Chapter 3: Assembling the Guillotine
I secured a job that exact same week. It was an administrative coordinator position at a mid-sized, aggressively fluorescent accounting firm in Oakville. The salary was $42,000 a year before taxes. It was nothing glamorous—mostly filing, scheduling, and enduring the smell of stale coffee—but it was a legitimate T4 slip. It was mine. My former colleague Blythe had called in a massive favor with a contact she had in HR to push my resume to the top.
When I walked out of the suffocating interview room into the cold parking lot, I dialed her number. She burst into hysterical tears of relief before I could even manage a word.
“Okay,” Blythe sniffled, once we had both gathered the shattered pieces of our composure. “Now, the lawyer.”
She had done the grueling research while I was interviewing. She texted me a name and a firm address: Howard Pace, Senior Partner in Litigation downtown. According to the dark web of high-society divorce rumors, forty-one percent of his family law cases resulted in settlement agreements that exceeded initial projections by a minimum of thirty percent. He had a terrifying reputation for being an absolute sadist during the discovery phase, particularly when it came to unearthing hidden corporate assets.
I called his office the next morning from the driver’s seat of my SUV, parked two blocks away from my own house to avoid our home’s Wi-Fi router logs.
Howard’s voice over the phone was measured, glacial, and entirely unhurried. He asked me four hyper-specific questions regarding Sawyer’s corporate structure. When I finished stammering out the answers, he went silent for ten seconds.
“Mrs. Beaumont,” he finally rasped. “I think you should come in.”
I sat in his sprawling, mahogany-paneled office for two full hours. I brought Eli’s battered green notebook. I brought the printed bank transfer screenshots Aunt Opel had risked her career to leak. I brought Blythe’s grainy photo from Canoe.
Howard reviewed everything in absolute silence. He adjusted his silver-rimmed glasses and set the green notebook down last, his fingers tracing the spine.
“How old did you say your son is?” he asked, his tone betraying nothing.
“Nine. He’ll be ten in June.”
Howard stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Toronto skyline. “This is unusually thorough documentation for a private investigator, let alone a child.”
“He reads a lot of non-fiction,” I offered weakly.
Howard did not look amused. He looked like a master architect rapidly assembling a demolition sequence in his mind. “The photo is damning, yes. But legally, we are going to need substantially more than circumstantial evidence of a romantic affair. Ontario is no-fault. The financials, however… those are your leverage. But to claim the assets, we need undeniable proof that the corporate funds constitute marital property, and that he intentionally hid them. What we are building toward is a formal disclosure motion. If your husband refuses to fully disclose his true financial statement, I file the motion, and the court forcibly orders an audit.”
“How long does a process like that take?” I asked, gripping the leather arms of my chair.
“Months. Sometimes years,” Howard replied flatly. “Ordinarily. However, if we can engineer a public confrontation with credible witnesses—a scenario where he is ambushed, forced to either lie and be caught lying on the spot, or visibly acknowledge the relationship—that creates an immediate evidentiary record. It breaks his leverage and speeds the capitulation process up considerably.”
He leaned over his massive desk, fixing me with a predator’s stare. “Is there an upcoming event? Something highly public? Industry-facing?”
I dug my nails into my palms. “Sawyer’s firm is hosting their annual charity gala in four days. It’s at the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa. He’s been meticulously planning it for half a year. Every single one of his major clients and board members will be in that ballroom.”
Howard Pace allowed a razor-thin smile to touch his lips. “Go,” he commanded softly. “Take your son. Say absolutely nothing to your husband. Dress the part. Eat the food. Let me arrange for an associate to be in the crowd to document the fallout. We are going to back him into a corner he cannot buy his way out of.”
The trap was set. Now, I just had to walk into the lion’s den and hand the match to my son.
