Breaking The Rules

Chapter 14

Sandra...?”

Tony mumbled groggily, his heavy eyelids fluttering open against the pale, icy blue glare of my phone screen.

My breath caught instantly in my throat, freezing every muscle in my body. For a second, the ticking of the bedside clock was the only sound in the suffocating dark. I snatched my hand back as if the glass surface had suddenly turned to a red-hot iron, pressing the phone flat against my chest under the blankets.

“Tony,” I breathed, forcing my voice to steady despite the jackhammer pounding of my heart. “I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”

He blinked sluggishly, trying to focus his sleep-heavy eyes on the dim light. “ No, you didn't. Why?”. I didn't say anything again.

Tony’s voice was low and heavy with sleep as he made his way to the bathroom door, spilling a thin sliver of warm light across the pitch-black bedroom.

“I need to use the restroom . . . I’ll be right back,” he mumbled, his feet dragging against the carpet.

For a second, the soft hum of the bathroom exhaust fan turning on and the ticking of the bedside clock were the only sounds in the suffocating dark. I snatched my hand back as if the glass surface had suddenly turned to a red-hot iron, pressing the phone flat against my chest under the blankets.

A few minutes later, the bathroom light flicked off, plunging the room back into shadow. Tony padded quietly back across the carpet, the mattress sinking under his weight as he sat on the edge of the bed.

He reached out blindly on the mattress, his fingers brushing against the spot where his own phone usually rested. He propped himself up on one elbow, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand.

“Can I make use of your phone, please? I just remembered my phone is destroyed, and I want to check the hourly rain radar for my morning commute,” he mumbled, his voice thick with exhaustion.

The blood drained completely from my face. The new passcode loomed like an invisible wall between us. If I handed it to him, the screen would light up demanding a PIN I had just invented ten minutes ago to hide Harrison’s threats. Refusing outright would plant an immediate seed of poisonous suspicion.

“Oh, um, my battery is actually almost dead,” I lied quickly, my palms slick with cold sweat as I fumbled in the dark. “Let me just . . . let me check it for you.”

With trembling fingers, I tapped the screen. It lit up, displaying the unyielding numeric keypad. My mind went blank. In my blind panic earlier, what random numbers had my shaking fingers punched in?

Tony shifted closer, his gaze sharpening slightly as the fog of sleep began to lift from his mind. He noticed the hesitation in my posture.

“Baby? Why are you staring at your lock screen like that? Just swipe it and check the weather, I need to get back to sleep,” he said, letting out a low yawn.

“I’m trying,” I choked out, typing a desperate guess.

Incorrect passcode. Try again in 30 seconds.

The small red text mocked me in the dark. Beside me, Tony’s expression shifted from sleepy confusion to active alertness. The heavy silence between us suddenly felt charged, razor-sharp, and dangerous.

“Why is your phone locked?” Tony asked, his voice dropping an octave, losing its warmth entirely. “You never lock your phone. And why is it asking for a timeout?”

I swallowed hard, the hot lump in my throat cutting off my air supply. The fragile web of lies I had spent the entire evening weaving was unraveling right before my eyes.

“It’s the date of our first anniversary,” I lied, the words tumbling out of my mouth before my brain could even filter them.

My voice sounded hollow in the dark room, high-pitched and strained. My fingers were still pinned beneath the comforter, clutching the locked phone against my chest like a live grenade.

Tony didn't move. In the pale shadows cast by the streetlights outside, his eyes were fully open now, completely clear of sleep. The silence between us stretched, heavy and suffocating, until every beat of my racing heart felt like a physical hammer striking my ribs.

“Our anniversary,” Tony repeated slowly. It wasn't a question; it was a flat, unreadable statement.

“Yes,” I insisted, forcing a nervous, breathy laugh that ended in a dry cough. “I . . . I realized earlier today that I kept forgetting small things, and with all the chaos at the firm, I felt like we were drifting. So I changed it to our date as a reminder. But my fingers were shaking so badly just now that I typed it wrong.”

Tony sat up fully, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. The mattress shifted under his weight. He didn't reach for the phone again. Instead, he just sat there in the dark, his back turned to me, his shoulders rigid and tense.

“Sandra,” he said quietly, his voice dangerously low. “We’ve been married for three years. You’ve never put a passcode on your phone. Not once. You leave it on the kitchen counter, on the coffee table, in my car. Now suddenly, in the middle of the worst financial crisis of my life, on the night Deborah supposedly called you raging, you set a password, entered it wrong, and locked me out?”

“Tony, please—”

“What are you hiding from me?” He turned back to face me, and even in the dim light, the sharp edge of hurt and suspicion in his eyes cut straight through me. “Are you talking to someone else about the firm? Is there something about the audit you’re not telling me?”

He wasn't thinking about another man. He was thinking about betrayal, about the company, about the impending collapse, about leaks. The irony was so bitter it made my mouth taste like copper. I was bartering my body to save him, and he was staring at me like I was a spy in his own home.

“I’m not hiding anything about the firm, Tony! I swear on my life!” Tears finally spilled over my lashes, hot and burning against my cheeks. That, at least, was the absolute truth.

Tony searched my face for a long, agonizing moment. The silence was deafening. He let out a long, ragged exhale, looking completely exhausted, broken, and dangerously distant.

“Just unlock the phone, Sandra,” he said softly, holding out his open palm. “If it’s our anniversary date, unlock it right now and let me check the weather. Prove to me that I’m just being paranoid.”

My heart stopped. The 30-second timeout on the screen was over. The keypad was waiting. But if I unlocked it, the notification banner from Harrison, “Smart girl. See you tomorrow at 7:00 PM sharp”, was sitting right there beneath the surface.

I was standing on the edge of a cliff, and the ground beneath my feet was crumbling.

With a sickening lurch in my chest, I slipped my thumb down from the top edge of the screen, my heart hammering like a trapped bird.

Swipe.

The banner vanished into the notification shade. Before Tony could snatch the device from my trembling grip, I quickly tapped the screen open past the lock interface, leaving it resting on the home screen.

I thrust the phone into his open palm.

“Here,” I breathed, my voice cracking slightly. My fingers were ice-cold, slick with a nervous sweat that made my palms damp. “See? It’s right there. Just . . . hurry up and check what you need, the battery is dying.”

Tony took the phone, his dark eyes boring into mine with a piercing intensity that felt like a physical weight. He didn't look down at the device immediately; he just studied my face, searching every micro-expression for a flaw in my armor.

“You were acting strange, Sandra,” he said slowly, his voice dropping to a low, gravelly register that made my stomach twist into painful knots. “You’ve never locked your phone in the three years we’ve been married. And you practically lunged at me when I tried to look at it earlier.”