Fractured: The Sins of a Father

Chapter 01

"Goodbye, Colin."

Colin

“Ceci. I—”

“You can explain? I’m sure you can.” She tilts her head, her face void of expression as she stands. “Not here. This is my favorite place in the house. I don’t want to taint it.”

A sharp pang pierces my chest as a memory surfaces—her saying something completely different...

We were lying in our bed after making love, Ceci curled against me with her head resting on my chest. “This is my favorite place,” she murmured, her voice soft and dreamlike.

I chuckled. “Our bed?”

“Here.” She pressed a kiss to my chest, then lifted her gaze to mine. “In your arms, no matter where we are.”

I’m yanked back into the present by the sound of a binder being placed on the console table behind one of the couches.

“You wanted to explain. Please do.”

She stands there, detached, her expression unreadable.

Taking a deep breath, I begin.

"I don't know who sent you the picture or what they told you, but it's not what you think. It only happened a few times, and it meant nothing to me. I swear it will never happen again. I love you, Ceci… you know that. You're the only woman I've ever loved."

I reach for her hand, and when she doesn't pull away or slap me across the face, the rush of relief is so strong I could almost cry.

"You know how hard this past year has been for the company.

We had to recover from bad investments, and with all the stress, I.

.. I let myself slip. But I swear to you, I promise you, it will never happen again. "

Her silence presses in. Each second drives another nail into my chest, pinning me in place. She stares at me for what feels like a lifetime. Her gaze unwavering, her expression carved from stone.

“How... how can you look me in the eye and lie as easily as you breathe?” she whispers. Her voice is so faint, it barely reaches me.

I cup her face in my hands, and the look of pain etched across her features makes my chest twist in agony. “Look at me, baby. Please... please look at me.”

When she finally lifts her eyes, they meet mine—but she doesn’t see me. She stares straight through me, past me, into a place where I no longer exist.

No. This can’t be happening.

“No, Ceci. You have to look at me. You need to look at me, really look at me and understand. You’re the only one who matters. No one else.”

I keep holding her face, my thumbs trembling against her skin, begging with my eyes for her to see me. To see the truth, the love I carry for her, just as she always has.

“I am looking, Colin. And I don’t like what I see.”

She pulls away from my touch and opens the binder resting on the console table. “What I see is a liar. A cheater. A manipulator. A man with no integrity.”

With each word that falls from her lips, she flips another page in the binder, the sound snapping against the rings like a verdict. Then she reaches down for a paper bag and tosses a white shirt onto the wood between us. The lipstick stain on the collar stares back at me—a silent accusation.

Fear seizes my body, my blood turning to ice in my veins with every step I take toward what might be my own condemnation.

I have to turn this around. I can’t lose Ceci. I won’t lose Ceci.

But of all the things I could have expected to find in the binder, this is a thousand times worse.

It's all here. Everything.

Photos of the dress and shoes Maya bought with my card. Our location history, reduced to data, laid out page after page—not just New York, but every trip, every itinerary, every hotel where we stayed for hours or days. A trail tracing my downfall.

Pictures of me and Maya at the Miami awards ceremony. Pictures I’ve never seen before. We’re not touching, but close enough.

I was so careful. So damn careful not to be seen with her in front of the cameras.

And there's more... Photos of me entering and leaving Maya's building late at night. Screenshots of our texts—me telling her I was on my way, asking her to wait for me at her apartment. Pictures she sent me. I deleted everything the moment I saw it, and yet here it all is...

Credit card statements. Every meal, the dress, the shoes, multiple repeated purchases of condoms and—oh God—every single lube I ever bought.

But it's even worse. No. No. Please, God, no.

And then… the Plan B receipt.

The flowers. The chocolates.

The birthday gift that meant nothing on its own, but which, laid out among all the evidence, tells a different story.

I stop looking, shut my eyes, and brace my weight against the table. "Who... gave this to you?"

Shame washes over me. Fear grips me in a way I've never felt before. None of this was ever supposed to touch us.

To touch Ceci.

She stays silent, but I can feel her eyes on my back.

"Mark," she says at last, voice steady. "But don't you dare think about reporting him or anything like that. He has copies of everything in there, and I can't control what he might do with them if you threaten him."

