Chapter 3

Perfume, wine, and candle smoke drifted into the hallway from the reception room. Suddenly I could not breathe.

"Go back to the party," I told him. "I need some air."

I did not wait for permission.

As I crossed the rooftop, guests smiled at me.

"Adrian really outdid himself."

"You two make marriage look easy."

"Nora, you have no idea how lucky you are."

Once, I would have found Adrian in the crowd and felt proud.

That night, every compliment felt like a hand closing around my throat.

I stepped onto the narrow terrace beyond the glass doors. Cold wind cut through my dress.

My phone buzzed.

A month-old message sat unread near the bottom of the screen.

TESSA: The room is still yours if you ever need it. No explanations required.

Tessa Bennett was my younger sister—sharp-tongued, stubborn, and once the first person I called whenever my life went wrong.

Now she ran a legal aid office in Madison, and we had barely spoken for almost a year. Adrian had made every call from her feel like a betrayal of him.

Relief hit first when I read her message.

Then shame.

She had never stopped leaving the door open. Adrian had simply made it harder and harder for me to walk through it.

I found her number and pressed call.

She answered almost immediately.

"Nora?"

The sound of her voice nearly undid me.

"Is the offer still open?" I asked.

There was no hesitation.

"Yes."

"Are you leaving tonight?" she asked.

I looked through the glass.

Adrian stood beside Paige now. He was not touching her, but his body angled toward hers as if protecting her from the whole room.

"I don't know yet," I whispered.

The terrace door opened behind me.

Adrian stood in the doorway, his eyes fixed on the phone pressed to my ear. The door clipped the champagne flute in his hand. It slipped from his fingers and shattered on the stone.

"Who are you leaving, Nora?"

I locked my phone and faced him.

"No one."

Adrian stepped onto the terrace and closed the door behind him.

"I heard you ask if an offer was still open."

"Tessa invited me to visit Madison."

His jaw tightened. "You have not spoken to Tessa in months."

"Maybe that was a mistake."

For one brief second, irritation showed through his concern.

Adrian had never liked Tessa.

He called her mean and disrespectful. He said she entered every room looking for a reason to insult him.

Tessa did have a sharp tongue.

Whenever Adrian answered for me, she called him controlling.

Whenever he made a decision for me, she called him arrogant.

Once, over Christmas dinner, she looked him in the eye and said, "You are a tyrant in a tailored suit."

Adrian demanded an apology.

Tessa refused.

"Politeness is useless if it only makes a bully comfortable," she said.

Most visits ended the same way.

They fought. I tried to keep the peace.

And little by little, Adrian grew to resent every call I made to my sister.

"This is your birthday," he said. "Do not turn it into an argument about your sister."

I almost laughed.

He had made my birthday about my best friend's ultrasound appointment, but I was the one ruining the night.

"You are right," I said. "We should go back inside."

Relief softened his face.

He believed the danger had passed.

Paige left twenty minutes later, saying she felt sick.

Adrian watched until the elevator doors closed.

I stayed because I wanted to see how far he would take the performance.

An hour later, Adrian stood beneath strings of white lights and lifted a glass to me.

"Tonight is supposed to be about Nora," he told the room. "Most of you know her as my wife. I know her as the woman who believed in me when I owned one suit and worked out of a rented warehouse. Everything I have today began with her."

People applauded.

I remembered signing the lease on that first warehouse because Adrian's credit was too damaged to qualify. I remembered working full time at a children's rehabilitation clinic, then spending nights helping him prepare investor packets.

When Northbridge finally became profitable, Adrian asked me to stop working.

"We do not need two exhausted people in this marriage," he had said. "Let me take care of you now."

I had mistaken dependence for rest.

Adrian took a small velvet box from his pocket.

Inside was a delicate diamond pendant.

"You once told me you wanted something you could wear every day," he said. "Happy birthday."

The guests began clapping again.

He lifted the necklace from its box.

His phone vibrated.

Adrian glanced down.

The blood drained from his face.

I saw only the first line of the message.

I am bleeding.

He closed the screen.

He returned the pendant to its box with unsteady hands.

"There is a systems emergency at Northbridge," he said. "I have to go."

"Now?"

"The distribution platform is down."

"On my birthday?"

His eyes flicked toward the room, checking who could hear us.

"Nora, please. Not here."

"You promised me tonight."

"And I will make it up to you."

He touched my cheek. "Go home. I will be there as soon as I can."

Then he left with my birthday gift still in his pocket.

Two nights earlier, I had followed him down a hospital hallway because I still needed proof.

This time, I let him go.

I already knew where he was going.

I left the Aster Hotel five minutes later and took a cab home.

In the study, I opened the blue folder and removed the bottle of supplements Paige had been refilling for me every Sunday.

By morning, I intended to know what she had really been giving me.