Chapter 1

The passenger seat wasn't where I left it. I'm only 5'2"; I always keep the seat pushed all the way up. But now, it was back by a good four inches.

I'd been working late until 9:30 PM. When I headed down to the garage, I spotted my white Jetta parked in a far corner of B2. The engine was still running. The taillights were glowing, and the chassis was vibrating ever so slightly.

I stood behind a concrete pillar and watched for 30 seconds. Two silhouettes were in the back seat.

My phone was gripped in my palm, the screen light reflecting off my face. I didn't go charging over there. Instead, I walked around to the driver's side, pulled the door open, and slid in.

There was a sudden, frenetic scramble in the back. I didn't look back. I reached out and hit the central locking button.

With a click, all four doors locked tight.

*****

The back seat went dead silent for about five seconds. In that silence, I could hear my own heart hammering against my eardrums.

Then, Michael's voice broke the air. "Zoe?"

He called me Zoe. We had been married for seven years; in public, he always referred to me as "honey," but at home, I was "Zoe."

As I heard my name drift from the back seat now, the air was thick with the scent of a perfume I didn't recognize. I didn't look back.

"The seat was moved," I said. My voice was flatter than I expected.

There was no sound from the back. I adjusted the rearview mirror until the angle was just right.

Michael's shirt was unbuttoned, his collar all askew. Beside him sat a woman, her hair a mess, head down as she fumbled with the zipper of her coat.

Her hands were shaking. My hands were steady as a rock.

"Unlock the doors first," Michael said. His voice was hushed, like he was afraid of being overhead. But the parking lot was empty. It was just the three of us and a locked car.

"Who is she?" I asked.

The woman didn't look up. Michael answered for her. "A colleague. I was just dropping her off to grab some things—"

"You grab things in the back seat now?" I shot back.

He hesitated. That split-second pause was more honest than any explanation he could have given.

I finally turned my head. The lighting was dim, but it was enough. I'd seen her before. At last year's company gala, Michael had brought me along. A girl had walked up with a glass of wine, smiled at him, and then turned to me.

"Nice to meet you, Mrs. Grant," she had said. Her voice was cloyingly sweet.

At the time, I told Michael how polite the young girls at his office were. He'd just said, "She's new. She's still got a lot to learn."

Well, here she was, the girl who "had a lot to learn," sitting in the back of my car with her hair disheveled and her lipstick smudged.

I stared at her. She finally looked up. Her eyes were red, but she wasn't crying. She was scared. "Mrs. Grant—"

"Don't call me that," I snapped, cutting her off. My voice was so flat it sounded foreign even to my own ears.

Michael reached out as if to touch my shoulder. "Just unlock the door. We'll talk about this at home."

"Home?" I looked at his face in the rearview mirror.

I've seen that face for seven years, in wedding photos, birthday dinners, and hospital hallways. For the first time, it felt unfamiliar.

"Which home?" I said. "The one we share, or the one you're shelling out 1,500 dollars a month to rent?"

The air was sucked right out of the car. Michael's expression shifted from panic to a total blank. It wasn't the blankness of an innocent man; it was the look of someone caught red-handed.

He opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

The woman recoiled, pressing herself against the door. She yanked at the handle. It didn't budge. It was the central lock. I watched her pull it twice before her fingers slipped.

I spoke my third full sentence of the night. "It's locked. You want out? You ask me."

Her hand froze on the handle.

Michael leaned over from the back, his voice a low hiss. "Zoe, don't make a scene—"

"A scene?" I turned back to face the front. The dashboard lights cast a green glow onto the windshield. My eyes felt just as cold.

"The dashcam has an interior lens," I said. "Everything you just did, every word you just said, it's all on tape."

The silence was absolute. Even the sound of breathing seemed to vanish.

I didn't look back. I gripped the steering wheel so hard my fingernails dug into the leather cover. In that moment, a memory flashed through my mind.

Last month, he came home late. I'd kept dinner warm for him, but he said he'd already eaten. By the time I was scraping the food into the trash, he was already in the shower, the sound of the water running.

I remember standing in the kitchen, holding a plate of untouched steak.

It was our anniversary. I hadn't mentioned it. He hadn't remembered.

As that memory bubbled to the surface, my hands on the wheel finally started to shake. It wasn't fear. It was the pain.

I realized then that pain never hit you all at once. It was only when memory settled the score that it started to hurt, one bitter detail at a time.

"I'm going to give you two choices," I heard myself say. My voice wavered for a split second before I regained my footing. "The first option is I will send this footage to your company group chat right now.

"And the second option is you tell me everything. And I mean everything."

Michael's tone finally shifted. It wasn't guilt; it was panic. "Zoe, just calm down—"

"I am calm." As soon as the words left my mouth, I grabbed my phone and opened the dashcam app. The thumbnail showed the back seat, clear as day.

I held the phone up, the screen facing them. "See? High definition. Want to see what you two were up to 40 minutes ago?"

The glow of the screen hit Michael's face. His face went from pale to ashen.