Dead Wife Walking Chapter 07

Dead Wife Walking Chapter 07

The forensic audit was damning.

Serena hadn’t just been skimming from the Blackwell Foundation – she’d

been running an elaborate network of shell companies, siphoning funds meant

for children’s hospitals and disaster relief into her personal accounts.

Two point three million dollars. Over two years.

Mark laid it all out on the conference table, document by document, while

Ethan sat in silence, his expression carved from stone.

“Vivian found all of this,” Mark said quietly. “The initial evidence on the USB

drive? She gathered it herself. Bank statements, transaction records, email

screenshots. She must have spent months piecing it together.”

I had.

It started by accident – a misfiled receipt I found while organizing Ethan’s

study. A payment to a company I didn’t recognize. Curiosity turned to

suspicion, suspicion turned to research, and research turned to horror.

Serena wasn’t just a homewrecker. She was a thief. And the people she was stealing from were the most vulnerable – the very people the Blackwell Foundation existed to protect.

I’d wanted to tell Ethan. Of course I had. But I knew exactly how that conversation would go:

*”Ethan, Serena is embezzling from your foundation.”*

*”Stop trying to sabotage her, Vivian. I’m not entertaining your jealousy.”*

So instead, I documented everything. Quietly. Meticulously. And I put it on

that USB drive, knowing that even if he didn’t believe me while I was alive, the evidence would speak for itself after I was gone.

“There’s something else,” Mark said, pulling up one final document. “Three months ago, Vivian sent an anonymous tip to the Foundation’s external auditors. She flagged specific transactions. The auditors dismissed it because – and I quote – ‘The complaint appeared to originate from a disgruntled party

with a personal vendetta.”

“Who overruled the audit?” Ethan’s voice was lethally quiet.

Mark hesitated. “You did, sir. Serena told you someone was trying to ‘attack’

the Foundation, and you personally called the auditors and told them to drop

it.”

The room went silent.

I remembered that day. I’d been sitting in my room, refreshing my email, waiting for confirmation that the auditors had launched an investigation. Instead, I received a form rejection. Case closed. Insufficient grounds.

I’d stared at that email for twenty minutes, then calmly closed my laptop, walked to the bathroom, and threw up.

Not from the chemo. From the futility.

Ethan stood. His chair scraped against the floor with a harsh, grating sound. “Get the lawyers. I want criminal charges filed against Serena Lane by end of day. Freeze every account she’s touched. And Mark-”

“Sir?”

“Find out which auditor dismissed Vivian’s complaint. Fire them.”

“Already done, sir.”

Ethan looked at his assistant – really looked at him – for what might have been the first time. “You knew her better than I did, didn’t you?”

Mark’s composure wavered. “She was kind to everyone, sir. Even people

who didn’t deserve it.”

The implication was clear. Ethan absorbed the blow without flinching. He’d

earned it.

The news broke within forty-eight hours. BLACKWELL FOUNDATION

SCANDAL: CEO’S MISTRESS EMBEZZLES MILLIONS. Every major outlet ran the story. Serena’s face was plastered across every screen, every feed, every front page.

She tried calling Ethan. Thirty-seven times in the first day alone. He didn’t

answer.

She showed up at the mansion. Security turned her away.

She sent a tearful video message: *”Ethan, please, you know me. This is all a misunderstanding. That woman poisoned you against me even from the grave

_”*

He watched three seconds of it before deleting the message and blocking

her number.

I stood behind him, watching his jaw clench. ‘So now you believe the dead woman over the living one. Funny how that works!’

But the public fallout was nothing compared to what happened next.

Someone I suspect Mark, though I couldn’t prove it – leaked a portion of my video diaries to a journalist. Not the deeply personal entries about my illness or my marriage. Just the ones where I discussed the Foundation’s finances, my discoveries about Serena’s scheme, and my failed attempts to

report it.

The internet exploded.

Within hours, I was no longer “the contract wife who died quietly.” I became

a symbol – the whistleblower who was ignored, the woman who fought

corruption while fighting cancer, the wife who tried to protect a family that

never protected her.

#JusticeForVivian trended for three consecutive days.

My publishing colleagues released a statement revealing that I’d been

working part-time as an editor despite my illness, donating half my meager

salary to the same children’s hospitals Serena had been stealing from.

Mrs. Chen, my neighbor, gave a tearful interview describing how I’d helped

her navigate her husband’s insurance paperwork while I was undergoing

chemotherapy.

And Dr. Patel published an open letter about the healthcare system’s failure

to protect patients without financial support, using my case as an example —

with my prior written consent, which I’d given him months before my death.

I watched it all unfold from my strange, incorporeal perch beside Ethan’s

shoulder.

The world was mourning me. Celebrating me. Fighting for me.

And the man who should have done all of those things was sitting alone in

his study, watching my video diaries on repeat, pausing on every frame where I

smiled.

“Why are you still smiling?” he muttered at the screen, his voice wrecked. “How could you still smile?”

–

I looked at my own face on that screen – thin, pale, dying and I remembered exactly why I was smiling in that particular clip.

It was because earlier that day, Ethan had left his coffee mug in the sink. instead of on the counter, which meant he’d actually walked into the kitchen. I’d taken it as a sign that maybe, just maybe, he was starting to feel at home.

That’s how low the bar was. A coffee mug in a sink. And I’d smiled about it.

‘I was so stupid,’ I thought.

But even now, watching him break apart, I couldn’t bring myself to fully hate

him.

And that made me angrier than anything else.