Chapter 3
When I woke up, the sprawling bedroom was empty. Michael was gone.
For the first time in five years, I really looked at the house.
The icy blue color palette was Claire's favorite. The minimalist French furniture was Claire's taste. Even the vintage porcelain figurines lining the shelves were the exact ones Claire used to collect.
Then, I looked down the hall at the locked spare room. Michael always claimed it held his late mother's delicate antiques, explicitly forbidding me from going inside.
My hands shook violently as I approached the door. I picked the lock with a hairpin.
Just as I suspected, there were no maternal heirlooms.
The walls were plastered with photos and oil paintings of Claire. Shelves were meticulously organized with gifts he had prepared for her over the years, from her first birthday up to her wedding day. There were holiday cards, expensive jewelry, and love letters that had never been sent.
It was a suffocating, obsessive shrine to his love for her.
My knees hit the hardwood floor. Through the blur of tears, my hand brushed against a gold medal sitting on a velvet pedestal.
Michael had engraved the back: [To my little angel. Love at first sight.]
My breath hitched. I had an exact replica of this medal.
Or rather, there was only one medal like this in existence. It was the first-place trophy I won at a national ballet competition when I was sixteen.
I remembered Claire throwing a fit because she wanted it. When I refused to give it to her, it mysteriously vanished. She casually told me she had thrown it in the trash so that neither of us could have it.
On the day of that competition, I had rushed out the back exit and bumped into a teenage boy collapsing from hypoglycemia in an alley. I shoved my emergency stash of candies and a carton of milk into his hands before sprinting back inside.
It happened so fast that we never clearly saw each other's faces. Connecting the stolen medal to Claire's lifelong smugness, a bone-deep chill paralyzed me.
So that's what happened. That's how this all started.
I curled into a ball on the floor of that psychotic shrine and sobbed until my throat bled.
Eventually, the survival instinct kicked in. I dragged myself up, meticulously placing everything exactly as I found it, and locked the door behind me.
When I heard Michael's footsteps approaching the master bedroom, I dived under the covers. As he walked in, I sat up, rubbing my eyes sleepily, and boldly reached into his suit jacket to pull out his phone.
"Surprise phone check!" I teased, injecting a playful pout into my voice.
It was a silly little game we played. Michael tapped my nose, letting out an affectionate chuckle. "Check away, Mrs. Sterling. I have no secrets from you."
He probably had a burner phone just for his actual life. He left this sanitized device completely unlocked for my peace of mind.
Because he didn't suspect a thing, it took me exactly thirty seconds to find his arch-rival's contact info and quietly forward it to my own device.
"Baby, go down and get me some of that chicken soup the chef made?" I asked, batting my eyelashes.
The second the door clicked shut, I texted Ray from my phone: [How about a multi-million-dollar deal? Interested?]
A question mark came back immediately.
I typed: [Get me out of this city in five days. In exchange, I'll hand over the deed to the Northside development plot. Trust me, Michael will gladly sign it over to get what he wants.]
I barely had time to lock my screen before Michael strolled back in.
He caught the fleeting movement of my hands, his eyes narrowing imperceptibly.
"Who were you texting, sweetheart? You're pregnant, so you'd better spend less time on the phone. You should know screen radiation isn't good for the baby."
I smiled effortlessly, leaning back against the pillows as I let him spoon-feed me the soup.
"I was just using your black card to order a custom crib," I teased, feigning a huff. "What, the baby gets here, and suddenly I'm not allowed to shop?"
His tension evaporated. He raised his hands in mock surrender. "My wife is always number one. A hundred babies couldn't replace you."