Chapter 3

The signs had been there for two years. Carroll started spending more and more time at our mountain villa after he retired. He claimed the solitude helped him focus on his poetry.

The villa was ours, bought with money from my inheritance. It was supposed to be our retreat, a place of shared memories.

Then I found out from a friend in real estate that he had secretly had it appraised for sale. He was planning to cash out our shared life.

His book of poems, the one he'd been working on for a decade, was suddenly on the back burner. The "search for inspiration" was just a cover story. I knew it, but I said nothing.

I didn't want to believe it. I didn't want to face the ugly truth that our marriage was a lie.

Then the photos started to circulate. A friend sent me one, a grainy picture from a local bar near the villa. It showed Carroll, my distinguished, respected husband, dancing with Kandy. His hands were on her waist, his face buried in her hair. It was a picture of a man utterly besotted.

I endured it. I held my head high. Forty years of shared history, of intertwined lives, felt too heavy to just let go. A marriage like ours was a deep, tangled root system. I thought we could survive this.

I started noticing other things. A long, blonde hair on his jacket collar. The faint, cheap scent of drugstore soap clinging to his skin when he came home. He always used expensive, sandalwood-scented bars I bought for him. This new scent was hers.

He moved into the guest room permanently. "My snoring is keeping you up," he'd said, a pathetic excuse. He didn't want me to touch him.

I told myself it was just what happens when people get old. The passion fades. I was lying to myself.

He was going to divorce me. I knew it for certain when Jared, whose friend worked at a top divorce law firm, told me Carroll had been in for a consultation.

Jared got me the details. Carroll was planning to leave me with the house in the city and a pittance of a settlement. He would keep the villa, the stocks, the bulk of our fortune. He thought I was a fool.

That was when I forged the doctor's report. It was a desperate, ugly move, but it was all I had left to save the life I had built.

After he stormed out, Jared came and took me to his house. The moment I walked through his door, the world tilted. A sharp, crushing pain seized my chest, and I gasped for breath.

I remembered my doctor's warning years ago. "Helena, your heart is under immense strain. You cannot carry any more stress." I had a genuine heart condition, exacerbated by years of suppressed grief and anger.

I had been suppressing so much. Kandy's constant provocations. She sent me photos of the "healthy" meals she cooked for Carroll, little heart emojis sprinkled in the text. She sent me vile, taunting messages in the middle of the night. "He's with me now, old woman. He says you're cold as a fish."

She even sent me a short video of them laughing together, their heads close. The final, brutal move was her showing up at my door, waving the positive pregnancy test like a trophy.

And Carroll's reaction... he hadn't defended me. He hadn't been angry at her audacity. He had just looked at her, then at me, and his choice was clear. He didn't care if I lived or died. My death would just be a convenient obstacle removed.

He didn't call once during the week I stayed with Jared. Not a single text message.

But his life went on. He posted a new poem on his social media page, a gushing ode to new love and the promise of fatherhood. It was nauseating.

Then I saw a large withdrawal from our joint savings account. A few days later, Alexandr Sheppard, my former mentee and a brilliant forensic accountant, called. One of his junior associates had spotted Kandy at a luxury car dealership, paying in cash for a new convertible.

I just laughed, a cold, bitter sound that startled even me.

Alexandr sent me a photo Kandy had posted online. She and Carroll were clinking champagne glasses, celebrating. They were wearing matching rings on their right hands. Simple gold bands.

The pain in my chest flared again, sharp and hot.

I remembered how Carroll used to look at me, his eyes full of adoration, as if I were the center of his universe.

Now, all he saw was her. A young, fertile body. A vessel for his legacy.

"Professor Cook," Alexandr said gently through the phone. "Are you alright?"

I wiped a tear from my eye. "I'm fine, Alexandr."

I took a deep breath. The time for tears was over.

"I need you to do something for me," I said, my voice steady now. "That file we've been organizing. The evidence of Carroll's... extracurricular financial activities. Is it ready?"