Divorcing The CEO: I'll Take Your Empire

The bottle of Evian sat on the coaster, sweating condensation onto the polished mahogany. Isidora Tate watched a single droplet slide down the glass, her face reflected in the dark screen of her iPad. It was a mask of professional detachment, the same expression she wore when auditing a company on the brink of bankruptcy.

It was quiet in the Tribeca penthouse. The kind of silence that cost fifteen million dollars.

Her phone buzzed on the table. An automated reply from her husband, Cash Ferguson.

Currently in a closed-door roadshow in San Francisco. Signal spotty. Will update when possible.

Isidora didn't sigh. She didn't roll her eyes. She simply tapped the iPad screen, waking it up. She switched apps, moving from her email to the CNBC live stream. She needed to check the volatility of Ferguson Tech's pre-market valuation.

The financial ticker scrolled by, red and green numbers blurring together. Then, the anchor cut away to a segment on lifestyle and culture.

Live from Park City, Utah. The Sundance Film Festival is in full swing.

The screen filled with blinding white snow and the flashing bulbs of paparazzi. Isidora's finger hovered over the volume button, ready to mute it. She hated celebrity gossip.

Then the camera panned.

Her breath hitched. It wasn't a gasp; it was a mechanical failure of her diaphragm.

There, in the corner of the high-definition frame, was Cash. He wasn't in San Francisco. He was standing in the snow, wearing the Loro Piana cashmere coat she had steamed for him two days ago. He was leaning down, his hands adjusting the scarf of a woman with blonde hair and a smile that was too wide, too practiced.

Isidora took a screenshot. She pinched the screen, zooming in until the pixels blurred.

Chante Duran. The socialite. The girl who was everywhere on Instagram lately, tagging herself at the places Isidora used to go before she became "Cash Ferguson's wife."

The movement on the screen caught her eye again. A child, a boy no older than two, bundled in a navy Moncler snowsuit, waddled into the frame. He ran straight for Cash's legs, wrapping his small arms around the expensive denim.

Isidora waited for Cash to step back. She waited for the annoyance, the fastidious brushing off of lint or snow. Cash hated sticky hands. He hated disorder.

Instead, Cash scooped the boy up.

He hoisted the child onto his hip with a fluid, practiced motion. He kissed the boy's beanie. The look on his face wasn't the shark-like grin he saved for investors. It was soft. It was familiar.

Isidora felt a hollow void open in her gut, a data point of betrayal registering with digital precision. Her pulse registered a sharp uptick, an autonomic response she noted with detached curiosity, but her eyes remained dry.

She closed the CNBC app. She opened her laptop.

This was a crime scene. And she was the investigator.

Her fingers flew across the keyboard. She bypassed the joint family accounts-the