Chapter 16
On the day I first allowed myself to stop waiting for Adrian's next blow, his mistress came to my gates and begged me to save her from my husband.
Nikki Reed stood on the other side of the security camera in a gray coat, without makeup, without jewelry, without my watch on her wrist. I barely recognized the woman who, two months earlier, had placed a hand on her empty stomach and announced to my husband, my mother-in-law, the entire ballroom, and me that she had won.
Now she hugged herself as though her own body were the only thing they hadn't managed to take from her yet.
"Tell her to leave," I said.
My own voice sounded calm, and that calm had cost me more than a scream.
The old black wave was already rising beneath my ribs.
I saw the gold dress again, my watch, her fingers resting on Adrian's sleeve.
I heard her whisper on the yacht: "Sorry.
There isn't enough room." If hatred could be poured into a glass, I would have given the entire house a drink.
Graham sat beside me with the control panel in his hand.
He didn't argue. He didn't urge me to rise above my pain, to be purer or wiser than it.
He simply rewound the security footage ten seconds.
Nikki lifted her face. Beneath an uneven layer of foundation, a dark mark spread across her left cheekbone.
"Someone hit her," he said.
"I can see that."
"And that isn't a phone in her pocket."
I looked more closely. The fabric over her chest bulged in an almost perfect square.
"What is it?"
Graham pressed the intercom button.
"Nikki Reed, show us the object inside your coat. Slowly. Hold it with two fingers."
Nikki flinched, glanced back at the empty road, and slowly pulled out a small black flash drive. She pinched it between her thumb and forefinger as though she were afraid of leaving fingerprints.
"It's a copy of everything on Vivian Mercer's phone," she said, her voice coming through the speaker thin and broken.
"Messages, recordings, payments. Everything she thought she'd deleted."
It felt as though someone had tugged an invisible thread tied to my dead mother.
My hand moved to my stomach on its own. Perhaps the drive contained ordinary theft.
Perhaps it held one more scheme involving the foundation.
But my body knew the truth before my mind did: an ache spread through my cheekbones, clammy cold gathered at the base of my skull, and my heart took one heavy, uneven step.
"How did you get it?"
"I stayed at their house after the hearing.
I thought Adrian would keep me with him.
Funny, isn't it? He doesn't love people who've helped make a fool of him.
Yesterday, he said I forged the records myself and deceived him.
His attorneys are preparing a fraud case against me.
Vivian told me to leave by morning. Then I heard her telling security that my car might not make it to the airport. "
"So you stole her phone?" Graham asked.
"She left it in the study. She took a sleeping pill. I knew the passcode because she made me answer calls from reporters. I copied everything I could. If you don't let me in, I'll go to the police."
"Go," I said.
She closed her eyes. There was no remorse in the gesture, and I was almost grateful for that. Remorse had become a new currency people too often tried to use to pay me for harm already done. I didn't need her apology. I needed her to repeat everything on the record.
"One of Vivian's people will meet you at the station," Graham said. "Or a courteous detective who's already been told what a hysterical woman you are. You won't make it into an interview room with that drive."
"That's why I'm here."
"No." I rose from the couch too quickly and regretted it at once. Everything inside me lurched, my temples roared, and I had to brace one hand against the table.
"She's here because I was her last choice. First, she chose Vivian. Then Adrian. Then my silence. Now she's frightened, so she chose my gates. Don't call that trust."
Graham studied me carefully.
"But we still have to let her in."
"Why?"
"Because that black plastic may hold nothing. Or it may hold everything. We won't touch the drive until Langston and a digital-forensics specialist arrive. She'll hand it over on camera, give a statement, and stay under guard in the guesthouse. Not in the main house."
"You've already decided all this?"
"No. I know what you'll decide once you finish hating yourself for feeling sorry for her."
The words struck harder than I expected.
Not because they were untrue. The opposite.
Deep beneath my fury, a repulsive flicker of sympathy was already stirring.
