Chapter 2

Three days later, I was sitting in my car across the street from The Gilded Cup, a trendy downtown coffee shop. The award Anthony was in town to receive was a week away. Time was no longer a clock, but a fuse, burning down second by second toward a cold, new purpose.

My phone vibrated with a text from him.

Anthony: *Thinking of you. This afternoon's panel is a drag. Wish I was home with you instead. Love you.*

The words were a puff of smoke, without substance or meaning. I watched as his sleek black sedan pulled up to the curb. He got out, impeccably dressed, a charming smile already fixed on his face as he spoke into his phone, his AirPods nestled in his ears.

I could not hear his words, but I knew the cadence. It was his public voice-confident, warm, engaging. He was likely speaking to his business partner or a client.

Then I saw his expression shift. The public smile vanished, replaced by a look of impatient hunger. His voice, even from across the street, seemed to drop an octave, becoming more intimate, more urgent.

"I'm here. Where are you?" he said, his eyes scanning the street. "No, I told you, the back entrance. The one by the service alley. Just get here."

He snapped his phone shut and moved with a brisk, almost predatory stride, disappearing down the narrow alley beside the coffee shop. The alley led to the service entrance of The Atherton, the boutique hotel connected to the cafe. The same hotel mentioned in the text message.

My hands clenched the steering wheel, my knuckles showing white against the dark leather. A tremor ran through my body, not of fear, but of a deep, resonant rage, like a tuning fork struck against stone. This was not grief. It was something harder, something sharper.

I got out of the car, my movements deliberate. I followed his path down the grimy alley, the stench of garbage and stale beer clinging to the damp brickwork. I saw him swipe a key card and slip into a discreet side door of The Atherton. He possessed a key card. He did not even need to approach the front desk. The fluid, practiced ease of the motion told me this was a ritual, not a singular indiscretion.

I did not follow him in. Instead, I walked back to the front entrance of the hotel, my face a mask of polite indifference. I stood near the elevators, feigning interest in my phone.

Minutes stretched into an eternity. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. Each passing minute felt like another layer of filth being applied to the portrait of my twenty-year marriage. I imagined what was happening in a room upstairs. The thought did not bring tears. It brought a chilling, clarifying focus.

I would not be the weeping wife pounding on a hotel room door. I would not create a scene. My retribution would be cold, calculated, and public.

After forty-five minutes, I pulled out my phone and dialed his number.

He answered on the second ring, his voice breathless. "Hey, honey. Everything okay?"

The sound of his feigned concern, layered over his ragged breathing, was so profoundly disgusting it almost made me gag.

"Anthony," I said, my own voice a stranger's-shaky, weak. I injected a note of panic into it. "Where are you? I... I don't feel well."

"What? What's wrong?" he asked, the practiced worry flowing effortlessly. "I'm just in a meeting, it's about to wrap up. At the firm's satellite office."

A lie. So easy. So smooth.

"I think... I think I'm having a panic attack," I whispered, letting my voice crack. "My chest hurts. I need you to come home. Please."

There was a beat of silence. I could almost hear the gears turning in his head, weighing his sick wife against his cheap thrill.

"Of course, honey. Of course. I'm leaving right now. I'll be there in twenty minutes. Just breathe, okay? I'm on my way."

He hung up.

I flattened myself into a small alcove near the emergency exit, my thumb pressing hard against the frantic, erratic pulse in my wrist, as if I could physically quell the riot within. Seconds later, a door down the hall flew open. Anthony stormed out, his face a mask of fury, his phone already to his ear.

"Something's come up," he hissed into the phone. "My wife... she's not feeling well. I have to go. No, I don't know when. Just... go out the front. I'll text you later."

He did not wait for a reply. He sprinted toward the elevators, jabbing the 'down' button repeatedly.

I held my breath, waiting. A moment later, the same door opened again. A figure emerged, and the world tilted on its axis.

It was a woman. Young, perhaps mid-twenties, with long, blonde hair and a fashionable, expensive-looking dress that clung to her body. She stepped into the hallway, a pout on her perfectly glossed lips. She pulled on his arm.

"Don't go," she whined, her voice laced with a petulant entitlement. "She can wait."

He yanked his arm away, his face tight with irritation. "Katia, not now. I have to go."

He gave her a quick, rough kiss, a gesture devoid of any real affection. It was a dismissal. "I'll make it up to you," he murmured, before turning and rushing away.

She watched him go, a flicker of annoyance crossing her face before she composed herself, smoothing down her dress. And as she turned, her face came into the full light of the hotel corridor.

I did not feel cold, but rather a strange and spreading numbness, as if a local anesthetic had been injected directly into my heart, deadening everything it touched.

I knew that face.

Every parent at Northwood High knew that face.

Katia Shepherd.

Jacob's school counselor. The "cool" counselor, as my son had described her. The one who was "so much easier to talk to than, you know, adults."

The memory hit me with the force of a physical blow. Jacob, a few months ago, at the dinner table. *"Ms. Shepherd is so cool. She actually gets it. She said I have an old soul, just like my dad."*

Another memory. Jacob, scrolling through his phone, laughing. *"Look at Ms. Shepherd's TikTok. She's hilarious."*

He knew.

My son knew.

He was not just aware of the affair; he was an admirer of the mistress. The "cool" upgrade to his "old and boring" mother. The pieces did not just click into place; they slammed together. The hotel corridor's stagnant, perfumed air suddenly felt thick as poison, each inhalation a scalding insult to my lungs. This was not just Anthony's deception. It was a conspiracy. These fragments did not form a picture, but a mirror, one that reflected my husband and my son sharing a secret that was built upon their mutual contempt for me.

The image of them, laughing together, rose in my mind. For how long? Months? Years?

The pain was a physical thing, a white-hot agony that seared through my chest. For a moment, I couldn't breathe. I leaned against the wall, the rough texture of the wallpaper digging into my back. I suddenly understood that every cup of coffee he had ever made for me, every compliment on a meal, was now suspect, each memory a corrupted file in the archive of our life together.

The chill that had taken root in my chest did not dissipate; instead, it was forged by my rage into a single, hard point of ice, its tip aimed directly at my husband's heart.

I pushed myself off the wall, my movements steady again. The grief was gone, burned away by a pure, righteous fury. I walked out of the hotel, not back to my car, but down the street, my heels clicking a sharp, determined rhythm on the pavement.

I pulled out my phone. I did not call a friend. I did not call my mother.

I called my personal assistant, a ruthlessly efficient woman named Zara. "Zara, I need you to do something for me. I need everything you can find on a woman named Katia Shepherd. Social media, public records, everything. And I need it by morning."

Next, I dialed the number for LegalEagle88, the Reddit lawyer.

"It's me," I said when she answered. "The woman from the forum. I have proof. And I want to destroy him. But not yet. I want to do it on my own terms. And I have the perfect stage."