Chapter 2 - Collateral Damage
Maya walked into the room exactly at eight,
carrying two large coffees and a thick manila folder.
She didn't offer empty sympathies,
and she didn't tell me it was going to be okay.
Instead,
she opened her laptop,
connected to the hotel Wi-Fi,
and asked for the screenshots.
I handed her my phone,
watching her professional demeanor take over.
Maya was a shark in the courtroom,
and right now,
she was hunting for my husband's blood.
She reviewed the video I had taken,
pausing on Caleb's hand resting intimately on Tessa's waist.
She nodded slowly,
her expression grim,
and began typing furiously.
"We need to secure your assets,"
she said without looking up.
"He's been draining the joint account to pay off this secret card,
and we need to stop the bleeding."
I sat on the edge of the bed,
sipping the bitter coffee,
my mind racing toward the one person who was still in the dark.
Tessa's husband,
Mark.
Mark was a quiet man,
an architect who spent most of his weekends building treehouses for their two young children.
He had always been kind to us,
always waving from his driveway,
always inviting Caleb over for beers.
He deserved to know the truth,
and I realized that I held the power to destroy his world just as mine had been destroyed.
I asked Maya if I should call him.
She stopped typing,
looking at me with a mixture of pity and calculation.
"Wait until we file the initial injunction,"
she advised,
"because once Mark knows,
Tessa will know,
and then Caleb will know you're preparing for war."
But the anger in my chest was boiling over,
a toxic mixture of grief and pure rage.
I couldn't stand the thought of Mark kissing his wife goodbye this morning,
completely unaware of where her lips had been last night.
I slipped into the bathroom,
locked the door,
and dialed Mark's number.
It rang three times before he answered,
his voice thick with sleep.
"Claire?"
he asked,
sounding confused.
"Is everything okay?"
I closed my eyes,
letting the tears fall as I whispered the words that would burn his life to the ground.
"Mark,
May you like
you need to look at your wife's phone,
because she spent last night in my husband's arms."
