His jaw clenched.
“The relief on her face when she realized I hadn’t answered... that look gutted me.”
He suddenly slammed the baton into the marble floor.
The sound echoed like a gunshot.
Crack.
The stone cracked beneath it.
“That was the first crack,” he said. “Suspicion.”
He circled me slowly now — predator analyzing prey.
“Why the panic? What was she hiding?”
His voice dropped. “Turns out... everything.”
He picked the baton up again.
Slower this time.
More controlled.
“She guarded that phone like it was classified intelligence. She slept with it under her pillow.”
My chest tightened.
“One night,” he continued, voice raw now, “she was asleep. Deep. I took it.”
His grip tightened around the weapon — as if reliving the moment.
“I opened the messages under ‘Andrew.’”
Silence.
His eyes flickered with something feral. “Months of conversations.”
My throat went dry.
“Hotel meet-ups whenever he flew in from Poland. Explicit. Graphic.”
His lip curled in disgust. “They talked about how hot the sex was.”
The words hit like physical blows. “How much she craved him.”
His gaze locked onto me again.
The room felt suffocating now.
Vasquez’s shoulders sagged — not from weakness but from memory.
“I stood there in the dark reading those messages and felt my entire world collapse.”
His jaw flexed violently.
“I could have strangled her right then.”
