Chapter 30
Thirty
Ellie
I can’t stop thinking about the gun in my sink.
Every time I close my eyes I see the shiny gunmetal as if it’s tattooed on the back of my eyelids. My knees feel weak and
my hands won’t stop shaking. The knowledge that I could have done something criminal is too much. Was I sleepwalking again?
Did I have a blackout?
Maybe . . . maybe I really did kill the CEO.
The thought crashes through my chest, hot and wild.
The news said he was shot execution-style as he was stepping out of the lobby—like a professional hit. No security footage.
No suspect. And now a gun—this gun—is in my sink, like a calling card I don’t remember writing.
Am I breaking?
Just like my mother?
I think of Jack’s accusations that I’m unraveling. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I can’t tell what’s real and what’s imagined.
“You need professional help, El.” His tone cold and detached, like he was already mourning who I used to be.
But now I know better. Jack isn’t mourning. Jack is lying.
Every nerve in my body flares like a siren at the memory of all that money in the Grand Cayman accounts. And now there’s a gun in my sink.
I clutch the countertop until my knuckles ache. The kitchen is dark except for the streetlight bleeding through the blinds,
casting illuminated stripes across the cabinets. Everything in me is begging for logic, but there’s nothing logical about
this. I can’t help but wonder what other secrets are hiding right under my nose. I begin searching the apartment.
Every drawer. Every crevice. I start with the usual places—front closet, shoe boxes, bedside tables—but it’s Jack’s things
I’m drawn to. His home office. His leather laptop bag. The filing cabinet he never gave me the passcode to. For hours, I tear
through his life, page by page.
Tax returns. Contracts. Dry-cleaning slips. All normal. All expected. Except it’s not.
I know there’s more. I just have to find it.
Around 5:30 a.m., just as dawn spills across the sky, I find it—hidden behind his Columbia diploma on the bottom shelf of
the bookcase. A small black safe, bolted into the wall. I almost miss it, until the light catches the edge of the keypad.
I stare at it, pulse hammering. My mind starts running through possible codes he might have used.
His birthday. Our anniversary. The date he started his first job. It clicks open on the third try: the day of our first date.
Inside is a passport and a sleek, unfamiliar laptop.
The passport photo is him—but not his name.
Julian McCallister. Canadian. Born in Montréal. Forty-two years old.
It takes a full minute before I can breathe again.
Julian McCallister. I flip through the passport, fingers trembling. Multiple stamps from the Cayman Islands. Germany. Singapore.
I remember the offshore accounts I found. So much money funneled from my father to him. I believed Jack when he said he was
handling sensitive cases for my father. God help me, I believed everything.
I open the laptop. Password protected. But Jack—or Julian—is so predictable. His favorite author’s name, all lowercase, gets
me in.
What I find makes my heart stop.
Thousands of files. Financial spreadsheets, encrypted communications, hidden work documents I’ve never seen before. And security
footage. Dozens of folders, each labeled with a date. My hand hovers over the most recent.
Today.
I click.
The screen splits into four feeds. Living room. Kitchen. Bedroom. Bathroom.
My knees nearly buckle. It’s me. It’s me standing at the kitchen sink. Just seconds ago. Recorded. Archived. Watched.
He’s been spying on me.
Not just for days. Or weeks.
For a year.
A year ago—when I had the emotional affair. When I thought Jack had grown distant and cold and I turned to someone else for
comfort. We never touched, but we talked. About everything. About Jack.
Jack heard it all.
He saw it all.
Every conversation. Every private moment. Every breakdown. Every night I curled into myself and cried in the shower.
All of it.
And Aubrey. She’s in the footage too. In our apartment. Laughing with me on the couch. Telling me I’m too good for Jack. Hugging me. Sharing wine as we bitched about men and life and love.
I step back from the desk, dizzy. The air feels thick, poisoned.
I think of my father. Of how he told me my mother died in that psychiatric facility when I was five. But she didn’t.
He lied. Just like Jack. Why?
And what else are they hiding from me?
The psychiatric facility closed years ago—its records scattered, shredded, buried. But maybe my father knows more than he
admits. Maybe he and Jack have always known more than they say.
My father vouched for Jack when we met. Said he was trustworthy. Loyal.
“Just like me,” he’d said about his new intern.
Maybe that’s the problem.
They’re exactly alike.
A chill slithers down my spine. I think of my father’s penthouse, high above the city, his fortress of privilege and control.
What does he keep there? Files? Photos? Anything about my mother? Maybe it's time I find out.
I tuck the fake passport into my sweatshirt pocket. My reflection glimmers in the dark laptop screen, fractured and unfamiliar.
I’m not sure who I am anymore. A grieving daughter? A cheating wife? A murderer?
The gun is still in the sink. I glance toward the kitchen and wonder again if it’s the same one used to kill that CEO. If
I touch it again, am I leaving my fingerprints, or were they already there?
I don’t know what’s real. But I know what I have to do next. Jack—Julian—thinks he’s been watching me. But now I’m watching
him.