Chapter 5
By noon, the story was all over Chicago.
*“BILLIONAIRE BAKER EXPOSES EMBEZZLING HUSBAND.”*
*“SUMMIT FOUNDER UNMASKS SELF-MADE MAN AS FRAUD.”*
Hannah’s phone would not stop ringing.
Reporters. Investors. Old friends she hadn’t spoken to in years.
She turned it off.
She needed to think.
She was sitting in the CEO office—her office now, at least temporarily—when Clara walked in with a thick stack of papers.
“Our response to the divorce petition,” Clara said, dropping it on the desk. “I filed it twenty minutes ago. And I attached everything—the audit, the call logs, the medical records, the photos of him looting the house. The judge is going to hate him.”
“Good,” Hannah said.
“There’s something else,” Clara said, sitting down. “Brandon has hired Daniel Voss.”
Hannah’s stomach dropped.
Daniel Voss.
The most notorious divorce attorney in the state.
He didn’t fight fair. He dug up dirt. He leaked to the press. He destroyed reputations. He once got a man acquitted of domestic violence by convincing the jury his wife had “provoked” him by “nagging too much.”
“How the hell can he afford Voss?” Hannah asked. “He’s broke. I froze all the accounts.”
“Evelyn took out a second mortgage on her condo in Florida,” Clara said. “And Voss is working on contingency—thirty percent of whatever he wins from you. He sees a billionaire wife. He thinks he’s hit the jackpot.”
Hannah stood up and walked to the window.
“What’s Voss’s play?”
“Same as always,” Clara said. “He’s not going to fight the facts. He can’t—the audit is bulletproof. Instead, he’s going to make this about you. He’s going to paint you as a manipulative, controlling liar who tricked poor innocent Brandon into marriage. He’ll say you hid your identity to trap him. He’ll say you enjoyed watching him struggle while you secretly controlled everything. He’ll call it ‘financial abuse’ and ‘psychological torture.’ And he’ll ask the jury for fifty million dollars in ‘damages.’”
“Fifty million?”
“Voss thinks big. And he’s good. Really good. Juries eat up his ‘poor little guy against the rich bitch’ routine. Hannah, this could get ugly. Really ugly. He’s going to dig into every part of your life. Your parents’ divorce when you were sixteen. That time you checked yourself into a clinic for burnout in 2018. Your dating history. Everything.”
“Let him,” Hannah said.
Clara blinked.
“Excuse me?”
“I said let him dig,” Hannah repeated. “I have nothing to hide. My parents’ divorce was public record. The burnout was after I sold my first company—I worked myself into the hospital. I’m not ashamed of any of it. And as for ‘tricking’ Brandon? I didn’t trick him. I just didn’t advertise my net worth on our first date. He assumed I was poor because I baked bread for a living. That’s on him, not me.”
Clara smiled.
“I love your confidence. But Voss has a trick up his sleeve. He’s going to call Evelyn as his star witness. She’s going to testify that you abused her for three years. That you starved her. That you hit her. That you made her life a living hell.”
Hannah laughed.
“Evelyn? The woman who ate three of my muffins for breakfast every morning? Who I drove to every doctor’s appointment? Who I bought new teeth for?”
“Juries love old ladies, Hannah. Especially crying old ladies. If Voss can get her to tell a good enough story, and if he can make you look cold and unfeeling on the stand… a jury might just give him something. Not fifty million. But maybe five. Maybe ten. Enough to ruin your reputation forever.”
Hannah thought for a minute.
“Then we fight fire with fire.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Evelyn’s background. Run it. Everything. Arrests. Lawsuits. Debts. That Florida condo—when did she buy it? How did she pay for it? And all those women Brandon was seeing—find them. Every single one. I want statements. I want them under oath. If Voss wants to put on a show, we’ll give Chicago the trial of the century.”
Clara stood up, already typing on her phone.
“I’ll get the team on it today.”
She left.
Hannah sat back down.
She closed her eyes.
She thought about Brandon.
He was probably sitting in some cheap motel room right now with his mother, plotting. Voss was probably telling him exactly what to say, exactly how to act, exactly what tears to cry.
They thought they could destroy her.
They had no idea who they were dealing with.
Two weeks later.
The bakery was busier than ever.
Lines stretched around the block.
People didn’t just come for the croissants—they came to see her.
The Billionaire Baker.
Hannah was behind the counter, covered in flour, when the bell above the door rang.
She looked up.
A woman was standing there. Mid-thirties. Beautiful. Nervous.
“Can I help you?” Hannah asked.
The woman stepped forward.
“I’m Jessica Miller,” she whispered. “I… I was with Brandon Cole. For two years. I just saw the news. And I need to talk to you.”
