Callum's office door was still ajar.
I pushed it open.
The room smelled like him. Cedar and coffee and the faint trace of Laura's perfume still hanging in the air. His desk was a disaster of files and proposals, the usual chaos of a man who performed polish in public and let the mess accumulate in private. But my eyes went straight to the corner of his blotter,where a manila folder sat at an angle that didn't match the rest of the stack.
I lifted it.
Underneath, folded into a precise square on Crestline letterhead, was a handwritten note.
I recognized Laura's handwriting before I read a single word. She'd left notes on my desk a dozen times. Meeting reminders, client follow-ups, the occasional passive-aggressive suggestion about my presentation skills. Her script was neat and slanted, and I'd learned to read it the way you learn to read a weather report. Looking for the storm behind the forecast.
This wasn't a meeting reminder.
You asked me what I wanted. I want to stop being a secret. I'm tired of watching you go home to a life that should be mine. You told me yourself she's just a functional part of the business now. So stop treating this like a business decision. This is about us. It has been for a long time. I won't be your after-hours arrangement forever. The waiting is over.
I read it twice. Then a third time, because some part of me was still trying to find a way to misread it. To make the words mean something less than what they meant.
There wasn't one.
I set the note down on the desk and pulled out my phone. My hands were steady. That surprised me. I'd expected them to shake, but they didn't. I photographed the note, the folder it had been hidden under, the angle of the desk lamp, the silver pen Laura had used. Then I opened the top drawer of Callum's desk and found what I was looking for without having to dig.
A small velvet box, navy blue, with the jeweler's logo embossed on the inside lid. The receipt was tucked beneath the cushion. I photographed that too. The date was three weeks ago. The description readSilver chain bracelet, artisan collection. The price was more than a professional thank-you.
I closed the drawer and looked at the file Laura had been reaching for. It was the Morrison expansion proposal. My original specs. My designs. My client relationship, stretching back six years to when Crestline was nothing but a name I'd let Callum put on my work.
She'd been trying to access my files. My legacy project. My history.
I photographed the note and receipt, but left the originals exactly where they were. They wouldn't know what I knew. Not yet. It wasn't just the affair; it was the attempt on my work. Laura, with her hand on his chest, reaching for my client files.
The office was still quiet. The HVAC hummed its low, indifferent drone. Outside the window, the Chicago skyline glittered with its usual evening indifference, a thousand lights that didn't care what had just happened on the thirty-second floor of a building on Wacker Drive.
I stood in my husband's office, surrounded by evidence of a replacement campaign, and waited for grief. It never came. What arrived instead was a cold, complete clarity. It wasn’t a suspicion. It wasn't insecurity, or misread body language, or a wife reading too much into a professional relationship. This was proof. Written in her own hand, worn on her wrist, spoken in her voice in a room she had no business being in after hours.
And Callum had let her. He'd let her claim my work, my place, my history. Let her stand in his office and tell him she was done being the secret while he said nothing to defend the wife who'd built the company he was standing in.
He hadn't defended me because he didn't need to. He needed me exactly where I was. Quiet. Useful. Invisible. Keeping the lights on while Laura kept him company.
I looked at the photograph on my phone screen one last time. Laura's handwriting, neat and slanted, spelling out a truth that had been running parallel to my marriage for years.
Then I turned off Callum's desk lamp, closed his door behind me, and walked out of the office with the proof in my bag and a question forming in my mind that I wasn't ready to answer yet.
Not what I was going to do.
What I was going to stop doing.
The elevator doors opened on an empty lobby. The security guard nodded as I passed. I nodded back. Outside, the night air was cold and clean. I stood on the curb and let it fill my lungs, then pulled out my keys and drove. He would come home eventually, unaware that his secret was now mine.
Chapter Six
HOLLAND
The lock turnedat 2:15 a.m. I didn't look up from the kitchen island, from the note spread flat on the marble. Callum stepped inside, his coat half-unbuttoned, his face slack with late-night exhaustion until he saw it. The mask didn't just fall into place—it slammed down, a click of sound in the quiet room.
"You're up."
"I've been up."
He hung his coat on the hook by the pantry, slow and deliberate, a performance of patience meant only for me. "It's late. Whatever this is, can it wait until morning?"
