Chapter 3
Sylvia raised her champagne glass, catching her reflection in the crystal surface, her makeup immaculate, her lipstick bold red, and her eyes utterly serene without a single tear.
Five years spent playing the perfect wife to Calvin, three months to burn his world down and reclaim her life.
She finished the remaining champagne, feeling the chill settle in her chest as the plane cut through the clouds.
Golden sunlight poured into the cabin, bright and dazzling.
"Olivia," Sylvia called.
"Yeah?" Olivia replied.
"Hand me my eye mask."
"Why?"
"I need my rest," Sylvia said, adjusting her seat back and pulling the blanket over her shoulders. "We have a full schedule once we land in Lysandra."
Olivia handed over the mask, mumbling, "Your husband's empire is crumbling, and you're taking a nap."
Sylvia took the eye mask, and before slipping it on, she said, "His world is ending. Mine is beginning."
*****
Sylvia remembered that day of pouring rain three months back so vividly, because she'd never planned to leave home.
Out the floor-to-ceiling windows, fog hung dark and heavy over the river. The rain smashed against the glass like fistfuls of gravel, rattling the frames.
Calvin had left his trench coat by the door. She figured she'd drop it off at his office.
It was a grey Burberry trench coat. The left pocket held a half-empty pack of gum and a parking stub. Inside the right pocket, her fingers hit something hard.
She pulled it out. It was a tiny earring, silver-based, with a teardrop-shaped diamond set in it.
Sylvia stared at the earring in her palm for a long moment.
She never wore silver. Her entire jewelry collection was gold or rose gold. Calvin knew that better than anyone; he'd bought her enough jewelry over the years to know her taste by heart.
So it hadn't been bought for her.
It didn't belong to her either.
Her immediate reaction wasn't anger.
It was a strange, delayed throbbing, the way a nasty paper cut felt before the blood actually showed up. The sting only crept up a few beats later.
She left the earring on the glass table and sent Calvin a text: [You left your coat at home. Want me to bring it over?]
His reply flashed back two minutes later: [Don't bother. Stuck in meetings all day.]
She stared at the message for twenty seconds.
Then she opened her phone's banking app to check his primary credit card statement. He had linked his secondary card to her account after their wedding. "Just to make it easy for you to shop," he had told her with a smile back then.
The endless list of transactions flooded the screen.
She scrolled past the travel expenses, gas charges, and corporate dinners until a line item made her stop.
Two weeks prior, he had charged four thousand dollars at an elite women's health clinic for a prenatal examination.
Her thumb hovered over the glowing glass, her fingertips going cold.
She kept scrolling and found a two-thousand-eight-hundred-dollar charge from a month earlier at the same clinic for intake and ultrasound scans.
Going back two months, there was an entry of ten thousand dollars for early pregnancy screenings and ultrasound.
Sylvia set her phone down.
The living room sat utterly quiet, save for the muffled roar of rain outside. It felt as if heavy cotton packed her ears.
She looked down at her hands, resting on her lap. Her skin was smooth, her nails trimmed neatly and painted with a simple clear gloss. For five straight years, her hands had looked like this: clean, classy, built for a wedding ring.
That three-carat diamond band sat heavy on her left ring finger, gleaming dull in the gloomy light.
All of a sudden, the ring felt unbearably tight.
Her finger was going totally numb.
She stood up, walked to the bathroom sink, turned the faucet to the cold side, and held both hands under the stream. Ice-cold water surged over her skin, rushing down her knuckles and over the ring.
She stood there, letting the water run for a solid three minutes.
Only when her fingers turned a raw, bright red did she turn off the tap.
Then she grabbed her phone and made a call.
It picked up on the third ring.
"Riley," Sylvia said.
The guy on the line was clearly eating, mumbling an answer through a mouthful of food.
"Look into someone for me," Sylvia mumured.
"Who?" Riley James asked.
"Sophie Young. Calvin's secretary."
The chewing sounds on the line stopped. "Are you sure about this?" Riley asked after a moment.
Sylvia looked at herself in the mirror.
Her hair was damp with a strand sticking to her cheek, and her eyes were rimmed with red, though no tears fell. She looked like someone who had been pulled from the water, shaken, but clear-headed.
"I'm sure," she said. "And I need you to check one more thing."
"Yeah?"
"What happens if I dump my entire eighteen percent stake in Hartman Holdings?"
Riley went silent for five seconds. "Sylvia, have you really thought this through?"
"I thought about it for three minutes," she answered with a faint smile. "That's more than enough."
She hung up the phone, folded Calvin's coat neatly, and put it back in the closet. She left the earring sitting on the coffee table without touching it again.
*****
By the time Calvin arrived home that evening, Sylvia had already prepared a hot pot of soup on the stove.
It was peach crisp soup, his favorite.
"Why are you cooking today?" Calvin asked as he walked in, changing into his slippers and unbuttoning his cuffs.
"It's raining, so I cooked to pass the time," Sylvia replied, serving him a bowl of soup with a pleasant smile.
He sat down at the table, took a sip, and nodded in approval. "This is really good."
"I'm glad." Sylvia sat across from him, her hands folded on the table, watching him have his soup.
His throat moved as he swallowed, and his spoon tapped softly against the rim of the bowl.
He looked the same as he had eight years ago during their very first dinner date, head lowered and shoulders hunched like a cat lapping up water. She used to think that posture was endearing.
"Calvin," Sylvia said.
"Yeah?" Calvin replied.
"I saw a pack of spearmint gum in your coat pocket. You never used to chew that brand."
His spoon paused mid-air. "I grabbed it from the office break room," he murmured without looking up.
"I see." Sylvia picked up her glass and took a sip.
The plain water tasted entirely flat.
She didn't mention the earring.
She had already wrapped the teardrop diamond in a tissue and locked it in the third drawer of her vanity.
She wasn't saving it as a memory, but as cold, hard evidence.