I played her the recording — my husband’s own voice, explaining that the marriage had always been a means to the company.
When it finished, no one in my family ever spoke up for Marshall again.
The next afternoon I called an emergency meeting at headquarters — both families, Lionel, and Leland Perry.
Marshall arrived pale and seething but upright, flanked by his mother, who took the floor at once.
“Regina, men make foolish mistakes,” she said.
“Think of the five good years.”
I laid it all on the glass table: the transfers, the vacation photos, the vasectomy certificate.
“Your son didn’t make a mistake,” I said.
“He ran a years-long robbery.”
Leland stood and read it into the room — my petition for divorce, a suit for criminal misappropriation of corporate funds, a notice for the illegal disclosure of trade secrets.