Chapter 6 - The Cold Counsel
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The very next morning, the moment Julian’s car pulled out of the driveway and disappeared down our suburban street, I picked up my phone. I didn't call my sister, and I didn't call my best friend to cry. I called Rebecca Shaw, the fiercely pragmatic, no-nonsense family attorney who had ruthlessly and efficiently handled my late mother’s complicated estate two years prior.
I sat at the kitchen table, staring at the empty chair where Julian had sat hours before. My hands shook so violently I could barely hold the phone to my ear as I laid out the facts. I told Rebecca everything—about the name Isabel, the deleted pictures, the Aspen messages, the elaborate Tokyo fabrication, and the terrifying, growing certainty that my husband of five years was actively planning to spend Christmas morning in the arms of his mistress.
I expected Rebecca to offer sympathy, or perhaps tell me to hire a private investigator to confront him at the airport. Instead, her voice was as cold and sharp as cracked ice.
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“Claire, listen to me very carefully,” Rebecca instructed. “Do not scream. Do not expose him. Do not send angry texts, and whatever you do, do not touch the joint bank accounts yet. If you are leaving him, every single decision you make from this second forward must come from a place of protecting Harrison and securing your financial future, rather than a desire to punish Julian. Vengeance feels good for ten minutes; strategy secures your life for the next twenty years.”
Her clinical, emotionless advice was a bucket of ice water to the face. It shocked me out of my grief and activated a primal survival instinct I didn't know I possessed.
