PART 2
The next morning, I came back to the house with my lawyer, a notary, and four strong security guards. The big tent on the lawn was completely ruined by the heavy rain last night, with broken flowers floating in dirty water.
Spencer and Evelyn were sitting inside the living room. Penelope did not come down to see us.
“You have one hour to pack your clothes and leave,” Attorney Miller said, putting official papers on the table. “This house belongs to Apex Holdings. Mr. Spencer Salgado signed a paper saying he could live here only if he followed our financial rules, which he broke yesterday.”
Spencer picked up the papers and his face went white. “This is wrong! My name is on the house papers!”
“You are just a borrower,” I said calmly. “My company owns the property and can take it back anytime. You wanted to live in a big house you could not buy yourself. I let you stay here, but I never gave it to you for free.”
Evelyn tried to jump at me angrily, but two security guards stopped her immediately.
“You are a bad woman! You planned this whole trap since the day you married my son!” she screamed.
“No, Evelyn. I only protected what I built with my own money. You were the one who planned to replace me the moment I went on a business trip,” I replied.
While they were packing their bags and yelling, Spencer kept saying that Penelope and her rich father would save his company. He said this bad moment would pass quickly and he would soon buy a much bigger house in Key Biscayne.
He did not know that I already knew the whole truth.
That afternoon, sitting in my private apartment on Brickell Avenue, I received a report from a private detective I hired weeks ago after seeing strange money movements in Spencer’s company bank account.
Penelope was not rich at all, and her real name was not even Penelope. Her real name was Brenda Morales. She used to work in night bars and tried to get close to men who liked to show off their money.
The man she called her rich father was just a simple actor hired for the day. The gold bracelet she gave Evelyn was just cheap metal, and the baby photo she showed everyone was taken from the internet.
Even worse, Brenda had a boyfriend who was a local singer, and she was secretly sending him money from Spencer’s company account.
I called Spencer right away.
“Before you trust your new wife, you should take her to a doctor and check if that baby photo is real,” I said on the phone.
He got angry and shouted back, “You are just jealous because Brenda can give me a real family!”
“You should also check the money you sent out to buy fancy apartments, trips, and jewelry,” I added. “You used the money that belonged to my company’s building projects.”
There was complete silence on the line. “How do you know about that?” he asked, his voice shaking.
“Because all those paper reports end up on my desk every day,” I said.
Spencer gave a nervous laugh. “You are just a simple office worker. Stop lying to me.”
“Tomorrow at ten o’clock, come to the Apex Holdings office building downtown. Ask to see the top boss, bring your project papers, and explain where the missing money went,” I told him.
The next morning, Spencer walked angrily into our big office building on the forty-second floor. He shouted at the receptionist, demanding to go inside right away and saying he was a very important boss who should not be kept waiting.
But when the big boardroom doors opened, he stopped completely when he saw me sitting at the head of the big table under the company sign.
On the table in front of me were three folders: one to end his work contracts, one showing all the money he stole, and one legal paper ready to send to the police.
Spencer dropped his bag on the floor. “Laura… are you really the top boss here?”
I stood up and looked at him. “The woman you looked down on is the only reason you could ever call yourself a businessman.”
I pushed the first folder toward him. As he read the pages, his face turned completely pale, but the worst truth was still waiting for him.
