PART 2: The Secret Room
The big house became completely quiet. Giselle took off her yellow gloves and put them by the sink. She washed her hands, dried them, and walked down the hall to the wine room. Behind a wall of old wine bottles was a hidden door. Giselle pressed her thumb against a tiny scanner, and the door opened to reveal a hidden elevator. She stepped inside and went down under the house.
Down here, she was no longer the weak wife Philip knew. The secret room had fast computers, legal papers, and special phone lines connected directly to her main offices in San Francisco, Chicago, Miami, and Atlanta. Giselle walked to her big desk and picked up a green phone. She called Herman Croft, her head lawyer.
He picked up on the first ring. “Hello, Ms. Prescott.”
Only a few people knew her real full name.
“Is everything ready for tonight?” Giselle asked.
“Yes, the papers are ready, the managers are seated, and the check on his money is done,” Herman said.
Giselle looked at a stain on her plain shirt. “Move Philip’s table right to the front of the stage.”
Herman paused. “He will think our company is about to give him a huge business deal.”
“That is what I want him to think,” she said.
“What about the audit papers?” Herman asked.
Giselle closed her eyes. For eight months, her team had found out that Philip was stealing money, changing contracts, and sending cash to a fake company run by Linda. Herman wanted to stop him long ago, but Rosalind had waited because she still hoped Philip was a good man. But that hope died when he kissed Linda.
“Show all the papers to everyone,” Giselle said.
“Even the secret voice recordings?”
“Yes, everything.”
At the end of the room, another door opened to a dressing room. A blue dress sat on a frame, and next to it was a rich diamond necklace from her grandmother, Evelyn Prescott. Her grandmother had built the family company from scratch. Giselle took over the business when she was twenty-nine.
She had hidden her money from Philip when they met because she wanted a man to love her for who she was, not for her cash. She told him she was just a small financial worker. She kept her small apartment and drove an old car because she liked a simple life. Philip used to say that made her special. But after they got married, he and his family started treating her like trash because she seemed poor.
In secret, Giselle had paid for Philip’s first big real estate build. She had saved his company twice when he almost went broke. She paid off Fiona’s huge credit card debt, gave Lola money for a failed makeup business, and paid for Philip’s father, Arthur, to get a big heart operation.
The Clayton family thought Philip made all the money because he was smart. But really, Giselle was paying for their whole life. She never asked them to say thank you. She just wanted them to be nice to her when they thought she had nothing. Tonight, they showed her who they really were.
