Chapter 5 - The Encrypted Server
For six months, I lived a dangerous double life. By day, I played the role of the docile, broken wife. But in the dead of night, while Ethan slept soundly beside me, the forensic accountant woke up. I began a meticulous operation to dismantle him.
I started copying bank records, financial statements, and email logs, taking photographs of every document he foolishly left on his home office desk. I also began documenting my physical reality. Every time he left a mark on me, I locked myself in the bathroom, took high-resolution photos of the bruises, and uploaded them to an encrypted, offshore folder.
There was only one other person who had the password: my older brother, Liam. Liam was the chief of emergency medicine at Riverside Hospital. He was the only family I had left, and the only person who saw through Ethan’s polished exterior.
Liam had suspected the abuse early on. The first time he saw finger-shaped bruises fading on my wrist at a family dinner, he had cornered me in the kitchen, begging me to run. "I have the money. I can get you out tonight," he had pleaded.
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"I can't just run," I had whispered back, terrified Ethan would overhear. "He’ll hunt me down. He’ll destroy us both. I need evidence he can’t explain away."
Liam had gripped my hands, his eyes dark with fear. "You may not survive long enough to collect it."
