Chapter 3 - WHAT SLOANE THOUGHT SHE WAS SIGNING
Sloane’s attorney contacted Rachel.
Not Derek’s attorney.
Hers.
That told us the relationship was collapsing.
She wanted to discuss the Apex transactions.
Rachel advised me not to attend the first meeting.
I agreed.
My desire to see Sloane uncomfortable was not a legal strategy.
Nathan and Rachel met with her counsel.
What came back complicated everything.
Sloane claimed Derek told her I had approved a joint investment into Apex.
He represented Holdings as a family investment vehicle looking to acquire a minority stake in her company.
She received $705,000 over eighteen months.
In return, Apex was supposedly developing a new investor-relations platform for Callahan Ridge Consulting and supporting acquisition targets.
Some services existed.
Not enough to justify the money.
But not nothing.
Sloane produced presentations.
Market reports.
Event strategies.
Client introductions.
Nathan estimated credible value might eventually be determined around $140,000 to $200,000 depending on expert review.
That still left a large unexplained gap.
Then there were my signatures.
Sloane admitted she created the PDF packets.
Derek sent her images of my signature and told her to insert them because I had already approved the deal and “hated paperwork.”
She believed him.
At least that was her story.
Her emails with Derek partly supported it.
SLOANE:
Elena hasn’t signed page 4.
DEREK:
She approved it. Drop her sig from the Holdings form.
SLOANE:
Are you sure?
DEREK:
I’ve done it a hundred times. She doesn’t care.
Sloane responded with a laughing emoji.
That hurt in an absurdly personal way.
Not because an emoji proved criminal intent.
Because I could imagine the ease of it.
My consent transformed into administrative inconvenience.
Later, however, Sloane wrote:
We should get Elena’s actual signature if this gets bigger.
Derek:
Stop worrying. I control the household side.
That phrase made Rachel angry.
Household side.
Me.
I was the household side.
The investigation expanded in the civil case.
Then Derek’s operating company hired outside counsel.
That was important.
The company itself had obligations separate from Derek if corporate funds or records were implicated.
Callahan Ridge Consulting had outside investors.
A board.
Lenders.
Employees.
No court would casually destroy it because its founder’s marriage collapsed.
The board placed Derek on temporary administrative leave while an independent review examined related-party transactions involving Apex.
Derek blamed me publicly.
Not in a press conference.
In private messages to colleagues that eventually reached me.
Elena is weaponizing divorce to ruin the company.
That became his story.
Then the review discovered something I did not know.
Apex had received another $480,000 directly from Callahan Ridge Consulting.
Those payments had gone through proper accounts payable channels.
Invoices existed.
Approvals existed.
But several approvals came from Derek.
Related-party disclosure forms did not identify his romantic relationship with Sloane.
Whether the relationship existed at each payment date mattered.
Company governance rules required disclosure of material personal relationships affecting vendor independence.
Derek had not disclosed one.
That created corporate consequences.
Still separate from my marital claims.
Sloane was no longer merely the mistress in the red dress.
She had become a vendor whose business relationship with Derek preceded and overlapped the affair.
And that meant a question I had not considered.
Did Derek start sleeping with Sloane because of the business arrangement?
May you like
Or had the business arrangement been built to move money to a woman he was already involved with?
The dates became critical.
