Chapter 148 Talia

Chapter 148 Talia
Her heart sank. She knew it was impossible to guess, such a cheating manwouldn't out up something so easy to guess. She stood up, pacing round theceoom in thoughts before an idea came to mind. 

An automated message to all her big clients. 

They should list their special days and enjoy a special thrift wear on all those days. The real truth was, she'd only sent it to Celine using the number she gave her but wrote it like shr sent to all her customers. 

Within a few minutes, she had responded. 

Eight days were carefully listed. Amber flushed, rushing back on seat. She didn't know whether to grade Celine as a gossip or a show-off bitch. One thing she knew, Archer knew what he was doing but she? 

That turned a case for another day. Her focus returned back to the password. Being his specisl woman, his password could be one of these days. 

“Let the game begin.” 

Thirty minutes later, her suspicion turned reality, when his system opened to his secret marriage date with Celine. She turned to the note beside the note. The proof it was his marriage day. 

She wrote, “The day he became mine!” 

Her fingers typed into the system, her eyes navigating fron one folder to the other, from his photos of her, their chats but these weren't her main focus. 

They were the transfers he made, the secret accounts they shared, passwords. She took pictures and video records. Exactly what she needed, not shouting and confronting him. 

Amber knee exactly what to do with these. 

She searched through all the important details that came to her mind. With the course she took ok economics, financial interpretation and management, she was able ti navigate through. 

In this marriage, it felt easier to let Archer handle everything and pretend she didn’t notice more than she let on.

Should Archer himself get to know what she had done, he'd be speechless. 

Millions. Not hundreds of thousands, millions, shifted in quiet, controlled installments over six years through four different shell accounts. One traced cleanly into a property holding company, as if it had always been meant to end there.

The Carver Ridge villa. Another line tied neatly to a vehicle leasing account, three luxury cars, all accounted for in the same quiet, deliberate way.

Then she saw the third shell account, and something in her went still.

Celine M. Trust Fund,  established 2023.

Amber leaned back in his chair, eyes fixed on the screen, not blinking, not moving, as the name settled into her like something she couldn’t immediately decide how to survive.

2023, Three years ago. The same year Archer told her the company was in a “growth phase” and they needed to be careful with personal spending. The same year she had held off replacing the boutique’s lighting because he said they had to be sensible.

She had been sensible. She had been careful.

And all that time, he had been building a trust fund.

The memory hit her without warning, sharp and sudden, the way old things sometimes resurfaced when she least expected them.

Six years ago, Amber, sat across from her bank manager, a neat folder of inheritance documents spread between them, everything her father had left her. Fifteen million dollars. 

Her father’s entire life investments, left to her alone, along with a letter that had stayed with her longer than anything else he ever gave her. “Don't keep the money. It will vanish. Build a legacy. A well-functional business. Amber. Something yours.”

The ‘yours’ made more sense to her now, lest she'd definitely regret it. 

She had been dating Archer for a year by then. He had a business plan, a small rented office, and a kind of certainty about himself that felt almost magnetic to her at the time, like he already knew where he was going, even if no one else could see it yet.

He had spread his pitch documents across her apartment floor, talking like he could already see the future laid out in front of him. He sold her a vision, Calloway Global Enterprises, a consulting and investment firm that would start small but grow into something powerful, something respected.

He told her he only needed seed capital, about ten million dollars to launch abd two million dollars for the post-launching expenses. 

She gave him twelve million dollars. Almost all of her father's investment. 

Her eyes flashed red. Danger. 

“He'll vomit all of them.” She vowed. 

The memory of that day stayed with her, the way the pen felt too light in her hand, the finality of the transfer form, and the brief flicker in Archer’s face when he saw it go through, like something in him had quietly settled, as if the future had just been secured.

That look, overwhelmed, grateful, almost certain. He had pulled her into his arms right there, holding her like she had just changed his life. “I will make this worth everything, baby. I promise you.”

And she had believed him. Completely. Without hesitation. She wouldn't have created her business at all if not for her dad's specific advice.

Now she sat in his chair, staring at the screen, understanding in a slow, sickening way that he had taken her father’s inheritance and turned it into something far larger than either of them had ever spoken about out loud, a billion-dollar company built on money that had never truly been his.

And somewhere along the way, he had stopped seeing her as anything essential.

She wasn’t a partner anymore, or even a witness to what he was building. Just background. Something placed neatly in the life he designed, useful in its presence, easy to ignore in its absence. Furniture.

Amber sat in his chair for a long time after that.

She didn’t cry. She had already spent her crying yesterday, alone in the stockroom where no one could see her fall apart. What was left now  the vengeful wife without pity. 

She took photographs of every relevant document on her phone, one by one, steady-handed. Then she closed each tab exactly as she had found it. 

She logged out, cleared the browser history, and restored everything to its original silence, as if she had never been there at all.

After that, she went upstairs. She dressed with care. Then she put on her full face, controlled, composed, and perfectly intact.

By the time she walked into Berx Fashion  at half past nine, she looked like a woman having a perfectly ordinary Thursday.

Nothing in her posture gave anything away. Not the night that had shifted something irreversible, not the documents she had seen.

To anyone watching, she was exactly what she had always been.

Darla was already inside, working the new arrivals rack with a kind of sharp, restless energy that said she hadn’t slept much, and that she had spent most of the night thinking about yesterday.

“Office,” Amber said as she walked past, her voice calm and low.

Darla didn’t ask anything. She simply stepped away from the rack at once and followed.

In the back office, Amber shut the door behind them, moved to the desk, and sat down. Without a word, she set her phone down between them and unlocked it.

She opened the photos of the financial documents and turned the screen toward Darla.

Darla leaned in. She looked. Then she began to scroll, slowly at first, then more deliberately, as if the meaning needed time to catch up with what her eyes were seeing. Her jaw tightened. She kept scrolling.

Finally, her hand rose and pressed flat against her mouth.

She pushed the phone back onto the desk like it had burned her. “He built a trust fund for her. With your father’s money.”

Darla clenched her teeth.

“The man took your inheritance, built an empire with it, and has been running a second household for the past five years. Boss, we need to work with these.”

Amber didn’t respond at first. She just sat there, still and unreadable.