Hannah wiped her hands on her apron.
“Come with me.”
She led Jessica to the small office in the back.
They sat across from each other.
Jessica was twisting a ring on her finger.
“I didn’t know he was married,” she said immediately. “I swear to God. He told me he was single. He told me his wife had died in a car crash. He showed me fake obituaries. I believed him. For two years, I believed him.”
She started crying.
“He told me he was going to marry me. That we were going to move to Italy. I quit my job for him. I had an abortion because he said he ‘wasn’t ready to be a dad yet.’ And then I saw the news yesterday. And I realized it was all lies. Everything.”
Hannah reached across the table and took her hand.
“I believe you,” she said.
Jessica looked up, surprised.
“You do? You’re not angry at me?”
“Angry at you?” Hannah shook her head. “Jessica, you were his victim too. He lied to you. He used you. The only person I’m angry at is him. And his mother. She knew about all of you. She helped him cover it up. She thought it was ‘funny’ that he had ‘side dishes.’”
Jessica’s eyes went wide.
“She knew?”
“Every single one,” Hannah said. “She even helped him pick out anniversary gifts for me while he was with you. Said it kept him ‘happy and relaxed’ at home.”
Jessica wiped her eyes.
“I want to help you,” she said. “I have text messages. Thousands of them. Hotel receipts he sent me. Photos. And I know about the others. There’s a girl named Tiffany who works at the Nordstrom in Oakbrook. And a waitress at the Capital Grille. And a college student from Northwestern. He was seeing all of us at the same time. We all thought we were the only one.”
Hannah’s mind was racing.
This was bigger than she thought.
“Jessica… would you be willing to testify in court? Under oath? About everything he did to you?”
Jessica didn’t hesitate.
“Absolutely. I want to destroy him the way he destroyed me.”
“Good,” Hannah said. “Because you’re not the only one. And when we’re done, Brandon Cole is never going to be able to lie to another woman again.”
That same afternoon, across town in a run-down motel on Cicero Avenue, Brandon was pacing the room.
Evelyn was sitting on the bed, eating chips out of a bag.
The place smelled like cigarette smoke and mildew.
They had lost everything.
The Highland Park house was frozen by the court.
The cars were repossessed.
All their bank accounts were seized.
The Summit employees Brandon had hired—his cousin, his nephew, his friends—had all been fired too. None of them would return his calls.
Daniel Voss, their lawyer, was sitting at the rickety table, going through papers.
“Brandon, you have to listen to me,” Voss said. “This Jessica Miller woman? She just contacted Hannah’s attorney. She’s going to testify. And my sources say there are at least three more women ready to join her. This is bad.”
Brandon kicked the wall.
“THOSE BITCHES! THEY’RE JUST DOING THIS FOR MONEY!”
“Calm down,” Voss said. “We can still win. But we have to change strategy. The embezzlement is a problem. The women are a problem. But we have one thing Hannah doesn’t have.”
“What?”
“Sympathy.”
Voss stood up and started pacing.
“Hannah Parker is rich. Beautiful. Powerful. She built a company. She has everything. Juries hate people like that. They think they’re cold. They think they got lucky. They think they stepped on people to get to the top. But you? You’re just a regular guy. A guy who married a pretty girl and found out too late she was a billionaire who was playing with him like a toy.”
He pointed at Brandon.
“Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to go on TV.”
Brandon stopped pacing.
“TV?”
“Local morning show. Daytime Chicago. You’re going to tell your side. You’re going to cry. You’re going to say you had no idea who she really was. You’re going to say she humiliated you every day by hiding her money. That she made you feel small. That you only ‘took’ the money from Summit because you were ‘so depressed’ from her emotional abuse that you ‘didn’t know what you were doing.’ And Mom?”
Evelyn looked up, mouth full of chips.
“Yes, honey?”
“You’re going to tell them she beat you. Show them the fake bruise on your arm I told you to make. Cry. Talk about how scared you were of her. The audience will eat it up. By the time we get to court, every woman in Chicago will hate Hannah Parker. And the jury? They’ll give us whatever we want.”
Brandon smiled.
It was the smile of a man who had nothing left to lose.
“I love it,” he said. “When do we go on?”
“Monday morning,” Voss said. “And Brandon? One more thing. I want you to leak one more thing to the press.”
“What?”
“That Hannah Parker’s bakery is failing. That she’s only doing all this for attention because her business is going under. And that she has a history of mental illness. The 2018 clinic stay. Make it sound like she’s been in and out of psych wards her whole life.”
Brandon’s smile got wider.
“Consider it done.”
May you like
He had no idea that Hannah was already three steps ahead.
And that his TV appearance was going to be the biggest mistake of his life.
