The new intern had been calling my husband “Daddy” for six months, but the night she dropped into his arms in front of four hundred employees, I finally understood why he had never asked her to stop.
Chapter 1
“Daddy, my ankle!” Zena Lynch cried as she stumbled beside the stage at Starlight Technologies’ annual gala. One second she was posing in a silver dress and four-inch heels after winning a raffle prize; the next, she was clinging to Seth Hawkins, my husband of seven years and the company’s acting CEO.
Seth jumped from our table before anyone else could move. He caught Zena, helped her into a chair, then crouched in front of her as though there weren’t hundreds of employees watching. When she whimpered again, he slipped off her shoe and began massaging her ankle.
The ballroom went so quiet I could hear forks touching china three tables away. Finance Director Noel Carter sat beside me and stared straight ahead, apparently deciding that looking at me would make the humiliation worse. Across the room, several employees lowered their eyes.
Zena did not.
She looked over Seth’s shoulder and smiled directly at me.
“Daddy, it really hurts,” she murmured.
“Hold still,” Seth said. “You probably twisted it.”
He rubbed her ankle with both hands, gentle and attentive. A month earlier, when I had a migraine so severe I could barely open my eyes, I had asked him to massage my temples. Seth had sighed and told me his wrist hurt.
Now his wrist seemed perfectly healthy.
Zena reached down and ran her fingers through his hair. “Mrs. Hawkins, please don’t misunderstand. Daddy’s just used to taking care of me.”
A ripple of discomfort passed through the ballroom.
I lifted my champagne glass and took one slow sip.
For months, people had brought me stories. Zena asking Seth to buy feminine products because she was “having the worst luck.” Zena calling him into an empty conference room because the zipper on her dress was stuck. Zena fastening a pink hair tie around his wrist as punishment for forgetting to wear hers.
Each time I confronted Seth, he laughed.
“She’s twenty-two, Lillian. She’s playing around.”
“You’re forty.”
“That’s exactly why it’s harmless. If something were really happening, would I let her act like that where everyone could see?”
At the time, I had almost believed him.
I had been away from Starlight for nearly a year after a difficult pregnancy with our son, Leo. Our daughter, Sunny, was five, and I had spent months balancing recovery, doctors, a newborn, and the guilt every working mother knows too well. I had trusted Seth to handle the company I founded while I took care of our family.
Apparently, Seth had mistaken trust for blindness.
I rose from my chair and applauded three times.
The sound cut sharply through the ballroom.
Seth froze.
“Please,” I told the host. “Continue the raffle.”
Zena’s smile widened. She had been hoping for a scene, and my refusal to provide one seemed to amuse her.
A few minutes later, I went to the ladies’ room.
Zena followed me.
She didn’t limp.
The moment the door shut, she straightened and walked across the marble floor with perfect ease.
“I guess staying home really does suit you better,” she said, checking her lipstick. “The company has Daddy and me now.”
I washed my hands and studied her reflection.
“You know Seth has a five-year-old daughter?”
“So?”
“She’s closer to being his daughter than you are.”
Zena laughed. “Oh, please. He likes when I call him Daddy.”
She leaned toward the mirror and dabbed powder beneath one eye.
“I heard you’re thirty-five,” she continued. “You look older.”
I said nothing.
That annoyed her.
“Daddy says you’re boring now. He says being married to you feels like another meeting on his calendar.”
My hands stopped beneath the dryer.
There are insults you can dismiss because they reveal more about the speaker than the target. Then there are sentences containing details nobody outside a marriage should know.
Zena saw the change in my face.
Her smile became triumphant.
She sprayed perfume across her throat. The scent reached me immediately—vanilla and something floral, the same fragrance I had smelled on Seth’s jackets for months.
“Custom blend,” she said. “Daddy bought it for me.”
I turned off the dryer.
“Does Seth know you’re telling me this?”
“Why would he care? Once you two divorce, I’ll be Mrs. Hawkins.”
She opened her purse, removed a crumpled condom wrapper, and placed it beside the sink.
“We were in his office last night,” she said. “I forgot to throw it away.”
For one terrible second, I understood exactly what she wanted.
She wanted screaming. She wanted me to slap her, pull her hair, destroy the gala, and become the jealous middle-aged wife she could point to afterward.
My hand actually started to rise.
Then the restroom door flew open.
Tracy Morgan, Starlight’s sales director and one of my oldest employees, hurried inside.
“Lillian, I need you.”
Her face told me this wasn’t sympathy.
She pulled me into the stairwell and handed me her phone.
“Read.”
The screen showed an internal employee chat group. At the top was a photograph of Zena wearing Seth’s white dress shirt after midnight in his office.
Below it were dozens of messages.
Everyone knew.
Matching coffee cups. Weekend trips disguised as business travel. Zena wearing the watch I had given Seth for his fortieth birthday. Her social-media post showing their hands intertwined beneath the caption, Celebrating our 99th day with Daddy.
Then Tracy played an audio recording.
Zena’s voice came through clearly.
“That old woman looked miserable tonight. Daddy says she’s boring. Once they divorce, the company will be mine.”
Something strange happened inside me.
The anger disappeared.
Not faded—disappeared.
“What else?” I asked.
Tracy hesitated. “There have been concerns about corporate spending.”
That interested me far more than perfume.
I transferred every screenshot and recording to my phone, then made three calls. General counsel. My executive assistant. Corporate security.
Afterward, Tracy stared at me.
“What are you going to do?”
I smoothed the front of my black evening gown.
“Finish the gala.”
When I returned to the ballroom, Seth intercepted me.
“Lillian, about Zena—”
“It’s fine.”
His expression changed.
He knew me well enough to understand those two words were far more dangerous than shouting.
I walked to the podium.
“Before everyone leaves tonight, I have one announcement.”
Behind me, the enormous presentation screen went black.
Zena leaned against Seth’s shoulder, still smiling.
Then the first financial document appeared.
Her smile vanished.
I looked across the room.
“As of tonight,” I said, “Starlight Technologies will have a new chief executive officer.”
Zena jumped to her feet.
“What?”
Her voice rang through the room.
“You’re nothing but his wife. What makes you think you have the right to take Daddy’s position?”
I turned toward my husband.
“Seth Hawkins,” I said. “Would you like to tell her whether I have the right?”
