Once Bitten, Twice Shy.

CHAPTER 4: THE MISTRESS

"I invited Naomi to dinner tonight."

Gideon said it while tying his tie in front of the bedroom mirror, casual, the way he might mention a meeting moved to Thursday instead of inviting his mistress into our home.

"Naomi Reed?" I kept my voice light, my hands steady on the necklace clasp behind my neck.

"She's been carrying most of the restructuring work. I thought it would be good for you two to know each other, since she'll be around more once the consolidation closes."

I watched him in the mirror, the careful way his eyes avoided mine as he said it. This wasn't a courtesy dinner. It was a test, and I already understood what he was watching for.

"Sounds nice," I said, and smiled the way a woman smiles when she has no idea her husband is testing her.

Naomi arrived at seven, a dress too fitted for a casual dinner, a smile too rehearsed to be comfortable. Gideon greeted her with the polite distance of a man greeting an employee, a handshake, a gesture toward the living room, no trace of four years of history between them.

I greeted her the same way. Warm. Unbothered. A wife with no reason to be anything but gracious.

"Thank you for having me," Naomi said, her eyes flicking to Gideon before settling on me. "You have a beautiful home."

"Gideon built it for us the year we married," I said. "I keep telling him to slow down and enjoy it. He's always at the office."

"I try." Gideon slid an arm around my waist. "Some weeks are harder than others."

I played my part well. Through dinner I praised her work, asked about her career, told Gideon in front of her how lucky he was to have someone he trusted without question. Every word landed where I wanted it to. Naomi grew more uncomfortable with each one, her fork pushing food around the plate without lifting a bite to her mouth.

By dessert, Gideon excused himself to take a call in his study, the same excuse he'd used a hundred times before I knew the cost of those calls.

Naomi stood to help clear the plates. I followed her into the hallway and closed the distance between us before she reached the kitchen.

"How long have you been sleeping with my husband?"

The plates rattled against each other. She set them on the hall table, her face going pale.

"Elise, I don't..."

"I know, Naomi. I've known for days. I have documents, photographs, transfer agreements with your signature on them. Don't waste my time pretending you don't understand the question."

She stared at me, and I braced for denial, for tears, for the practiced apology of a woman caught doing what she'd always known was wrong.

Instead she asked a question I didn't expect.

"You think I wanted this?"

Her voice cracked on the last word, and for a moment I saw past the polish, to an emotion closer to fear than guilt.

"He told me he was leaving you," she said, the words spilling out fast, like she'd been holding them longer than tonight. "He said the marriage was over in every way that mattered, that he stayed because of the shares, because leaving too soon would cost him everything. He said once the restructuring closed, he'd file for divorce and we could be honest about what we were."

"And you believed him."

"I loved him." Her voice broke. "God help me, I did. Four years, and I believed every word."

"Four years." I let that number sit between us. "That's a long time to wait for a man who kept a wife the entire time."

"I know how that sounds."

"Do you? From where I'm standing, it sounds like you helped him steal my father's company while he strung you along with a wedding date he never meant to give you."

Naomi flinched like I'd struck her. "I didn't know about the fraud, not all of it. I signed documents because he told me they were standard transfers, routine consulting agreements. Three weeks ago I found out he'd used my name on filings I never authorized, moving money through accounts I'd never seen."

"Convenient timing."

"I'm not asking you to like me. I'm telling you the truth because I think he means to make me the one who takes the fall when this comes apart. Every forged signature traces back to me, not him. If it collapses, I go to prison and he walks away with your company."

I studied her face, searching for the lie I expected to find. I didn't find one. What I found instead was a woman who had come to understand she'd been used the same way I had, in a different currency.

"Why are you telling me this?"

Naomi reached into her handbag, her hands unsteady, and pulled out a small flash drive.

"Because I have proof." She held it out to me. "Emails, financial records, a recording of a conversation he doesn't know I kept. Everything that shows what he's building, and who he's building it for. Take it before he comes back."

I reached for it. My fingers had almost closed around the drive when Gideon's voice cut through the hallway.

"What are you two whispering about?"

We both froze. Naomi's hand closed around the drive and dropped it back into her bag in one motion, quicker than I thought her capable of after what she'd just told me.

Gideon stood at the end of the hallway, phone still in hand, his eyes moving between us with a focus that made my stomach twist.

"Naomi was thanking me for dinner," I said, my voice even, practiced, the same voice I'd used on him for days now. "I told her she's welcome anytime."

Gideon's mouth curved into a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "That's nice to hear."

"I should get going." Naomi reached for her bag. "I have an early meeting."

"Of course." Gideon walked her to the door himself, his hand hovering near her back in a way that would have looked professional to anyone who hadn't heard what I'd heard through his office door three nights ago.

I stood in the hallway and watched him say goodbye to her, and I knew, from the careful way he glanced back at me over her shoulder, that he hadn't believed a word of my explanation.

The text came an hour later, after Gideon had gone up to bed.

*Naomi:* Front porch. Two minutes.

I slipped outside in bare feet, the night air cold against my skin. Naomi stood at the edge of the driveway, car keys already in hand, the flash drive extended toward me.

"Take it now," she said. "I can't risk him finding it in my bag a second time."

I closed my fingers around it. "What's the real reason you're doing this? You could walk away, let him take the fall alone, protect yourself."

"Because walking away doesn't undo four years." She wrapped her arms around herself against the cold. "Because I loved a man who never existed. And because you deserve to know who you married before he takes everything from you the way he already took from me."

She turned to leave, then stopped, glancing back with an expression I couldn't quite place.

"If you want to know why Gideon married you," she said, "open the folder marked D."

Then she got into her car and drove away before I could ask what she meant.

I waited until the house had gone still, until Gideon's breathing settled into the deep rhythm of sleep, before I opened my laptop and inserted the drive.

Dozens of folders filled the screen. Financial records. Email threads. Recordings labeled by date. And one folder, alone at the bottom of the list, marked with a single letter.

“D.”

My hand hovered over the trackpad. Part of me wanted to close the laptop, pretend I'd never read Naomi's message, and leave whatever waited inside that folder a mystery I never had to face.

Instead I clicked it open.

A single photograph filled the screen. My father stood in what looked like a hotel lobby, smiling the way he always smiled for cameras, one hand resting on the shoulder of the man beside him.

Gideon.

I leaned closer to the screen, certain I was misreading the image, certain some explanation existed that made sense of what I was looking at.

A date sat stamped in the corner of the photograph.

Eight months before Gideon and I ever met.

My husband had known my father before I ever knew my husband existed.