Chapter 6 - SLOANE TURNED ON HIM
Sloane ended the relationship.
I learned through her attorney.
I laughed when Rachel told me.
Not because heartbreak pleased me.
Because Derek had destroyed our marriage claiming Sloane “mattered more.”
Less than two months after his control weakened, she left.
Then I checked myself.
Sloane was not innocent.
She sat drinking champagne while Derek humiliated me.
She mocked me.
She inserted my copied signature into documents.
She benefited financially.
But responsibility needed precision.
Sloane agreed to a civil forensic review of Apex transactions.
She wanted to avoid litigation if possible.
Nathan analyzed the work.
Apex had provided some legitimate services.
The parties eventually valued them at $187,000.
Apex had received $1.185 million combined from Holdings and Callahan Ridge Consulting.
Some payments represented approved business expenditures.
Others did not.
The civil dispute focused on approximately $560,000 that lacked adequate support or authorization after credits and adjustments.
Sloane claimed Derek promised her equity consideration and future compensation.
No signed agreement supported the full amount.
Negotiations began.
Then Sloane produced the message that changed everything.
Derek had written:
Once Elena is out, Holdings is effectively mine anyway.
Date:
Four months before I discovered the affair.
Sloane responded:
You said she owns half.
Derek:
On paper.
I read it twice.
On paper.
That was how he saw ownership.
Marriage.
Consent.
Me.
Formal rights existed on paper.
Actual authority belonged to him.
Another exchange:
SLOANE:
What if she checks statements?
DEREK:
She doesn’t.
SLOANE:
And if she does?
DEREK:
She won’t understand them.
That hurt more than the affair.
I had an MBA.
Before marrying Derek, I worked in corporate marketing and investor relations.
I stopped full-time work five years into the marriage after my mother became ill and Derek’s travel increased.
Somewhere along the way, he rewrote my competence.
Not only to others.
To me.
He began handling investments because he was “better with complex structures.”
I let him.
Then he used my distance from finances as proof I could not understand them.
May you like
That was not stupidity on my part.
But it was a vulnerability I intended never to recreate.
