Cruel Lies (Akov Bratva #1)

1. Cali

CALI

~Congratulations on reaching your goal weight

I blink at my phone in confusion.

I think the BioInfo Smart Scale I bought last month is having a brain fart.

There are a couple reasons to think that.

Firstly, as nice as it would've been to lose forty pounds, I'm nowhere near that quite yet. In fact, I'm only three weeks into my new diet and exercise routine. The devil works fast, but Dubai chocolate and fourteen-hour work days work faster.

Secondly, I'm not even home. I'm at a work conference in Phoenix, clear across the country from my bathroom scale.

So unless that squat little square of digitized plastic grew wings and flew here from Manhattan, there's no way it should be sending me anything at all.

The kids know they aren't allowed in Mommy's bathroom, and my husband Todd would—and I quote—"rather die than let a nerdy little robot monitor my donut consumption. "

So that leaves one real option: The scale is broken. Either that, or it's predicting the future. Or maybe I'm just hallucinating after a very, very long day?

No one ever told me entrepreneurship would be easy, but I never thought it would be quite this exhausting.

I was always told that motherhood was a job of wearing many hats.

And that's definitely true. At home, I'm a maid, a chauffeur, a Michelin-star chef of chicken nuggets and scrambled eggs.

I'm an ad-hoc therapist whenever a new boy at school cuts my son Hayden in the line for kickball and an unlicensed wedding officiant whenever my daughter Isabella decides that it's time for two of her Barbies to tie the knot.

I buy the groceries and pay the bills. I wipe the counters and make the beds.

I. Do. Everything.

So when the opportunity came to start my own business, I figured, How hard could it be?

Turns out: hard.

Very.

But I am nothing if not determined. So here I am in Phoenix, Arizona, despite the concept of "REM sleep" sounding more like "faerie magic" to me these days, to flog my data science company to prospective investors at an industry convention.

Not gonna lie: It's a bit humiliating. I feel like Oliver Twist, pleading for "just a few more dollars, sir and/or madam!

" But I had a few intrigued nibbles today, including a lengthy conversation with Emmett Glover, the hotshot CEO of a huge industrial services company who'd be a dream client if I could land him.

We're supposed to meet for coffee before the convention starts back up in the morning to chat further.

I was hoping to have time to assemble some notes tonight on how I can help him so I could really knock his socks off.

But this notification has thrown me for a loop.

I click on it and the app opens up. It shows a chart with my weigh-ins on it. For the last three weeks, the line goes down a little bit at a time. Half a pound here. A pound there. Slow, but steady. The way it's supposed to go.

Then, today, the line drops straight off a cliff.

The last entry says 142 pounds.

I weighed 182 this morning. I know because I stepped on the scale before I left for the airport.

I always weigh myself in the morning; it's part of the routine.

Weigh-in, cup of yogurt with my morning celery juice, then forty-five minutes of grueling StairMaster and dumbbells in my silent, unheated garage before the kids wake up and it's time to be SuperMom again.

I'm doing all this for our anniversary. It's going to be ten years in June. I can't even believe how fast the time has flown. Ten years ago, I was a skinny little thing, freshly married and radiantly happy, with killer boobs and a waist-to-hip ratio that would've made Michelangelo salivate.

Since then… Well, like I said: Life has gotten busy, and baby weight is a stubborn S.O.B.

But Todd and I are doing a big trip in two months to celebrate a decade of being the Bradshaws, just the two of us frolicking in sunny Santorini, and I want to look good. Better than good, actually—I want to be in the best shape of my life.

I keep saying I'm doing it for me. That's definitely true.

I want to prove that I'm tough and capable of anything I put my mind to.

If I can push two littles out into the world, if I can bring this company of mine to life, if I can run a household and maintain a happy marriage, then what's a measly few pounds?

But it's not the whole truth.

I'm also doing it—a little bit, just a teensy little bit—because of Todd.

He never comes right out and says it. He's not like that. He just makes little comments. He'll see me getting dressed for work and say something like, "Isabella sure left some stretch marks on her way out, huh?"

Or we'll be at a restaurant and I'll order dessert and he'll raise his eyebrows and say, "You sure about that, Cal?"

Or he'll say I'm "curvy" in this sort of eyebrows-raised, half-smirking kind of way that really doesn't sound like a compliment, even though he insists it is.

So I decided, Fine. I'm still me. I'm still a badass. SuperMom can be SuperBabe again. Just give me three months, and I'm gonna rock your world, baby.

That's the plan, anyway.

Which brings me back to the scale.

If I weigh 182 and the scale just clocked someone at 142, then ipso facto, someone must be standing on my bathroom scale right now. At home. While I'm in Phoenix.

The kids are at my mom's for the weekend. I dropped them off myself before I flew out. So it's not Hayden or Isabella, and besides, they're little. They don't weigh anything close to 142.

That leaves Todd.

But Todd weighs a wee bit more than 142. My husband is a big guy. Six foot two, a former high school football star, on the wrong end of a decade-plus of three-martini lunches with his banker bros in the Financial District.

So it's not Todd, either.

Who does that leave?

Even weirder is that time difference. I've been at the post-convention happy hour since the sun set, chatting and networking with all the other conference attendees. I check the clock on my bedside alarm clock to see 12:11 A.M. lit up in bright red numerals.

