Chapter 8 - He Had Signed the Divorce Papers Before I Ever Came Home
The shareholder meeting ended with Victor and Jang being escorted out separately.
But I barely noticed.
Three words kept repeating in my mind.
The divorce papers.
Shiaoza waited in my office afterward.
He placed an envelope on the desk.
“I signed them six weeks ago.”
I didn’t touch it.
“Why?”
“Because I was going to tell you everything.”
“Everything?”
“Jang. Victor. Northstar. The money.”
“And divorce me?”
He looked down.
“I thought once you knew what I’d done, you would never forgive me.”
“So you decided for me.”
“Yes.”
I laughed softly.
“That seems to be your favorite habit.”
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you file?”
“Cowardice.”
At least he didn’t lie.
“I kept waiting for the right moment.”
“There is no right moment to tell your wife you’ve been sleeping with your secretary.”
“I know.”
I opened the envelope.
His signature was there.
Mine was blank.
For ten years, I had imagined that if my marriage ever ended, there would be screaming.
Maybe broken dishes.
Maybe accusations.
Instead, there was paper.
Quiet paper.
I signed.
His breath caught.
“You don’t have to do that today.”
“Yes, I do.”
He stared at my signature.
Then nodded.
A tear rolled down his face.
I hated that part of me still wanted to comfort him.
Love doesn’t disappear simply because someone becomes undeserving of it.
Sometimes it remains after trust is gone.
That is what makes betrayal so painful.
“I loved you,” I said.
He looked at me.
“I still love you.”
“That doesn’t fix anything.”
“I know.”
I pushed the papers toward him.
“I hope someday you become the man you kept pretending to be.”
Then I walked away.
The following months were brutal.
Victor was indicted on fraud, conspiracy, forgery, and financial crimes.
Jang accepted a cooperation agreement.
She returned most of the assets she had purchased with stolen money.
The watch was recovered too.
I didn’t want it.
I sold it at auction and used the money to create an employee emergency fund.
That felt better.
Shiaoza resigned before the board could remove him.
He cooperated fully with investigators.
Because he had concealed transactions, he faced consequences too.
No prison.
But fines.
Loss of his executive position.
Public disgrace.
And divorce.
For the first time in my adult life, I lived alone.
At first, the silence frightened me.
Then it healed me.
I started arriving at headquarters at seven each morning.
Not because I needed to.
Because I liked watching the building wake up.
We removed the executive elevator restrictions permanently.
We established anonymous reporting.
We audited promotions.
We discovered twenty-seven employees who had been unfairly denied advancement because they had crossed Jang.
Mei Lau was one of them.
Six months after my first day, I promoted her to Director of Operations.
She cried when I told her.
“I don’t deserve this because I helped you that morning.”
“You’re not getting it because you helped me.”
I slid her performance reviews across the desk.
“You’re getting it because you earned it three years ago.”
She stared at the papers.
Then laughed through her tears.
That became one of my favorite moments as CEO.
The company changed.
Slowly.
Then quickly.
People stopped lowering their voices when executives passed.
Employees used the same elevators.
Managers began eating in the common cafeteria again.
Profits increased.
Turnover dropped.
And one year after Victor tried to remove me, the company reported its strongest performance in seventeen years.
I thought that was the end of the story.
It wasn’t.
Because on the anniversary of my first day as CEO, I stepped into the executive elevator at 7:12 in the morning.
Someone was already inside.
Shiaoza.
He looked older.
Thinner.
Different.
And in his hands was a small white box.
My first thought was absurd.
Another watch.
Then he said:
“I’m not here to ask you to take me back.”
The elevator doors closed.
I looked at the box.
“Then why are you here?”
May you like
He held it toward me.
“Because I finally found what your father wanted you to have.”
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