He Brought His Mistress to Watch His Wife Sign the Divorce — Then a Waiting Billionaire Revealed Whose Name His Empire Truly Belonged To.
PART 5
The evidence changed the case. Embedded timestamps on the drives matched the patent filings. Early versions contained Wren’s nurse identification number as an encryption seed. Emails showed Marcus requesting explanations of code he later claimed to have written.
Yet Marcus refused to settle.
Three days before the hearing, Marcus publicly described Wren as an unstable former spouse manipulated by Silas. Odalys stood beside him but no longer touched his arm.
“My ex-wife offered domestic support during our marriage,” Marcus told reporters. “Now she wants to rewrite history because a powerful competitor has promised her money and attention.”
Wren watched from Priya’s office. The old shame returned so quickly that she felt physically ill.
Silas switched off the screen.
“Turn it back on,” she said.
“You don’t need to hear this.”
“Yes, I do. He depended on me looking away.”
The video resumed. A reporter asked Marcus whether he had told Wren to sign documents without reading them.
“Wren never cared about business,” he replied. “She cared about being Mrs. Vane.”
Silas’s jaw tightened. “I can have our communications team release the archive tonight.”
“No.”
“He is defining you publicly.”
“Then I will speak publicly.”
Wren scheduled her own press conference for the following morning at a community health center on Chicago’s South Side. Silas offered the Kade Group auditorium, professional lighting, and a media consultant. She declined all three.
She stood in a crowded waiting room beneath children’s drawings and spoke without notes.
“I did not build Northbridge to make my husband rich,” she began. “I built its first model after working a night shift when a seventy-eight-year-old patient named Nadia Ward missed insulin because three agencies thought another agency had sent a nurse. Nadia survived. Many people in the same situation do not.”
She explained the patents, the one-dollar license, and the patient protections. She did not mention Marcus’s affair. She did not repeat his courthouse insults.
“This case is not about a failed marriage,” she said. “It is about whether vulnerable people are products. It is also about the invisible work that happens in homes, hospitals, and offices every day. When someone’s labor benefits us, we do not get to erase their name because acknowledging them is inconvenient.”
A reporter asked if she intended to bankrupt Northbridge.
“No. I intend to keep it working and make it honest.”
“Are you romantically involved with Silas Kade?”
Wren looked toward the back of the room, where Silas stood without security or a reserved seat.
“Mr. Kade funded early research and is advising the trust. My personal life is not for sale either.”
Silas smiled.
The speech changed the coverage. Nurses posted photographs from Northbridge’s earliest trials, many showing Wren training teams while Marcus spoke to investors elsewhere. Former engineers confirmed she had reviewed technical decisions. Patients began sharing stories about the free-care tier.