Just past midnight here equals three in the morning back home, New York time. Huh. Bizarre.

But no matter how I try to square things up, it just doesn't make sense. Late on a Thursday night, can't be the kids, Todd's home alone…

… or is he?

As soon as that thought steps one nasty little Grinchy tiptoe in my conscience, I shove it right back out. No. Nuh-uh. No freaking way.

There are a hundred more likely reasons I might be seeing this notification right now. Maybe a friend came over. Maybe Todd's mom stopped by and got curious about the new gadget. Maybe the scale's just broken. The thing's only a month old. Things break, newfangled technological things especially.

But let's be honest: I don't believe any of that.

No "friend" would plausibly be in our private master bedroom. Todd's mom is in a wheelchair at a nursing home. And yeah, the device could be broken… but do I really think it is?

I think I'm getting loopy. Two Cosmopolitans at happy hour, plus a day that started early and ended very late, multiplied by lots of extremely anxiety-inducing conversations in between, equals one very tired Cali.

Letting my mind run rampant with negative, invasive thoughts is not doing me any favors.

Besides, I need to get some sleep so I can be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when I meet with Emmett Glover tomorrow morning.

So I set my phone facedown on the bedside table and slip into the bathroom. I change out of the day's work clothes, brush my teeth, and wash my face.

When I'm done, I make the mistake of looking up.

The hotel mirror is one of those cruel, unflinching ones with the lighting designed by someone who clearly hates women. I stand there in my underwear and take stock.

It was stupid to wear this underwear. It's a frilly black set of matching bra and panties. I thought it would feel like battle armor, giving me a sexy little charge underneath my finest business casual. In this harsh fluorescent glare, though, it looks cheap and tacky.

More embarrassing than that is the body underneath.

There's the soft little pooch of my belly that Isabella gifted me on her way into the world.

The hips, wide enough that Todd finds it hilarious to make "vehicle moving in reverse" noises whenever I'm backing up while vacuuming in the house.

My thighs touch in the middle, which I'm told is a Problem, though I've never quite understood whose or why or what exactly is supposed to be fitting in there, anyway.

I turn sideways. Suck in. Let it out. Turn back.

The thing is, I don't hate what I see. Not exactly. On a good day, I look at this body and think, Damn, girl. You grew two humans in there. Go you!

But it's midnight, and I'm tired, and tomorrow, I have to convince a stranger I'm worth a fortune. So right now, all I can see is the pounds I haven't lost yet, and all I can think about is a number on a scale that doesn't belong to anybody I can explain.

I flick off the light.

I pull on my pajamas in the dark and get under the covers of the bed. My phone is right there if I want to keep squinting at that stupid BioInfo notification, but I try to talk myself out of it.

I mean, I'm jumping to conclusions, right? I have to be. There's a very good explanation that'll make all this panic look silly.

But my hands are cold and my heart's going fast and the part of me that's kept quiet for a long time is starting to whisper.

This isn't my first rodeo. I've wondered before.

Todd's been different the last few months.

He works late more than he used to. He always turns his phone away from me whenever I happen to peek over his shoulder, which he never did before.

He volunteered to do school pickup for Hayden a few weeks back, which sounds nice, except Todd never volunteers for anything to do with the school.

He says PTA meetings make him want to drive into a lake.

I noticed all of it. I just didn't let myself add it up. I was busy. I was tired. I had the business and the kids and the diet, and going all Inspector Gadget on the situation just seemed way too over-the-top.

There's a really easy solution to all this: Just call Todd.

It's so straightforward that I laugh out loud. I pick up the phone and I almost do it. My thumb's over his name in my contacts.

But then I hesitate.

What would I say? Hey, could you check the master bathroom? I think there's the ghost of a murdered woman standing on my scale?

He'd grumble that I was being crazy, then bring up yet again how I really need to start seeing a therapist, maybe getting on some anxiety meds, because I'm starting to lose it lately.

He's been dropping those hints more and more lately.

As if I have time for therapy. If I'm in therapy, who's picking up the kids from soccer practice, huh?

If I'm lying on a couch confessing my deepest, heartfelt desires, who's going to remember to only peel Isabella's banana halfway down so she can do the rest herself?

Nobody. That's who.

I put the phone down and take a breath. In and out, whoosah, just like Cody Rigsby always tells me on my Peloton rides.

There. Better.

I'm being ridiculous. I'm a grown woman with a PhD in data science who builds predictive algorithms for a living, and here I am, spiraling over a glitchy bathroom scale like it's a Ouija board spelling out my doom.

The thing probably just hiccupped. Software does that.

Lord knows my own app crashes every time someone so much as looks at it sideways during a demo.

It's nothing. It's a bug. Tomorrow, I'll laugh about this. I'll email the BioInfo people to let them know their precious gadget needs a patch, and they'll send me a coupon for fifteen percent off my next purchase, and the universe will go back to making sense.

I fluff the hotel pillow and close my eyes. Santorini is gonna be so beautiful. White buildings, blue water, Todd's arm around my tight, twenty-eight-inch waist. Ten years of love and partnership. We made it. We made two whole kids, a mortgage, a life.

That doesn't just evaporate.

Merciful sleep starts creeping in at the edges, soft and sweet. I have one more thought before it takes me all the way down.

There's no way my husband of ten years is cheating on me… Right?