Chapter 16 - The Smear Campaign
Eric slept in the guest room that night. He left at 6:00 AM the next morning without saying a word. Two hours later, he texted me: You’ve destroyed everything.
I blocked his number.
By Sunday, the fallout had begun. Gloria, safely back in West Virginia, launched a full-scale digital war. She posted long, rambling Facebook statuses claiming I was mentally unstable. She wrote that I had thrown boiling water on her because I was jealous of Eric’s "massive success" on Wall Street.
Brittany tagged along, posting vague TikToks about "surviving toxic, wealthy narcissists."
My phone blew up with messages from confused extended family members and mutual friends. I didn’t respond to a single one. Let them talk. I was busy preparing for the real war.
On Monday, Eric made the dumbest mistake of his life. He went to his HR department.
He preemptively told them he was going through a nasty divorce and claimed I might try to "sabotage" his career by lying to them. He wanted to get ahead of the narrative.
But HR departments don't care about personal drama. They care about liability. Eric’s bizarre preemptive strike triggered a routine internal audit of his accounts, just to ensure he wasn’t a risk.
That audit uncovered the corporate credit card.
It turned out Eric hadn't just been using my money to fund his fake millionaire lifestyle. When I cut him off from the joint accounts, he had started charging personal expenses to his company card.
Thousands of dollars in steak dinners with Gloria, luxury car services, and even the hotel room he put his mother and sister in after I kicked them out.
On Thursday afternoon, Eric was escorted out of his office building by security. He was fired with cause, stripped of his severance, and threatened with criminal fraud charges by the firm.
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He had lost the apartment, the wife, the money, and now, the job. The house of cards had completely collapsed.
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