Chapter 2
The words hung in the air like poison gas.
Second marriage.
I stared at Lauren.
Then at Daniel.
“What is she talking about?”
Daniel’s mouth opened and closed.
No sound came out.
My father stepped between us.
“Answer her.”
Our friends were frozen.
Some had their phones out.
Others were quietly herding their children toward the door.
My mother was crying into a napkin.
Lauren leaned against the mantel, one hand still on her stomach, watching everything with a strange, cold satisfaction.
She had planned this.
Every second of it.
The cake.
The pregnancy announcement.
The photo.
The final blow about the marriage.
She wanted to destroy me in front of everyone I loved.
And she was succeeding.
“Daniel,” I said again. My voice sounded hollow, even to me. “Did you marry her?”
He finally looked at me.
Tears were in his eyes.
Real tears.
Or the best acting I had ever seen.
“Sarah, it wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It was a business arrangement,” he said quickly. “That’s all. I needed—”
“A business arrangement?” I laughed. It came out sounding like a sob. “You marry someone as a business arrangement?”
“Your inheritance,” he blurted. “The trust. It had clauses. If I could show certain financial structures—”
My father grabbed him by the shirt collar.
“You used my daughter’s money to marry another woman?”
“No! That’s not—” Daniel struggled. “Let me explain. Please.”
I held up the photograph.
“Explain this. Yesterday. At the courthouse. With her and my attorney.”
Lauren pushed off the mantel.
“Your attorney fired you, by the way,” she said to me. “Daniel hired him away last month. He works for us now.”
Us.
The word landed like a fist to my stomach.
Us.
Daniel and Lauren.
A team.
While I was planning birthday parties and picking out curtains and believing every lie he told me about late nights at the office, they were building a life together.
Stealing from me.
Marrying each other.
Having a baby.
I felt the birthday cake still sticky on my skin.
Chocolate frosting crumbled from my hair onto the floor.
I had never felt so humiliated.
So stupid.
So completely betrayed.
“How long?” I asked.
Daniel stopped fighting my father’s grip.
“Eighteen months,” Lauren answered for him.
Daniel closed his eyes.
“Eighteen months,” I repeated. “We’ve been married seven years. You’ve been with her for eighteen months.”
“Almost two years,” Lauren corrected. “We met at that conference in Miami. Remember? You couldn’t go because of your mother’s surgery. Daniel was so lonely.”
I remembered.
I had stayed home to help my mother recover from a double mastectomy.
Daniel had called me every night from Miami.
Told me he missed me.
Told me he couldn’t wait to come home.
All while he was in bed with her.
“You told me you were working,” I said to Daniel.
“I was,” he said. “Working on getting the inheritance restructured. Lauren has a background in finance. She helped—”
“She helped you steal from me.”
“It’s not stealing if it was for our future!” he shouted.
“Our future?” I stared at him. “Which one? The one with me in this house? Or the one with her and a baby?”
That shut him up.
My father finally released him.
Daniel stumbled back, straightening his shirt.
“Everyone out,” my father said. “Now.”
Our friends didn’t need to be told twice.
Within two minutes, the house was empty except for me, Daniel, Lauren, and my parents.
My mother sat on the sofa, dabbing her eyes.
“I always liked him,” she kept saying. “I always thought he was such a good boy.”
Lauren didn’t leave.
She made herself comfortable in the armchair.
“You should probably call your financial advisor,” she said to me. “Before Daniel does. The transfers started going through this morning.”
I looked at Daniel.
“Transfers?”
“Just temporary,” he said quickly. “Security measures. The market has been volatile—”
“How much?”
“Sarah—”
“How much money have you moved out of my accounts?”
He hesitated.
“All of it.”
The room spun.
All of it.
The money my grandfather had left me.
Twelve million dollars.
Earned over three generations of hard work.
Protected by trusts and attorneys and every safeguard money could buy.
And Daniel had taken every penny.
“When?” I whispered.
“Most of it over the last six months,” he said. “The final wire went through at nine o’clock this morning. Your birthday present to me, I guess.”
He actually tried to smile.
I walked over and slapped him as hard as I could.
The sound cracked through the room.
His head snapped to the side.
A red mark bloomed across his cheek.
“You bastard,” I said. “You absolute bastard.”
He touched his face.
“I deserved that,” he said. “But Sarah, you have to believe me. It was never supposed to go this far. I was going to put it back. Once the investments matured—”
“What investments?” Lauren asked.
We all looked at her.
She was frowning.
“What are you talking about, Daniel? You told me the money was for our house in Aspen. And the business. And the baby’s trust.”
Now it was Daniel’s turn to look nervous.
“Lauren, not now—”
“No,” she said, standing up. “You told me Sarah’s money was the reason we could get married. That we’d be set for life. You didn’t say anything about investments that mature.”
My father was watching the exchange like a hawk.
“Daniel,” he said softly. “Where is the money right now?”
Daniel looked from Lauren to me to my father.
Three people who hated him in that moment.
And for the first time all night, I saw it.
The truth beneath all the lies.
He was trapped.
Not just in this room.
But in something much bigger.
Something even Lauren didn’t know about.
“I can’t tell you,” he said.
“Can’t or won’t?” my father asked.
“They’ll kill me,” Daniel whispered.
The temperature in the room seemed to drop twenty degrees.
“What did you say?” I asked.
He looked at me.
And this time, there were no crocodile tears.
Just raw, genuine terror.
“I borrowed money,” he said. “Before I touched your inheritance. From people who don’t send polite reminders when you’re late. Your money was supposed to pay them back. But then the deal fell through. And now—”
He stopped.
Swallowed hard.
“Now what?” Lauren demanded. She had gone pale too. The baby she had been parading minutes ago suddenly felt like a very heavy burden.
“Now they want their money,” Daniel said. “Plus interest. And if they don’t get it by Friday—”
He didn’t finish.
He didn’t have to.
Lauren sank back into the chair.
“You told me we were rich,” she said. Her voice trembled. “You told me we were buying Aspen.”
“We were!” Daniel said. “We are! It’s just a timing issue—”
“Shut up,” I said.
Both of them looked at me.
I wiped the last of the cake from my face.
My hands were shaking.
But my mind was suddenly, terrifyingly clear.
My husband had cheated on me.
Married another woman.
Stolen twelve million dollars.
And gotten involved with criminals who were going to kill him by Friday.
May you like
And somehow, I was in the middle of all of it.
“Everybody sits down,” I said. “And nobody leaves until we figure out exactly what the hell is going on.”
