Two Wrongs

Chapter One

"Your husband is sharing a bed with my wife."

The coffee in my mouth nearly choked me. I slammed my ceramic mug down onto the bistro table, the dark liquid sloshing over the rim and staining the white linen.

I stared across at Rowan Vance, convinced my ears were playing a cruel trick on me. Because what he had just suggested wasn't just absurd—it was anatomically impossible for the man I knew.

Jonah would never.

"Mr. Vance," I said, my fingers trembling as I reached for a napkin to blot the spill, forcing my voice into a brittle, defensive calm. "If this is some kind of twisted corporate joke, it isn't funny."

Rowan didn't blink. His dark, severe gaze didn't waver for a fraction of a second. Rowan Vance never looked like anything except a man inspecting a balance sheet he knew was fraudulent.

"Do I look amused, Elena?"

"Jonah adores me," I fired back, my spine stiffening. "He spends every waking hour building our life together. He wouldn't risk losing me."

"I said the exact same thing about Maeve six months ago."

Maeve.

Just her name felt like a physical blow to my ribs. Maeve Vance. My closest confidante since our university days. The woman who had caught my bouquet at our wedding, who brought me soup when I was sick, and who called me every single evening just to check in on how my architectural firm was doing.

We were practically sisters.

"You're out of your mind," I whispered, though my voice lacked the steel it had a second ago.

Rowan leaned back, his expression a mask of tired exhaustion. "Did you ever wonder why she started dropping by your house four times a week? Always right around the time Jonah's car pulled into the driveway?"

The breath caught in my throat.

The memories rushed in uninvited. Maeve's sudden, convenient drop-ins. The way she’d smile warmly, telling me she just missed her best friend. And Jonah—always affectionate, always bringing me lilies on Tuesdays, always whispering that I was his whole world.

Except...

Except for the last four months. The sudden exhaustion. The late nights at the downtown office. The way his hands felt distracted when he held me, his mind miles away behind a wall of polite kisses.

Stop it, I scolded myself internally, fighting back the rising panic. You are falling right into whatever game this man is playing.

"Even if things have felt a bit strained lately," I said carefully, keeping my chin up, "stress at the firm does that. It proves nothing."

Rowan didn't argue. He simply pulled a sleek black smartphone from his tailored jacket, tapped the screen twice, and slid it across the table toward me.

It took me three agonizing seconds to process what my eyes were looking at.

A high-end private lounge in the city's financial district. Dimly lit, impossibly exclusive.

And right there in the corner booth, half-hidden in shadow but unmistakable: Jonah and Maeve.

He had his hand tangled in her hair, pulling her close. She was laughing, looking at him with an expression of reckless, absolute devotion—an expression I hadn't seen on her face in years.

My stomach violently plummeted.

"That was captured four days ago," Rowan said, his tone flat, devoid of anger now, hollowed out by a quiet devastation that mirrored my own.

"No," I choked out, pushing the phone away as if it were burning hot. "No, Jonah was out of state last week. A conference in Chicago. He video-called me every single night from his hotel room before I went to sleep."

"I know," Rowan replied quietly, retrieving his phone. "He's very meticulous."

The word meticulous sliced right through me, hitting a fresh, tender bruise.

"If you still don't believe me," Rowan continued, watching me carefully, "you can see it with your own eyes."

I wiped a stray tear from my cheek before I could stop myself, furious at my own weakness. "What are you talking about?"

"Jonah told you this morning that he has a three-day client retreat out of town, didn't he?"

I went completely, chillingly still. "How could you possibly know that?"

"Because Maeve told me she's taking a four-day wellness trip to the coast." A cold, humorless smile touched the corners of his mouth. "They aren't going to separate corners of the map, Elena. They booked the secluded cliffside estate at Blackwood Cove. Four days. Just the two of them."

The entire room seemed to tilt sideways.

Jonah had kissed my forehead only two hours ago before heading out the door, his skin still warm from sleep. I'll miss you every second, my love. Those were his exact words.

"Come with me tomorrow evening," Rowan said, his voice dropping to a low, commanding register. "If I'm wrong, we walk away and pretend this conversation never happened. But if I'm right..."

He didn't finish. He didn't have to.

I don't remember agreeing. I don't remember saying goodbye.

All I remember was the endless, numbing drive back home, sitting in a car that suddenly felt entirely empty, wondering how a man could lie so flawlessly, and how I was ever going to survive the truth.