PART 1
The Christmas message was meant for his mistress. Instead, my husband sent it to me while I stood in the kitchen, holding a knife above a gingerbread cake shaped like the first apartment we had ever shared.
Merry Christmas, my love. Tonight, I’ll tell her everything after dinner. Then it’s just us, Paris, and the money.
For five seconds, the kitchen disappeared. There was only that message. The fairy lights blinked red and gold, red and gold, like tiny warning signs. Snow pressed against the windows of our townhouse. Upstairs, Daniel’s mother, Evelyn, laughed at a holiday movie, her voice sharp enough to slice through the walls. Then Daniel’s second message appeared.
Wrong chat. Don’t be dramatic.
I stared at the screen until it dimmed. Don’t be dramatic. That was Daniel’s favorite spell. He used it whenever he lied. When I noticed lipstick on his collar. When the company account showed “consulting payments” to a woman named Celeste Vale. When his mother smiled across the dinner table and called me “simple,” as though I were some charity case Daniel had married for entertainment. I typed one word.
“Okay.”
He called immediately. I let it ring. A minute later, he walked into the kitchen wearing his charcoal coat, handsome in the expensive way cruel men often are. He looked at my phone, then at my face.
“Claire,” he said carefully. “You’re not going to ruin Christmas over a joke.”
“A joke about Paris and money?”
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