Chapter 3

I didn't confront Michael immediately, nor did I call to curse out Michelle.

The next day I took a half-day off and went to the building across from Michael's office.

Not to find him—to check the surveillance at the print shop across the street.

Michael's company was in a Financial District office building. Every day at noon he'd go downstairs to eat.

I wanted to see who he ate with.

The print shop owner took two hundred dollars from me and let me watch a month's worth of door surveillance footage.

Day one: Michael went downstairs alone, went to the noodle shop next door.

Day three: Michael came out with a woman.

I zoomed in on the image. Michelle.

She was wearing the beige trench coat I'd given her for her birthday last year, arm-in-arm with Michael as they walked into the Western restaurant next door.

I kept scrolling.

In one month, they'd eaten lunch together eleven times.

Eleven times!

Michael and I had dated for three years, got engaged, and the number of times he'd eaten lunch with me—I could count them on one hand.

He always said he was busy, that he could only grab something simple at the office for lunch.

I'd even bought him a case of self-heating rice, told him to keep it in his office so he wouldn't always eat instant noodles.

He said, "Baby, you're so good to me."

What happened to that case of self-heating rice? I don't know.

But I knew that those eleven Western restaurant bills were all charged to his secondary card—in other words, my money.

I screenshot all the records and saved them to a new encrypted album.

I named the album "Wedding Materials."

From that day on, I began another kind of life. Working during the day, investigating at night.

On the surface, I was still that busy bride-to-be preparing for her wedding.

Discussing bridesmaid dress colors with Michelle, tasting menu options with Michael, arranging seating with Ruth.

On the third day, I found a pattern in Michael's Twitter activity.

Every Thursday night he'd appear at a residential complex in the east part of the city.

The complex was called Love. Average price: twenty-eight thousand per square foot.

I looked up the property ownership information.

Building 7, Unit 1402.

Owner: Michelle.

Purchase date: Eleven months ago.

Down payment: Six hundred and seventy thousand.

Six hundred and seventy thousand.

Michael's year-end bonus last year was seven hundred and twenty thousand.

He told me his take-home bonus was only three hundred and fifty thousand after the company deducted taxes and insurance.

The extra three hundred and seventy thousand, plus the miscellaneous expenses he'd charged to the secondary card each month, added up to exactly the down payment for this apartment.

I stared at the numbers on the screen for a long time.

Then I closed my phone and washed my face.

My eyes in the mirror were dry—not a single tear.

Not because I wasn't hurt—because my tears weren't worthy.

My tears weren't worthy of being shed for people like this.