Page 10 of Broken Blades

That should've been the first warning. Barbara always locked the door. Always. Obsessive about it, checking twice before bed, testing the handle even after she'd heard the bolt click.

I dropped my bag in the entryway. Kicked off my boots. The house held that particular silence that meant someone was home but pretending not to be—breath held, movement frozen, waiting for the danger to pass.

"Barbara?"

No answer.

Laughter drifted down from upstairs. Not her usual laugh—that controlled, measured sound she used at charity functions and investor dinners. This was different. Higher. Breathless.

I took the stairs two at a time.

The bedroom door stood half-open. Light spilled into the hallway, cutting a triangle across the hardwood.

I pushed it wider.

He stood by the bed. Shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest, tie discarded on the floor beside his shoes. His wedding ring caught the lamplight—gold band, expensive, probably custom-made to match the one his wife wore at family dinners.

Barbara sat on the edge of our bed. Her robe hung loose. Her hair—always perfect, always styled—fell messy around her shoulders.

They both turned.

Thomas Harrington looked at me the way someone looks at an interruption. Mild annoyance. Nothing more.

Barbara's expression cycled through three stages in the space of a breath: confusion, then panic, then something calculated and cold.

"Wyatt." She stood, tightening the robe. "You're home early."

I couldn't speak. Couldn't move. Just stood there like an idiot while my brain tried to reconcile what my eyes were showing me with what I'd believed about my life five minutes ago.

Thomas reached for his shirt, buttoning it with the same casual precision he probably used to sign contracts. "This isn't what it looks like."

That broke the paralysis. "Get out."

My voice came out quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that preceded violence.

Barbara moved between us. "Wyatt, let me explain⁠—"

"Get. Out."

Thomas finished with his buttons. Collected his tie. Slipped into his shoes like he was leaving a business meeting that had run long.

"We'll talk when you've calmed down," he said.

He walked past me. Brushed my shoulder. His cologne—expensive, subtle—lingered in his wake.

I turned to follow him, but Barbara grabbed my arm. "Don't." Her nails dug into my bicep. "You'll make this worse."

"Worse?"

The word tasted like ashes.

She pulled her hand back, and I saw it then—the shift. The performance clicking into place. Tears welled in her eyes, perfectly timed, perfectly calibrated.

"You're always gone," she whispered. "You're never here. What did you expect?"

What came after blurred together into a nightmare I couldn't wake from.

Lawyers. Depositions. Media vultures circling for scraps.