Chapter 4

The air in the bedroom grew thick and heavy. Ava' s breath caught in her throat. The sound from downstairs was unmistakable, a deliberate and menacing intrusion. "Who is that?" she whispered, looking at Mark.

Mark' s face was pale. He looked from Ava to the hallway, a flicker of fear in his own eyes. "Stay here," he said, his voice a low command, and started to move toward the stairs.

But Ava wasn't going to hide. This was her home. She followed him, her heart pounding against her ribs. As they reached the top of the staircase, they saw her. Chloe was standing in the foyer, her face a mask of pure rage. In her hand, she held a heavy glass vase from the console table.

"I' m not finished with you," Chloe snarled, her eyes locked on Ava. Her earlier facade of the cunning manipulator was gone, replaced by something raw and unhinged.

"Chloe, what are you doing?" Mark said, his voice shaking slightly. "You need to leave. Now."

"Leave?" Chloe laughed, a wild, sharp sound that echoed in the silent house. "So you two can patch things up? So you can go back to your pathetic, sexless marriage and pretend none of this ever happened? I don' t think so." She took a step toward the stairs, raising the vase. "She has to pay for what she' s done. For trying to ruin everything."

Ava stared at her, horrified. This wasn't just about an affair anymore. This was a deep, obsessive hatred that had been festering for years. "Chloe, you' re the one who ruined everything," Ava said, her own voice steady despite the terror coiling in her stomach.

"I GAVE YOU EVERYTHING!" Chloe shrieked, her voice cracking. "I was your friend! I supported you! And all you ever did was look down on me from your perfect little life with your perfect little career and your perfect husband!"

Mark stepped forward, placing himself between the two women. "Chloe, put the vase down. You' re not thinking clearly."

"Get out of my way, Mark," Chloe warned, her eyes never leaving Ava. "This is between her and me."

In that moment, watching Mark stand there, weak and ineffective, a profound realization washed over Ava. She had spent years loving a man who was nothing more than a hollow shell, easily filled by the will of a stronger, more malicious person. She had mourned the loss of a great love, but that love had never really existed. It was a fiction she had told herself. The man she loved wouldn' t be standing by, trying to placate a monster. He would be protecting her.

Mark reached out to take Chloe' s arm, but she shoved him away with surprising force. He stumbled back, colliding with the wall. In that split second of distraction, Chloe lunged up the stairs toward Ava. Ava scrambled backward, tripping over the suitcase she had left in the hallway. She fell hard, her head hitting the wooden floor.

The world swam for a moment. She looked up to see Chloe standing over her, the vase raised high, her face a terrifying mess of tears and fury. Time seemed to slow down. This was it. This was how it ended. Betrayed by her husband and murdered by her best friend in the hallway of her own home.

Suddenly, the front door burst open. "What in God' s name is going on in here?" a deep voice boomed.

It was her father, Mr. Green. He stood in the doorway, his large frame filling the space, his face a thunderous mask of rage. He took in the scene in an instant: Mark cowering by the wall, Chloe looming over Ava with a weapon, and his daughter, his only child, on the floor.

Chloe froze, the vase held in mid-air. The sight of this powerful, unexpected authority figure seemed to break her manic spell. She slowly lowered her arm, her expression shifting from rage to a panicked, tearful victimhood.

"Mr. Green!" she cried, dropping the vase, which shattered on the floor. "Thank God you' re here! Ava... she attacked me! She' s gone completely insane!"

Ava pushed herself up, her head throbbing. "She' s lying! She broke in! She was going to hit me!"

Mr. Green' s sharp eyes darted between Chloe' s hysterical performance and Ava' s desperate, truthful face. For a moment, Ava saw a flicker of doubt in his expression. Her father had always been swayed by appearances, and Chloe, even in her disheveled state, looked like a frightened victim.

"Mark," Mr. Green said, his voice a low growl. "Tell me what happened."

Mark looked from Chloe to Ava and then to the imposing figure of his father-in-law. He swallowed hard, his weakness on full display. "It' s... a misunderstanding," he stammered. "Things just got heated. Ava has been under a lot of strain." He was still protecting Chloe, still pushing the narrative that Ava was the unstable one.

The last thread of hope Ava had for her marriage, for the man she had once loved, snapped. Her father' s gaze finally settled on her, and the doubt in his eyes was a fresh wound. He didn't know who to believe.

Just then, Ava' s phone, which had fallen from her pocket, lit up on the floor beside her. Another notification had appeared, but this one was an email. The subject line was a single word: "Proof." It was from her firm' s private investigator, someone she had hired weeks ago, on a desperate hunch, to look into some financial discrepancies in a joint project she shared with Mark. She had suspected he was hiding money, but she had never imagined what the investigator would truly find.

She scrambled for the phone, her fingers fumbling with the screen. She opened the email. It wasn't about money. It was a detailed report, complete with travel receipts, hotel bookings, and phone records. It documented Mark and Chloe' s affair for the past two years. But there was something else, something at the very end of the report that made the blood drain from her face.

It was a section titled "Further Inquiries: Correlated Events." The investigator had cross-referenced Chloe' s known whereabouts with other significant dates. One date stood out, circled in red. The day of her mother' s death. Her mother had died from a sudden, severe allergic reaction. The official cause was accidental exposure. But the report showed a receipt. A pharmacy receipt, dated the morning of her mother' s death, from a small town two hours away where her mother had been staying at a health retreat. The receipt was for a purchase made by Chloe Davis. The item purchased was a highly concentrated peanut oil extract. Her mother' s allergy, the one that had killed her, was to peanuts.

A strangled gasp escaped Ava' s lips. It couldn' t be. It was a coincidence. It had to be. She looked up from the phone, her eyes wild, and met Chloe' s gaze. Chloe was watching her, and in that instant, Ava saw it. A flicker of cold, calculating triumph in her eyes. She knew. She knew what Ava had just discovered.

"What is it, Ava?" her father asked, his voice sharp with concern, seeing the color drain from her face.

Ava couldn' t speak. She could only hold up the phone, her hand shaking uncontrollably, as the monstrous, unthinkable truth settled over her. This wasn' t just about a stolen husband. This was about a stolen life.