I stared at her.
“Did you know Lily was dying?”
She covered her mouth as tears spilled over.
“Not at first. He told me they’d been divorced for a year. He said she had abandoned him. I didn’t know about the cancer until I saw a message on his phone in Nassau. When I confronted him, he laughed.”
My stomach hardened.
“What did he say?”
“He said the policy would clear soon. He said then we’d be rich.”
I studied her.
Guilt has a posture. Hers was real.
“If you are sorry,” I said, “prove it.”
She reached into her purse and handed me a thick envelope.
“I left him when we got back,” she whispered. “I copied everything I could.”
Inside were screenshots, banking records, expense reports, and a small USB drive.
“There’s a recording,” she said. “He was drunk at the resort. He didn’t know my phone was recording. Use it.”
Nathan and I listened to the file in my hotel room that evening.
Behind Colin’s voice were waves, music, and laughter.
“Don’t worry about the credit card bill,” he slurred. “Once Lily’s policy pays out, we’ll have half a million. I timed it perfectly. She’s too weak to change anything.”
Nathan leaned back slowly.
“That,” he said, “is the bullet.”
Within hours, the insurance company froze Colin’s claim. Nathan filed fraud concerns, financial exploitation allegations, and a civil case challenging every transfer and document Colin had engineered.
He also contacted Colin’s firm.
The records Marissa provided showed that Colin had billed parts of his Bahamas affair trip as client development expenses.
His employer suspended him immediately.
His clients were reassigned.
His accounts were audited.
Men like Colin rarely fall gracefully. They claw at everything on the way down.
His attorney demanded emergency mediation and threatened to sue me for defamation.
Nathan smiled when he heard that.
“He’s scared,” he said. “Good.”