I knew what it was like to stand before a man who had seemed like my whole world only yesterday, then look at his face today and see a locked door.
The only difference was that I had nearly died behind that door, while Nikki had helped lock it.
"Let her in," I said. "But she gets examined first. And she is never to be alone with me."
Graham gave the order to security. The gates slowly parted.
Nikki stepped through and immediately swayed, as though fear alone had held her upright the entire way there and had now released her.
Andrew and a female security officer met her on the drive.
I watched the screen and felt no triumph.
Victory turned out to be nothing like the bright emotion I had imagined while lying in the bottom of the boat.
It smelled of another woman's fear, sweat, and old crimes finally exposed to the air.
Forty minutes later, they brought Nikki into the small sitting room.
She wore someone else's loose clothes; her hair had been searched, and her coat and bag taken away.
A long table separated us. Graham sat to my left, and Langston, who had arrived surprisingly fast, sat to my right.
A red light glowed on the camera mounted on a tripod. Nikki looked only at me.
"I'm not going to ask for forgiveness," she said.
"Good. That will save us time."
She flinched at my tone. And suddenly I realized I no longer wanted to hurt her.
Not because she didn't deserve it. Her pain simply couldn't give me anything back.
Not my trust. Not the years of my marriage.
Not that night. It would only make me part of their circle again, where one person wounded another, the second struck back, and afterward everyone tried to remember who had started it.
"Tell the truth," I said. "Not for me. For yourself. Maybe for the first time in your life."
Nikki lowered her eyes to her clasped hands.
"The pregnancy was Vivian's idea. Adrian didn't know the records were fake.
He knew about us. He knew I was going to become the face of the foundation.
But he found out about the pregnancy right before we went onstage.
His mother said it would be better for everyone that way.
He believed her. Or he wanted to. I don't know. "
"How long?" I asked.
Nikki looked up, and I saw her counting. Not days. Not months. My humiliations.
"Eleven months."
She swallowed.
"The first time was after the new clinic's opening reception.
He said the two of you had been living like strangers for a long time.
That your marriage was held together by pity and obligation.
I wanted to believe I wasn't breaking up a family.
I was only stepping into a place that had already been empty. "
A cold so pure swept through me that I could almost hear my bones ringing.
Eleven months. I remembered the previous winter, when Adrian didn't come home for the first time and sent me a photograph of an empty conference room.
What a thoughtful man. He had proven to his wife that her place was empty while he was busy filling another woman's bed.
That night, I sat in the kitchen until morning and counted my flaws like rosary beads: not beautiful enough, not easy enough, not obedient enough, not pregnant enough.
All that time, he had simply been lying.
"Vivian knew from the beginning?" Langston asked.
"A month later. She called me herself. I thought she'd demand that I leave him. Instead, she invited me to lunch and asked whether I knew how to see something through to the end. Then she gave me the watch. Your watch."
Nikki pulled a closed fist from her pocket. Her fingers opened slowly. The same watch lay in her palm. The crystal was cracked and the band scratched, but I recognized it instantly. My wedding gift. My initial engraved on the back. My time, worn on another woman's wrist as proof of my defeat.
"Take it," Nikki said.
"No."
She jerked.
"It's yours."
"What was mine was everything I put into it. That's gone now. Keep it as evidence. For once, let it serve my truth instead of their beautiful lies."
Without a word, Langston slid a clear evidence bag toward Nikki. She placed the watch inside. Like the drive, it was sealed. My past lay on the table in two bags, and for the first time, I had no desire to tear either of them open with my bare hands.
Dr. Foster, who had been standing by the door the entire time, came over and rested a hand on my shoulder.
"You're pale."
"I hope that isn't a crime yet."
"Since yesterday, I wouldn't rule out anything where your family is concerned. But you need to lie down now."
"I need to hear the rest."
"You need to give birth to a living child, not collapse dramatically over a witness statement."
"Is this how you always comfort people?"
"No. Sometimes I'm even harsher."