Her own voice filled the room.
“You’ll eat when I decide you’ve earned it.”
Mom flinched beside me, and Wendy suddenly lunged toward the island as if grabbing my phone could somehow erase everything already preserved elsewhere. The lead officer immediately stepped between her and the device.
“Don’t do that, ma’am.”
Wendy’s composure collapsed as she demanded that everyone leave her property. Before she could continue, my attorney arrived through the still-open front door carrying his briefcase.
“This is my private property! Get out of my house!”
My attorney calmly corrected her. The residence was held by the Luca Mercer Separate Property Trust, which had been established two years before our marriage, so Wendy’s assumption that the house automatically belonged equally to both of us had never been accurate.
He also explained that an emergency petition had already been filed to freeze assets connected to Mom’s stolen retirement money. The corporate account belonging to VLM Lifestyle Holdings had been legally restricted while investigators examined the transfers.
Wendy stared at me in disbelief, but I had never hidden the structure of my premarital finances from her. She simply hadn’t bothered reading documents unless she thought they could immediately benefit her.
The bank fraud specialist placed his folder on the counter and explained what investigators had already uncovered. They had traced the secondary transfers from Mom’s retirement account and discovered that a significant portion of the money had financed luxury purchases and a non-refundable application for an expensive downtown condominium.
I looked directly at Wendy.
“A condominium?”
At that point, she finally abandoned the innocent-wife act. Her expression hardened, and the contempt she had hidden behind excuses came out without restraint.
“I was leaving you anyway, Luca. You’re boring.”
“Good. That saves us an argument in court.”
My attorney stepped forward and handed Wendy another stack of papers. They included the divorce petition and a temporary restraining order requiring her to leave the property immediately.
The cruelty toward Mom, the financial records, the forged documents, and Wendy’s behavior that morning gave investigators an expanding body of evidence. Most importantly, the $186,000 taken from Mom’s retirement savings had never belonged to Wendy and couldn’t simply be treated as marital property during a divorce.
Wendy began accusing me of setting a trap for her. She insisted I had deliberately waited until she made mistakes so I could destroy her life, but Mom finally stepped forward from the hallway.
