Fourteen Days

Chapter 1 The Plagiarized Muse

The champagne glass chilled my fingers. On the eighty-inch screen in our living room, my husband, Arthur Kensington, smiled for the cameras. He looked charming, confident, impossible to read.

It was also our third wedding anniversary.

"And now, for the centerpiece of our new foundation. A piece representing a powerful, emerging new voice in the art world."

He reached for a red silk cord and brushed the fingers of the woman beside him. Maya Lin was a social media starlet he had taken under his wing. My grip tightened around the glass.

He pulled the cord. The velvet curtain fell away.

The rim stopped halfway to my mouth.

It was *Awakening*. My painting. I had spent six months on it behind the locked door of my private studio.

Indigos circled a single s***h of gold. That gold was my quiet rebellion, a story I had told no one.

"A masterpiece by the incredibly talented Maya Lin," Arthur declared. The camera zoomed in on Maya's beaming face. She accepted applause for a work she had never touched.

Numbness spread through my hands. Arthur had cheated, stolen my voice, and handed it to another woman.

I went to the balcony and pulled out my burner phone. The city lights blurred beyond the screen.

"It's me. I need the 'Vanish' protocol. Everything under Chloe Kensington. Records, digital footprint, all of it. I want to disappear."

"That's the top-tier package, ma'am. Two weeks."

"Start now."

I ended the call just as I heard Arthur's car in the driveway.

He came in smelling of night air and someone else's perfume. "Chloe, darling. Sorry I'm late."

He leaned in to kiss me. A smudge of Prussian blue marked the collar of his white shirt, the same pigment I had used for the shadows in *Awakening*. He had not even changed.

He pulled back and presented a small, elegant box. "A little something for our anniversary."

Inside lay a ruby necklace on black velvet. Beautiful, expensive, useless. Another payment for my silence.

"It's stunning, Arthur." I let him fasten it around my neck.

"And I have something for you, too." I picked up a sleek, black velvet box from the side table.

His eyes lit up. "What's this?"

"A gift. For our anniversary. But you can't open it for fourteen days."

He frowned. "Fourteen days? Why?"

"It's a surprise that needs time to mature."

He shrugged, wrote "DO NOT OPEN FOR 14 DAYS" on a sticky note, and slapped it on the box.

Later that night, my burner phone buzzed. A single photo: Arthur's muscular back, slick with water, taken from inside a hotel shower.

The text: *He says your bed is always so cold.*

I stared at the screen until it dimmed, then set the phone facedown.

Fourteen days.