CHAPTER 001
The elevator smelled like rich people.
Expensive soap. Clean leather. A little bit of cologne, like someone had walked through it ten minutes ago and left a ghost behind.
I stood in the corner with a small white bag in my hand. Lemon cookies. The soft kind, with sugar on top. Brandon's favorite. I had picked them up from a bakery near the airport, and I had held that bag so tight the whole ride that the paper had gone soft under my fingers.
Twelfth floor.
The doors slid open with a little ding.
My heart was going crazy. I put my hand on my chest like that would calm it down. It didn't.
I had been in Chicago for about five hours. My plane landed at five. A driver named Marcus picked me up, polite and quiet, and drove me to a mansion with iron gates. A housekeeper named Patty gave me a bowl of soup and told me Mr. Marchetti was running late for dinner.
Good, I thought. I'll be gone by then.
So I slipped out. I took a cab. I told myself it was just a little trip. One hour. Maybe two. I hadn't seen my husband in nine days, and I wanted to see his face when I walked through the door.
I walked down the hall on quiet feet. The carpet was thick and dark red. Every door looked the same.
Apartment 1204.
My key was in my coat pocket, wrapped in a tissue. I kept it there on purpose, away from my wallet, away from anyone who might ask. Brandon gave it to me the week after the courthouse. He said, Don't ever lose this, Em. And don't ever let anyone see it.
I should have asked why.
I slid the key in. The lock clicked.
I opened the door slowly and stepped inside, smiling like an i***t.
"Surprise," I whispered, to nobody.
The apartment was dim. One lamp glowed in the living room. Brandon's jacket hung over the couch. A bottle of wine sat open on the glass table, with two glasses beside it.
Two.
I stared at them. My smile got smaller.
Maybe a friend came over, I told myself. Maybe his dad stopped by. People have wine with their dads, right?
Then I heard it.
A laugh.
It came from the bedroom down the hall. Soft. Low. A woman's laugh, the kind you only make when someone is whispering in your ear.
My whole body went still.
I know you're supposed to turn around right then. I know that. Every movie tells you to turn around and walk back to the elevator and never look back.
But my feet kept moving.
One step. Two. The cookie bag crinkled in my fist. The floor creaked under me, and I held my breath, like I was the one doing something wrong.
The bedroom door was open a few inches. Gold light spilled across the floor.
I put two fingers on the wood and pushed.
It swung wide.
Brandon was in bed.
His shirt was off. His hair was messy in a way I had never seen it. And next to him, with the sheet pulled up to her chest, was a woman with long brown hair and bare shoulders.
I knew her face.
It took me a second. My brain felt slow, like it was wading through mud. Then it came to me. The welcome email for my master's program had a group photo at the bottom. Ten smiling students on the steps of a brick building.
She was the one on the end, in the green scarf.
Ashley Brennan.
She was going to be in my class.
The cookie bag slipped from my hand and hit the floor with a soft thud.
Nobody moved.
Then Brandon turned his head and saw me. His eyes went wide for half a second. Just half. Then his face went smooth again, like a pond after a rock sinks.
"Em?" he said. He let out a long, tired sigh. "Seriously?"
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.
"You could have texted," he said.
"Texted?" My voice sounded like a stranger's. Thin and far away. "You want me to text before I walk into my own husband's bedroom?"
"Don't be dramatic."
"Brandon."
"Look, this isn't what it looks like."
"It looks like you're in bed with her."
"Okay. It's exactly what it looks like." He sat up and rubbed his face with both hands. "But you weren't supposed to be here until Thursday."
Thursday.
My stomach twisted. Of course. I was a Thursday wife. Seven o'clock, blue dress, home by midnight. A little piece of his week, scheduled like a dentist appointment.
I looked at Ashley. She pulled the sheet higher and stared at her hands. Her face was red, but not like a girl who got caught being bad. More like someone who just got caught in a storm.
"I didn't know," she said quietly.
Brandon snapped his head toward her. "Ash. Don't."
"I didn't know she was..."
"I said don't."
She went quiet again.
I turned back to my husband. My knees felt weak, like they might fold, but I locked them. I wasn't going to fall down in that room. Not in front of her.
"Say you're sorry," I whispered.
He blinked at me.
"Just say it, Brandon. Say you're sorry, and I'll go."
I don't know why I asked. Maybe I needed one small piece of him to be good. Maybe I thought an apology would make it a little less true.
He looked at me for a long time. Then he laughed, one short breath through his nose.
"Em," he said. "Come on. Let's be honest."
"I am being honest."
"This is exactly why I never told anyone about you."
My heart stopped.
"What?"
"You show up with cookies and a sad face and you make everything about feelings." He shrugged. "My dad was right. You're not exactly an asset."
Asset.
He said it the way you'd say stain.
I stood there with that word ringing in my head. Asset. Asset. Like a bell in an empty church. I waited for the tears to come. I really did. I had cried over a lost mitten when I was seven. I had cried at a dog food commercial last week.
Nothing came.
Just a strange quiet, loud and empty, ringing in my ears.
Eight months.
Eight months of hiding a ring in a cookie tin. Eight months of blue dresses and midnight cabs and don't tell anyone. Eight months of lying to my father over eggs and toast. I had folded myself up smaller and smaller, just so a man like this could stay comfortable.
For this.
I looked down at my feet. The cookie bag had split open. Sugar and crumbs spilled out across the dark wood floor, little yellow pieces, crushed flat.
I had stepped on them without noticing.
I almost laughed. How stupid. How perfectly, terribly stupid.
"Take the key off the hook before you go," Brandon said, already reaching for his phone. "And Em? Don't make this ugly."
Don't make this ugly.
I looked at the man I married. I really looked. I saw the dimple in his cheek. The little scar near his eyebrow. The hands that used to hold mine in the elevator. And for the first time, I saw something else underneath, something cold and flat and patient.
He wasn't sorry.
He wasn't even embarrassed.
He was bored.
I took the key out of my pocket. My fingers didn't shake. I set it on the nightstand, right next to the lamp, with a tiny click.
Then I turned to leave.
"Wait."
It was Ashley's voice.
I stopped at the door but didn't turn around.
"Emily," she said. She said my name like she'd been practicing it. "Please. Don't go back to the house tonight. Don't tell him where you're staying."
"Ash," Brandon warned.
"Just be careful. Okay?"
I turned my head, just a little.
She was looking right at me. Her eyes were wet. She wasn't smiling. She wasn't smug. She looked like someone standing on the wrong side of a glass window, trying to warn me about a fire I couldn't see.
Brandon's jaw tightened.
"Get out," he said to me. His voice was very calm. "Both of you. Now."
I walked out of that bedroom with crumbs under my shoes and my husband's voice behind me. I passed the wine glasses. The couch. The little table by the door where I once left a note that said, Miss you.
I never saw him pick it up.
Out in the hall, the carpet swallowed my footsteps. I pushed the elevator button and watched the number climb.
Then my phone buzzed.
A text. From a number I didn't know.
Don't trust Ashley. And don't go back to the mansion alone.
My blood turned cold.
Who sent it, and how did they know exactly where I was standing?
