Her voice carried its usual calm efficiency, but beneath it was something else. I frowned slightly. “Where’s Vani?”
Maria gestured toward the back of the house. “She’s in the library.”
Relief loosened something in my chest. Of course she was. The library had quickly become her favorite place in the house, and more often than not, I found her there whenever she disappeared for long stretches of time. That woman could spend hours buried in books without realizing time had passed. A faint smile tugged at my mouth as I started toward the hallway.
“I’ll go get—”
“Mr. Sterling.”
Maria’s voice, sharper than before, halted me mid-step. I turned back, confusion prickling as I noticed her unusually grave expression and the faint hint of worry etching her features.
“Did Christina try contacting you today?” she asked.
I blinked in surprise, caught off guard by the question. Still, I nodded, curiosity and a hint of concern beginning to rise.
“Yes,” I said. “She did.”
Maria waited.
“She tried to set up a last-minute appointment,” I continued. “But I was too swamped with work to accept it.”
Maria exhaled a quiet sigh of relief, but the tension in her shoulders didn’t fade. That immediately caught my attention. “Did something happen?”
Instead of answering right away, she reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone.
“I have something important to show you.”
I stared at the device for a moment, unsure what to expect. A message perhaps. Some kind of scheduling issue. But when she turned the screen toward me, I realized it was a video.
She pressed play.
I recognized Christina immediately. Her posture radiated confidence—almost arrogance—and the tone of her voice made my stomach knot with discomfort before her words even registered. When I understood she was criticizing the other woman’s body, my jaw clenched.
The comments were cruel and unnecessary, delivered with a casual ease that made them sound even worse. She spoke about proportions and elegance as if she were offering professional advice, but there was nothing helpful about the way she spoke.
The other woman stood facing away from the camera, and at first I could only see her back.
A head full of dark curls framed her face.
Christina continued speaking, circling slightly as she pointed out supposed flaws with a detached kind of superiority.
As Christina kept talking, my discomfort sharpened into anger, an icy chill prickling beneath my skin while I listened, unsettled and tense.
Then the woman spoke.
The instant her voice reached me, my insides froze.
It was Vani.
My wife.
My eyes locked on the screen as shock tore through me.
The woman standing there, enduring Christina’s comments, was my wife. Christina continued speaking, dismissing Vani’s reaction and insisting that she was only trying to help.
“You’re married to Callahan Sterling now,” Christina continued smoothly. “You should at least try to look elegant enough to stand next to him.”
My mind sputtered in stunned disbelief. The video played on for a few more seconds before Maria paused it, and silence pressed in, thick with confusion and anger. I struggled to make sense of what I’d just seen.
