Chapter 4

The morning sun streamed into Delila Crane's all-white Upper East Side apartment, making the dust motes dance in the air. Crockett sat in a ridiculously uncomfortable armchair, a cigarette burning forgotten between his fingers.

Delila was finally asleep, tucked into her pristine bed after a two-hour performance of tears and nightmares. He had played his part, murmuring soothing words, stroking her hair, but his mind was elsewhere. It was back in his own apartment, replaying the scene with Erin. Her cold eyes. The locked door.

A relentless, buzzing vibration from his phone shattered the quiet.

He glanced at the screen. It was Marcus Thorne, the CFO of the Winters family office. A man who would never, ever call at six in the morning unless the world was on fire.

Crockett's stomach clenched. He answered. "Marcus."

"Mr. Winters." The CFO's voice was tight with a barely suppressed panic. "Sir, there have been several... highly unusual, large-scale transactions on Mrs. Winters' supplementary card since midnight."

Crockett's frown deepened. "How large?"

Marcus took a shaky breath. "In total... just over ninety million dollars."

The cigarette fell from Crockett's fingers, landing on Delila's white silk rug and leaving a small, black singe mark. He didn't notice.

Ninety million? Had she bought a goddamn airline?

"What did she buy?" he asked, his voice dangerously low.

"A portion of the funds were funneled through a new LLC, a 'Phoenix Holdings,' into the stock market. Small-cap tech stocks, sir. Junk, by all accounts. But the largest single transaction... was a deposit to Sotheby's."

Sotheby's. The name clicked into place. He knew they were hosting a private auction of contemporary art tonight.

The pieces of the puzzle slammed together in his mind, forming a picture of calculated, public humiliation. She wasn't just spending his money. She was doing it on a stage, in front of their entire social circle.

This wasn't a marital spat anymore. This was a declaration of war on his authority, on the Winters family name.

"Furthermore," Marcus continued, his voice trembling slightly, "we've tracked inquiries from Phoenix Holdings to Gideon Holt. It appears they're attempting to acquire his entire industrial block in Brooklyn."

Brooklyn. Crockett almost laughed. The sheer, unadulterated stupidity of it was breathtaking. She was burning his money on garbage.

It was all so clear to him now. This was revenge spending. The desperate, pathetic act of a woman scorned, a woman trying to wound him by wasting the very thing that gave her status. She was trying to make him notice her.

"Mr. Winters, should we freeze the card?"

"No," Crockett said, the single word as sharp and cold as a shard of ice. "Let her buy. Let's see just how big a fool she's willing to make of herself."

He ended the call. The air in the room seemed to crackle with his fury. It wasn't about the money. Ninety million was a rounding error. It was the audacity. The public nature of the betrayal.

He had always seen her as a beautiful, tame creature, a canary in a gilded cage. A creature that would be helpless without him. Now, the canary was trying to burn the cage down.

"Crockett?" Delila's sleepy voice came from the bedroom doorway. She padded towards him, clutching her silk robe. "What's wrong?" She wrapped her arms around him from behind.

For the first time in their long, complicated history, he shrugged her off. An impatient, dismissive gesture.

Delila froze, a look of shocked disbelief on her face. It was quickly replaced by her signature expression of wounded fragility, but he saw the flash of resentment in her eyes.

He ignored it. He grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair.

"I have a family matter to attend to," he said, his voice flat and hard. He didn't look at her as he strode towards the door.

He was going back to the penthouse.

He was going to find his wife. And he was going to remind her, in no uncertain terms, who held the leash.