"Exactly." He grins. "Glad you understand."
I keep my voice flat, my heartbeat loud in my ears. "Good to know," I say. "That's all I needed."
I walk out first, leaving him in the dark, surrounded by shelves full of tools he doesn't know how to use. One of them is still recording in my pocket, carrying his confession word for word. I don't go home after work. I drive until I find a quiet coffee shop with low noise and no one who knows my name.
I park, sit in the car, and scroll to a number a buddy gave me a year ago when his own marriage exploded. Marcus Chun, divorce and employment law. I hit call. He answers on the second ring.
"Chun, my wife is sleeping with my boss," I say. "I have evidence, recordings, dates, witnesses."
There's half a second of silence. Then his tone changes. All business. "Can you meet tonight?"
"Yeah."
"Good. Until then, you don't confront anyone. Don't threaten. Don't brag. And don't gather evidence illegally. I'll text you my address."
"Understood."
We hang up. I open my banking app. Stare at the joint account. I moved $30,000 into a new personal account I set up months ago, just in case life went sideways.
Not greed. Not revenge. Protection. I screenshot the transfer for my records. At Marcus's office, the lights are still on.
Glass door, clean lines, no nonsense. He shakes my hand and motions me to sit. "Walk me through it," he says. I lay it out in order like a service report.
Rooftop party. The panties. The 30 witnesses. The midnight text.
The timeline on my table. The tool room confession. I place the recorder on his desk. He listens, jaw tight, eyes sharp.
When I finish, he nods once. "First," he says, "Illinois is a single-party consent state. Your recording is legal. Second, what your boss did on that rooftop, that's not just infidelity. That's workplace misconduct, harassment, abuse of authority."
"Companies fire people for less." He leans forward. "We run this on two fronts. One, divorce. We build your case, timeline, affair, financial protection."
"Two, employment. A formal complaint to HR and the board. Time it so he can't clean this up before it hits."
"What do you need from me?" I ask.
"Act normal," Marcus says. "No outbursts, no threats. Keep documenting texts, lies, anything that shows pattern. Be ready for ugly when this breaks."
He slides a retainer form across the desk. I read it, sign it. The pen feels heavier than it should. As I walk out into the cold night, I'm not calmer, but the chaos has borders now.
I'm not just a man who got humiliated on a rooftop. I'm a man at war with a lawyer on retainer and a plan in motion. I'm at the building before sunrise. The city is still half asleep, streets wet from whatever the night washed off.