I cross the café, the floorboards groaning softly under my feet. She looks up as I approach, dissolving in a fit of giggles as she sees the look on my face. Before she can speak, a laugh bursts out of me. It’s not a pretty sound. It’s a hysterical, gasping, can’t-breathe kind of laugh, born from years of repressed frustration and the sheer, beautiful absurdity of this moment. I have to brace myself against the table, my whole body shaking with it.
“Oh my god,” I manage to get out, sinking into the chair opposite her, tears of laughter streaming down my face. “It’s you. Of course, it’s you. You absolute, beautiful, crazy lunatic. I should have known.”
Nico leans back, a slow, wicked grin spreading across her face. “I was wondering how long it would take you to figure it out. For a minute there, I thought I’d have to spell it out for you.”
“His ‘hot new assistant’,” I say, quoting Preston, which sends me into another fit of laughter. “He has no idea, does he? He thinks you’re flirting with him.”
“Men like Preston don’t think, they assume,” Nico says, taking a delicate sip of her latte. “He assumes all women are impressed by his money and his title. It makes him predictable. And very, very easy to fool.”
“The universe has a funny way of delivering karma, doesn’t it?” I say, wiping a tear from my eye. “And apparently, today it’s sending it via a badass from Brooklyn with a killer wardrobe and access to all my husband’s passwords.”
“He uses ‘Darlington3’ for everything,” Nico says with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Preston Darlington the Third. So predictable. Amateur.”
Her expression softens then, the humor replaced by the fierce loyalty that is the bedrock of our friendship. “But seriously, Snow. Are you okay?”
“I am now,” I say, my laughter finally subsiding into a state of giddy, empowered calm. “But tell me everything. How did this even start?”
“It started the day you called me crying after that disastrous anniversary dinner last year,” Nico says, her voice losing its lighthearted edge. “The one where he told you your dress was ‘inappropriate’ and then ignored you all night. I knew then I had to do something.”
She pauses, her jaw tightening. “I’ve never liked Preston much. You know that. In the six years you’ve been married, I’ve seen him maybe five times? He’s always too busy to see your friends or family. But that call? That was the last straw. I told you to stick it out a little longer, not because I thought it would get better, but because I knew about that prenup. I figured if I could dig around in his life, find something concrete, you’d have leverage.”
She leans forward, her dark eyes intense. “A few months later, you mentioned his latest assistant was leaving. I knew that was my shot. I applied for the job. If I hadn’t gotten it, I would have found another way to dig for dirt on him. But this?” She gestures at the laptop. “This gave me access to everything. I’ve been gathering evidence for six months now.”
The words, which would have been a shock before, are now just a confirmation of the beautiful, crazy truth. This is what ride-or-die friendship looks like. It looks like my best friend going deep undercover to burn my cheating husband’s world to the ground. Without me even needing to ask for help.
“He’s worse than you think,” Nico says softly, pulling a sleek, silver laptop from her bag and turning it to face me. “And he’s dumber than I ever imagined.”
The screen is open to a password-protected folder. The name on the folder makes me snort with laughter. “Project Burn.”
“I thought it was fitting,” Nico says with a wry smile. She types in what I know is a complicated password, and the folder opens, revealing a meticulously organized series of sub-folders. It’s a work of art. A symphony of destruction.
“Let’s start with the fan favorite,” she says, clicking on a folder labeled “The Mistresses.” It’s not just Ashleigh, the tennis instructor. There are photos, screenshots of lurid texts, hotel receipts. A picture of Preston at a hotel bar in Miami, his arm around a leggy blonde, his face flushed with alcohol andarrogance. He was wearing the watch I bought him for his thirty-fourth birthday. The blonde was laughing, her head thrown back, and Preston was looking at her with a proprietary smirk I knew all too well. It was the same look he gave his new car. The same look he gave me when he introduced me to his business partners. It wasn’t desire. It was ownership. I wasn’t even the only one in his collection. Another photo shows him leaving a boutique hotel in SoHo with a redhead. He didn’t even bother to go out of town. The sheer, breathtaking stupidity of it all is almost as shocking as the betrayal itself.
My stomach clenches. I feel a wave of nausea, the bitter taste of bile rising in my throat. But underneath the sickness, something else is happening. The deep, aching sadness that has been my constant companion for the last 12 months is being burned away by a clean, pure, righteous anger.
Nico clicks on the next folder, “The Money.” “He was planning on screwing you in the divorce,” she says, her voice hard.
“I know,” I say. “I found the post-nup draft yesterday when I was going through his study. He wanted to strip away the infidelity clause from our prenup.”
Nico’s eyes flash with approval. She smiles, a fierce, proud expression. “Good for you. But that’s only part of it.”
She turns the laptop back to me, showing me spreadsheets, bank statements, documents detailing how he’s been systematically hiding marital assets. She explains it all in the calm, clear language of a financial analyst, the same way she explained derivatives to me in our college study sessions. “He was going to leave you with just enough to keep you from being a nuisance. His words, not mine.”
“How do you know?” I ask, my voice a hoarse whisper.
For an answer, she clicks on another folder. “The Recordings.” She plays a short audio file. The quality is muffled,but the voice is unmistakably Preston’s. He’s talking to his father.
“…don’t worry, Father, I’ll handle it. She’ll sign whatever I put in front of her. She’s that fragile little artist, remember? Too emotional to understand the numbers…”
Fragile. The word hits me like a slap. He never saw me. He never knew me. He saw a story he could tell himself, a role he could cast me in.The fragile little artist. The decorative asset.
Nico closes the laptop, the soft click echoing in the sudden silence between us. The evidence sits there, a digital bomb waiting to detonate the rest of my life. And I am no longer afraid of the explosion.
“So,” Nico says, her voice shifting, the warmth and sympathy replaced by the sharp, tactical edge of a general planning a campaign. “Here’s what we do.”
As she speaks, I feel a change happening inside me. It’s a physical sensation, a straightening of my spine, a hardening in my gut. The fear and the hurt are still there, but they are no longer in control. They are fuel. My hands, which were trembling just minutes ago, are now perfectly still on the table. I am no longer a victim in this story. I am a combatant. And I have the best second-in-command in the world.
Nico outlines the strategy. “When you texted me yesterday morning asking to meet, I knew you’d finally found something. And I know you well enough to know you’d get a lawyer immediately. I figured you’d go to Patricia Taylor. Remember when Suzie gave you her card? You were so shocked by the whole conversation, you called me right after and told me all about it. I never forgot.” She grins. “That’s what best friends are for — remembering the details you don’t think matter.”
