I felt a strange and biting coldness wash over my back as I realized the depth of the situation. Later that night, after Mark had fallen into a deep sleep, I crept into his home office and opened his laptop. He was so arrogant that he had never bothered to change his security settings and used his fingerprint for everything.
I carefully took his hand while he was snoring and pressed his finger against the keyboard sensor to unlock the screen. What I found within his private files left me completely breathless and shaking with rage. There were emails from supposed investors that did not actually exist and messages where he referred to my father as the old man.
I found folders with titles like “Clean Exit” and “Temporary Control” that detailed exactly how he would drain our accounts. There was even a draft for a divorce petition that claimed I suffered from emotional instability. He wanted to use my grief over my mother’s death to prove that I was unfit to manage my own inheritance.
However, that was not even the most heartbreaking thing I discovered during my late night search. I found a hidden folder containing digital copies of medical receipts and appointments. There were prenatal consultations at an expensive private hospital and images of ultrasounds showing a growing child.
Everything had been paid for using a business credit card that was linked to my father’s secondary company accounts. Mark was not just deceiving me and planning to leave me for my best friend. He was actively using my family’s hard earned money to fund the lifestyle and medical care of his mistress.
