No Longer Anyone’s Accessory Chapter 12
Day twenty-five in London.
Trevor finally dug up my London contact. He started using virtual numbers, swapping them for new ones every day to get around the block.
I didn’t answer a single one.
He switched platforms and sent private messages. Facebook. Twitter. Instagram. LinkedIn. Finally he fired one straight at my work email. I gave it a glance.
“Corinne, I know you’re in London. Please. Come home. We can see a marriage counselor. We can fix this.”
“I know I screwed up. The money stuff, I’ll talk to my mom.”
“You can’t do this to me. I’m your husband.”
“Come back. I promise. From now on, I’ll leave half of every paycheck in our account.”
Half. Half of $900,000 — $450,000.
The man who hadn’t contributed a single cent in three years was now willing to put in half.
Far too late.
No reply. Blocked on the spot.
That same day, Corbin sent over an encrypted file.
“Ms. Whitfield. Ursula Wexler’s trading account records. We obtained them through compelled disclosure.”
I opened the file.
Over three years, Ursula’s account had taken in roughly $2.7 million in total inflows. High-risk cryptocurrency contracts cascaded through margin-call liquidations, with losses of about $2 million. Of the roughly $700,000 that remained, some $400,000 went to her brother Dale for his RV park venture, and $300,000 went to assorted luxury goods and a new pickup truck.
Which meant every cent Trevor had moved to his mother over three years was, at this point, essentially zero.
He thought his mother was Warren Buffett. In reality, his mother was a gambler who didn’t even know what a stop-loss was.
I archived it. Saved it. Then I opened another email.
Dr. Ashcombe.
“Dear Corinne, the fifth round of validation is confirmed. The XR-7 data is stable and highly reproducible. The legal department has kicked off the patent application process. You’ll be signing the Lead Inventor agreement next week. Congratulations.”
Lead Inventor.
I looked at those two words. Something opened up behind my sternum. Not joy. It was the feeling of a person who’d been pressed down for three years finally standing up straight.
I wrote a short reply.
“Thank you, Edmund. I’ll sign next week.”
I closed my email and pulled a bottle of sparkling water from the hotel minibar. I didn’t bother with a glass. Drank straight from the bottle.
The bubbles burst on the tip of my tongue.
It tasted better than any Napa Valley red.
