The woman my husband claimed to hate lifted her champagne glass and announced to a room full of our old classmates that she had once been the love of his life. Then she smiled at him as if the fifteen years between them had never happened. My husband did not smile back, but what frightened me was that he could not seem to look away.
Part 3
“How could you do this?” Daniel demanded.
I barely had time to stand before his hand closed around my throat.
“What are you talking about?”
“Victoria was attacked last night.”
He shoved his phone toward me.
On the screen, several men were kicking Victoria in an alley. Near the end of the recording, police held one man against a wall while he shouted that Claire Mercer had paid them a hundred thousand dollars to teach Victoria Hale a lesson.
I stared at Daniel.
“You believe that?”
“The man named you.”
“I had nothing to do with this.”
“You hated her!”
“I was afraid of losing you. That is not the same thing.”
His eyes were wild. “You could have had her killed.”
“Daniel, listen to yourself.”
His palm struck my face.
The sound seemed to silence the entire house.
I touched my cheek, stunned.
For one instant, I saw uncertainty in him.
Then anger took control again.
He shoved me.
My lower back hit the edge of the vanity, and my abdomen struck the corner.
Pain tore through me.
I looked down.
Blood ran along my legs.
Daniel’s phone slipped from his hand.
“Claire?”
His voice changed completely.
I pressed both hands against my stomach.
“No.”
Daniel lunged toward me.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Claire, let me help—”
“Don’t you ever touch me again.”
The room tilted.
The last thing I saw was Daniel kneeling in my blood.
When I woke, I was in the hospital.
My hand went to my abdomen before I was fully conscious.
I knew.
Daniel sat beside the bed wearing the same bloodstained shirt. He looked ten years older.
The instant my eyes opened, he dropped to his knees.
“I’m sorry. God, Claire, I’m sorry.”
I looked at him without speaking.
“I saw that video and lost my mind. I thought you had—” He covered his face. “I killed our baby.”
Years earlier, when I had saved him from that chair, he had cried this way.
Back then I had stroked his hair.
Now I felt nothing.
Love did not slowly leave me. It had died in one violent moment on our bedroom floor.
“Get out.”
He looked up.
“Claire—”
“Get out.”
“I love you.”
“If you love me, leave.”
He stumbled toward the door.
My father arrived from London the following morning. He stood beside my bed, his face gray with fury.
“I’ll destroy him.”
“No,” I said.
He turned.
“I will.”
For the next five days, I worked from my hospital room.
My attorney, Mark Ellison, brought corporate records. My father brought my laptop. A private investigator named Warren Pike brought me the truth.
Victoria’s assault had been staged.
One attacker’s sister had suddenly received enough money to clear years of medical debt. Warren traced the payment through shell companies to an offshore account controlled by Victoria.
Then he found security footage.
Two days before the attack, Victoria had met the same men in a parking garage.
She had paid them herself.
“And Daniel’s thirty million?” I asked.
Mark opened another folder. “Twenty-five million went offshore within twelve hours.”
“She’s planning to leave.”
“Yes.”
I almost laughed.
Fifteen years earlier, Victoria had abandoned Daniel for money and another man.
Now she was preparing to abandon him for money again.
Daniel had forgotten one important detail about Mercer Development.
The company was never truly his.
When I financed the startup, my father’s family trust retained fifty-one percent of the holding company. Daniel had full operational authority because I trusted him, but controlling ownership remained mine.
“Freeze nothing yet,” I told Mark.
He looked surprised.
“Claire, she could run.”
“That’s exactly what I want her to try.”
Two weeks later, Victoria came to my house while Daniel was at the office.
She wore an expensive white coat and the expression of a woman arriving to claim property she believed already belonged to her.
“I heard about the baby,” she said.
I waited.
“It’s tragic. But perhaps it saves everyone from a bigger mistake.”
My hands tightened beneath the blanket covering my lap.
“You came here to say that?”
“I came to tell you to let Daniel go.”
She picked up our wedding photograph from the mantel and laid it facedown.
“You were useful when he was broken, Claire. You were the nurse. I was the love of his life.”
“Is that what you call staging your own assault?”
For the first time, her smile slipped.
Then it returned.
“Prove it.”
I said nothing.
“He believed me,” she continued. “That’s what matters. He gave me the project. He gave me thirty million dollars. He chose me.”
She leaned closer.
“Divorce him quietly. If you fight me, I’ll take everything Daniel has, and you’ll get nothing.”
I smiled.
“Take him.”
Her confidence faltered.
“But hold on tight,” I added. “He’s about to become very expensive.”
Victoria left without another word.
I waited until the front door closed.
Then I removed my phone from beneath the blanket and stopped the recording.