I spin toward her. "He's your friend—you know I wouldn't report him. Even though I'd love to smash his face right now. He shouldn't have shown you this."

Ceci tilts her head, studying me.

"No, Colin. I don't even know what you're capable of anymore.

In fact, you've just seen proof that maybe I never knew you at all.

" She lets out a humorless laugh. "You think Mark put this together?

No, Colin—this little souvenir of your love affair was my doing.

I gave him access to your phone. All he had to do was follow the trail and collect the evidence for me. "

“It was not a love affair. I already told you. It was nothing. It meant nothing.”

My voice comes out louder, rougher than I intend. I can’t let her turn this into something it’s not.

“It is, Colin.”

She looks me straight in the eyes. “Or do you really think I didn’t know you were in San Jose with her—and not just for work?”

She jerks her chin toward the console table. “You should look all the way through.”

My hands are shaking as I turn the next page.

There we are at the San Jose airport. Maya’s hand resting on my chest as she thanks me for getting her bag. At the convention, she’s always too close.

A restaurant shot, her fingers looped around my arm.

The elevator picture. The doorway to her room, both of us stepping inside.

Then the next morning… me leaving alone, in the exact same clothes, rumpled, tie dangling from my hand like an admission of guilt.

Even a picture of us walking out of JFK this afternoon.

The kiss Maya stole, frozen in pixels. Every single frame marked with a timestamp.

Cold climbs from my stomach, crawling up my chest. I can't think.

How didn't I see?

How didn't I see it happening… see it and stop it?

"Ceci..." I turn to her, and though her expression is impassive, I can see the pain in her eyes mirroring my own. "You have to believe me."

She lifts a hand to silence me, then folds both arms tightly around her torso, as if shielding herself from me.

"Do you know how I felt?" Her voice breaks on the last word. A single tear slips down her cheek, then another, and she doesn't bother to wipe them away.

"I felt like a fool. Always excusing your absence, believing your lies. Lying to myself. And then your lipstick-stained shirt—lying proudly in our laundry hamper. Mocking me."

The shirt...

"Do you know my first instinct was to justify it? To come up with wild lies to explain why my husband's clothes—the man I love, the man I've been married to for almost nineteen years—had a lipstick stain that wasn't mine."

She shakes her head, her gaze drifting somewhere far away, as though replaying every moment where she chose trust over truth.

"You'll never understand the strength it took for me to walk into your office that day… only to see you all cozy with her. The way she looked at me. The lipstick was the same, the perfume was the same... the wreck I was when I walked out of your office. The wreck Mark found me in..."

Her arms fall from around her torso, her expression hardening into something colder.

“I had to ask my doctor to run a full STI panel. I asked to be tested for every possible disease or infection she could think of, Colin. Me—a married woman who’s only ever had one partner my entire life.

And I walked out of there feeling filthy.

Humiliated. Cheap. Stripped of every shred of dignity. ”

I feel the blood drain from my face.

“Ceci, I didn’t—”

“Don’t lie to me.”

Her voice is steady. Deadly. “I saw the Plan B purchase, Colin. Less than a month ago.”

She swallows. “That was one of the things that made me physically sick the first time I saw it on paper. That—and the lube you…”

Her throat works, swallowing once, twice, three times. As if the mere memory alone could make her retch. My stomach twists into knots. Ceci was never supposed to know. None of this was ever supposed to touch us.

“Was that it, Colin? Was that enough for you to betray me? To tear apart years and years of a life we lived together?”

Her voice is so fragile it’s almost not there.

Desperate, I move toward her, reaching, needing to close the space between us. But Ceci steps back, the distance rising like a wall I can’t break through.

“No, Ceci, listen to me. It was a mistake, okay? A mistake I will never make again. You have my word.”

She wipes her eyes with the backs of her hands, then straightens, her spine rigid, her voice steady in a way that terrifies me more than her tears.

"What good is your word, Colin, when you've already broken every vow you ever made to me?"

My stomach sinks. I can't reach her anymore.

"You've become someone I don't recognize.

Someone I don't want to know. You were so focused on yourself—on your little escapades—that you never saw me slipping through your fingers, grain by grain.

For days, I looked for the man I once loved, trying to understand how he could turn into. .." Her hands sweep over me, shaking.

"This."

I take a step closer, but she instantly retreats.