Chapter 3

My parents' house. The suburban street was quiet, familiar.

A sanctuary? Or another trap?

I needed physical proof, something Kevin' s hacking couldn' t touch.

I remembered the locket.

David gave it to me on our first anniversary. Silver, heart-shaped, custom-made.

Engraved with "S & D" and our wedding date.

I always kept it hidden in a jewelry box in my childhood bedroom.

I let myself in with the spare key still hidden under the loose porch stone.

Mom and Dad were in the living room. Their faces were etched with worry.

"Sarah! Oh, thank God!" Mom rushed to me, but then stopped, her eyes filled with a strange mix of relief and fear.

"Honey, what happened at the airport?" Dad asked, his voice strained. "We saw... we saw some videos online."

Videos? Already?

Kevin was fast.

"They said you were harassing Kevin," Mom whispered, "and... and making advances on David."

Her eyes pleaded with me. "Please, Sarah. Just accept things. For your own good."

"Accept what?" I asked, my voice dangerously calm. "Accept that my husband is suddenly a man I've never seen before? That my entire life has been rewritten?"

I didn' t wait for an answer. I went straight to my old bedroom.

The room was the same, a time capsule of my teenage years.

The jewelry box was on the dresser.

My hands trembled as I opened it.

There it was. The silver locket.

I picked it up, my breath catching in my throat.

I turned it over.

The engraving.

"S & K."

And a different date. A date three years before my actual wedding to David.

My stomach dropped. The conspiracy wasn't just digital. It was physical.

They had thought of everything.

A noise from downstairs. Voices.

I looked out the window.

Neighbors were gathering on the sidewalk, pointing.

And there, a woman with a camera and a microphone, clearly a local gossip blogger, drawn by the online furor Kevin had no doubt already started.

They were closing in.

My parents were trying to reason with them, looking stressed and helpless.

My mind raced, desperately searching.

There had to be something. Something unique. Something they couldn't fake or replace easily.

Then, it hit me.

The tile.

Our honeymoon in Santa Fe. We bought a hand-painted ceramic tile, a small, unique piece with a specific desert flower design.

We embedded it ourselves into the hearth of the fireplace in our house. Our house.

The house that was now supposedly Kevin' s.

It was too specific, too personal. Too much work to replicate perfectly or replace without a trace, unless they rebuilt the entire fireplace.

A surge of adrenaline shot through me.

I ran downstairs, past my bewildered parents.

I threw open the front door, facing the small crowd.

"I have proof!" I announced, my voice ringing out, clear and strong despite the tremor in my hands. "Irrefutable proof that will expose all their lies!"

The blogger' s camera zoomed in.

This was it.