business when we met,” Jennifer said.

“It wasn’t worth millions, but it was successful and growing. Alexander convinced me to make him a partner after we got married. Said it would be good for tax purposes.”

Jennifer’s laugh was—

Jennifer’s laugh was bitter.

“What it really did was give him a legal claim to half my business when he divorced me.”

Sarah felt sick.

“Did he get it?”

“He got forty percent of the business value plus half our other assets,” Jennifer said.

“I had to sell my company to pay him off. It destroyed everything I’d built over ten years of hard work.”

“Jennifer, I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you,” Jennifer said, and then her voice sharpened with the question she’d been circling. “But Sarah… why are you calling me?

Are you going through the same thing?”

Sarah took a deep breath and told her everything—about finding Alexander with Rebecca, about her father’s inheritance that Alexander didn’t know about, about the revenge plan she was orchestrating.

When she finished, Jennifer was quiet for a long moment.

“Sarah,” she finally said, “you have a chance to do something I never could. You have the resources and the evidence to make sure Alexander faces real consequences for what he’s done. Not just to you, but to me—and probably to other women.”

“We don’t even know about other women.”

“I did some digging after our divorce,” Jennifer said.

“Alexander has a pattern that goes back at least ten years. He targets successful women, marries them, gains access to their assets, then destroys them emotionally and financially before moving on to the next victim.”

Sarah felt cold all over.

“How many women?”

“I found evidence of at least three others before me,” Jennifer said. “Maybe more.

Alexander is a professional, Sarah. This is what he does for a living.”

The room seemed to spin around Sarah. She had thought Alexander was just a cheating husband, but he was something else entirely—a serial predator who had built his entire life around destroying women.

“Jennifer,” Sarah said, forcing her voice to stay steady, “would you be willing to testify about Alexander’s pattern of behavior?

My lawyer thinks it could help ensure he faces serious legal consequences.”

“Absolutely,” Jennifer said without hesitation. “I’ve been waiting three years for the chance to make Alexander pay for what he did to me. If helping you means other women won’t go through what we’ve been through, I’ll do whatever it takes.”

After the call with Jennifer, Sarah felt a new sense of purpose settle into her bones.

This wasn’t just about her marriage anymore.

It was about stopping a predator who’d been victimizing women for years.

She called Janet immediately.

“Jennifer confirmed everything we suspected,” Sarah said.

“Alexander is a serial marriage fraudster. She thinks there are at least three other victims before her.”

“That changes everything,” Janet said grimly. “We’re not just planning a divorce anymore.

We’re building a criminal case.”

Janet didn’t pause.

“I’m going to contact the FBI’s financial crimes unit. If Alexander has been doing this across state lines, it becomes federal jurisdiction.”

“What does that mean for our timeline?”

“It means we need to be even more careful,” Janet said. “But it also means Alexander could face serious prison time.

Marriage fraud. Interstate financial schemes. We’re talking about federal felonies that carry ten- to twenty-year sentences.”

Sarah felt a mixture of satisfaction and fear.

She’d wanted Alexander to face consequences, but federal prison seemed almost too severe—until she thought about Jennifer losing her business, about the other unknown women Alexander had destroyed.

The sympathy evaporated.

“How do we proceed?”

“We stick to the Friday timeline,” Janet said, “but now we’re coordinating with federal investigators instead of just local law enforcement. The FBI wants to arrest Alexander at the same time Rebecca gets arrested for tax evasion. They think the two cases might be connected.”

“Connected,” Sarah repeated.

“How?”

“They’re investigating whether Alexander knew about Rebecca’s escort work and was taking a cut of her profits,” Janet said. “If so, he could be charged with operating a prostitution scheme in addition to marriage fraud.”

Sarah almost laughed at the irony. Alexander had been so sure he was the smartest person in every room—playing multiple women at once—only to get tangled up in someone whose criminal mess could bring down his entire operation.

“What do I need to do?”

“Keep acting normal for two more days,” Janet said.

“Don’t give Alexander any reason to suspect that anything has changed. The FBI is going to be monitoring both Alexander and Rebecca starting tomorrow, so any unusual behavior from you could tip them off.”

That evening, Sarah cooked Alexander’s favorite meal and opened a bottle of expensive wine. She needed him relaxed and unsuspecting for the next forty-eight hours.

“This is nice,” Alexander said, raising his wine glass in a toast.

“What’s the occasion?”

“Do I need an occasion to celebrate my husband?” Sarah clinked her glass against his, maintaining eye contact like a loving wife should.

“I guess not.” Alexander studied her for a beat. “You’ve just seemed… I don’t know. Different lately.

More confident, maybe. It’s attractive.”

If only he knew where that confidence was coming from.