I Froze the Shares Before He Could Give Them Away Chapter 04

I Froze the Shares Before He Could Give Them Away Chapter 04

The trending hashtag was at the top: #Vance Matriarch Forces 5-Year-Old to Undergo Blood Test.#

The video was edited very cleverly.

They cut out the Deed of Gift on the screen, cut out my mother-in-law forcing me to sign, and left only Chloe crying, Leo calling for his dad, and me demanding a DNA test.

The comments were a mess of vitriol.

[If you can’t conceive, go get treatment. Why bully a child?]

[The wives of the elite are truly terrifying.]

[The Vances haven’t even divorced her, yet she still wants to hoard the shares. No wonder the man has someone else on the side.]

I read them one by one.

The cold white glow of the phone screen made my wedding ring shine.

In my last life, I was so bullied by these words that I didn’t dare leave the house. I would wait until the hallway was silent before grabbing my delivery food from the door. The sound of the door lock clicking would echo three times every night because the Vances had changed the code, afraid I’d come back.

In this life, I saved the screenshots by timestamp and forwarded them to Margaret Thorne.

Margaret replied: “Evidence of public opinion manipulation has been preserved. The opposing party is suspected of using a minor for commercial hype; we can include this in the filing.”

I replied: “Wait for them to give it one more push.”

Margaret sent back only two words: “Understood.”

At eleven o’clock that night, Richard came home.

He hadn’t been back to this house in a long time.

I sat in the living room with only one lamp on. My mother’s brooch was on the table, next to a copy of that infertility diagnosis.

Richard saw the diagnosis, and his expression soured.

“Why are you digging this up?”

I said, “A follow-up.”

“It’s not necessary.” He took off his coat. “The result won’t change.”

“Are you so sure?”

He didn’t answer, walking to the bar to pour a drink.

I looked at his back.

During seven years of marriage, I once thought his coldness was just his personality.

He was busy, so I didn’t disturb him. He didn’t like me asking about company matters, so I learned to be a quiet Mrs. Vance. When his mother pressured us for a child, I went to the hospital for check-ups alone, enduring the cold instruments and the long waits for my number to be called.

But in my last life, before I died, I heard Chloe say with her own eyes that my check-up reports were fake from the very beginning.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t conceive.

It was that they didn’t want me to.

Because once I had a child, the protective clauses in my mother’s trust against “malicious misappropriation of marital assets” would be much harder to bypass. The Vances wanted my money, not my bloodline.

Richard took a sip of his drink.

“Eleanor, the equity freeze is only temporary. Don’t think hiring a lawyer will change anything.”

“And what do you plan to do?”

He turned around.

“Tomorrow, Arthur Brooks will supplement a complete report. The Board will also issue a resolution proving that those shares were generated by the management of Vance Enterprises. If you stop now, I can still save your reputation.”

“Save my reputation?”

“I wasn’t the one who leaked it to the press,” he said.

I looked at him.

“But you didn’t take it down either.”

He frowned.

“Chloe was just too scared. It’s not easy for a woman to raise a child alone.”

I suddenly found it hilarious.

Everyone who harmed me had it “not easy.”

My mother-in-law had it not easy because the Vance family needed an heir.

Chloe had it not easy because she was seeking a status for her child.

Richard had it not easy because he had to balance his family and the company.

Only I was supposed to have it easy. So “easy” that I should hand over the money my mother left me, my seven-year marriage, and my last bit of dignity with both hands.

I pushed the diagnosis toward him.

“This report—I’m going to re-investigate it.”

Richard’s eyes turned cold.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“I certainly would.”

He set his glass down; the base hit the table with a heavy thud.

“Eleanor, don’t push me.”

I looked at him.

“And don’t you stop.”

He didn’t understand.

But Arthur Brooks did.

The next morning, Margaret sent me a background alert.

“Someone in the Vance financial system tried to scrub three entry records from seven years ago. The account permissions belong to Arthur Brooks.”

I stared at those three amounts.

$240 million.

$180 million.

$310 million.

Every single one was life-saving capital injected into Vance Enterprises by my mother’s trust through an offshore escrow account.

In my last life, Richard relied on these three sums to turn the company around. The Vances told the world that the dowager had sold the ancestral estate to save the company. But I later found out that the so-called “ancestral estate” had been mortgaged to the bank years prior and was worth nothing.

“Keep the digital trail,” I said.

Margaret reminded me: “The more he deletes, the clearer his intent to maliciously transfer assets becomes. But you will have to endure the public pressure.”

I looked out the window.

The media was already camping outside the Vance estate.

Someone was holding a sign calling me a “toxic woman.”

The white paper of the sign was soaked by the rain, the black ink bleeding out like the blood on the steps in my last life.

I said, “I’ve endured it once already.”