5. Skye
— ? —
Skye
The screenshots sit in my photos app like a bomb I can’t defuse.
The hotel confirmation has been zoomed in on so many times the pixels have started to blur at the edges.
The timestamps have been memorized, cross-referenced against every excuse Jayden has given me for the past several weeks.
The pattern is there - Tuesday nights, always Tuesday nights - but patterns can be manufactured. Evidence can be fabricated.
Someone wants me to believe my husband is cheating.
The question that keeps me awake, that follows me from room to room in this empty mansion, is whether they want me to believe it because it’s true, or because believing it serves some other purpose entirely.
I confronted him about the Tuesday nights, and all it earned me was a diagnosis of paranoia.
But I haven’t shown him the texts. What would I say?
“I got anonymous messages accusing you of having an affair, and I can’t tell if they’re real or if someone is trying to destroy me”? Either answer is devastating.
So instead of confronting, I prepare.
The Valentino gown hangs in my closet like armor waiting to be donned.
Deep emerald, floor-length, with a neckline that says I’m not defeated and a silhouette that says look at what you’re losing.
My makeup has been planned down to the shade of lipstick.
My hair appointment was this morning. Everything is calculated to project confidence I don’t feel.
Tonight, at the gala, I’ll see him with her. I’ll watch them together. And maybe - maybe - I’ll be able to tell if the woman in red is just a colleague, or something more.
My hands won’t stop shaking as I zip up the dress.
The Rowland Studios Quarterly Gala is Hollywood’s worst-kept secret - an invitation everyone wants and no one enjoys. Industry elites crammed into the Beverly Wilshire ballroom, air-kissing people they’d stabbed in the back last quarter while scouting new backs to stab this quarter.
Twelve years of marriage. I’ve lost count of these galas since Jayden founded the studio.
The rhythm is memorized by now: champagne reception at seven, dinner at eight, speeches at nine, dancing until the older executives get tired and the younger ones get drunk.
The board members’ wives who need complimenting on their jewelry.
The rivals’ girlfriends who need avoiding entirely.
The smile that has to stay fixed until my face hurts.
The laugh that has to sound genuine at jokes that aren’t funny.
The perfect CEO’s wife. That’s what tonight requires.
But tonight, the performance has a different purpose.
The ballroom glitters with crystal chandeliers and designer gowns as I make my entrance.
Alone. Jayden left for the venue hours ago - some crisis with the seating chart, Miranda had texted apologetically - so I arrive in my own car, walking my own carpet, answering my own questions from reporters who seem surprised to see me without my husband at my side.
“Skye! Where’s Jayden tonight?”
“Already inside, putting out fires. You know how he is.” The smile comes automatically. “The studio doesn’t run itself.”
“Any truth to the rumors about the Henderson project?”
“You’ll have to ask the experts about that. I just show up for the free champagne.”
Laughter. More photos. The gauntlet of small talk that finally spits me out into the main ballroom, where the real work begins.
My eyes scan the crowd automatically, searching for two people: my husband, and the woman who might be taking him from me.
Table 1 is impossible to miss. Center of the ballroom, directly beneath the largest chandelier, reserved for Rowland Studios executives and their guests. The power table. The throne room.
And there, seated in the chair that should have been mine, is Adriana Stuart.
The photos hadn’t done her justice. She’s stunning in a way that makes other women want to cry - tall and willowy, with cheekbones that catch the light like they were designed for it.
Her dress is red. Of course it’s red. Bold, attention-grabbing, unapologetic.
Her laugh carries across the room, bright and confident, drawing glances from every direction.
She’ll be wearing red. She always wears red when she’s with him.
The anonymous text echoes in my mind as I watch her work the table.
The way she leans in when someone speaks.
The way she touches arms, shoulders, hands - casual contact that establishes intimacy without crossing lines.
The way she makes everyone around her feel like the most important person in the room.
That used to be me. That used to be my gift. The ability to charm, to connect, to make people feel seen.
When did I stop using it? When did I become so busy shrinking myself to fit into Jayden’s shadow that I forgot how to shine on my own?
A waiter passes with champagne flutes. My hand reaches for one automatically, but I stop myself. Not tonight. Tonight I need clarity, not comfort.
Jayden is across the ballroom, deep in conversation with a group of investors.
The charcoal suit. The perfect hair. The body language that says I own this room and everyone in it.
He’s in his element here, surrounded by people who want things from him, performing the role of visionary CEO with practiced ease.
He hasn’t looked at me once since I walked in. Not once. Forty thousand dollars of emerald Valentino, and my own husband can’t be bothered to notice.
The champagne suddenly seems more necessary.
My fingers close around a glass just as Jayden’s head turns. His eyes scan the crowd - looking for someone, something - and then they land on me.
Everything stops.
He smiles. Not the one he wears for step-and-repeats and quarterly calls - the other one. The real one. The one that crinkles the corners of his eyes. The one that used to make me feel like the only person in any room.
He raises his champagne glass in my direction. A tiny gesture. Private. Just for us.
You look beautiful, his eyes say.
I know, mine say back.
My skin warms despite everything. My body responded before my brain could stop it. For one perfect second, standing in this glittering ballroom surrounded by people who don’t matter, I feel like his wife again. Not his accessory. Not his obligation. His wife.
Then Adriana touches his arm, and he turns away, and the moment dissolves like smoke.
The champagne goes bitter on my tongue. Whatever that was - whatever flash of connection just passed between us - it wasn’t enough to hold his attention. Not when she’s there. Not when she’s touching him with that easy familiarity, leaning in to whisper something that makes him laugh.
The last good moment. That’s what this will be, when I look back on tonight. The last time he smiled at me like that before everything burned.
But standing here with my champagne going flat and my heart doing complicated, painful things, I don’t know that yet. All I know is that he smiled at me across a crowded room, and I still felt it in my chest, and maybe that means we’re not as broken as I thought.
A hand touches my elbow. The flinch is automatic, champagne sloshing dangerously in my glass.
“Mrs. Rowland?” Miranda Costello, Jayden’s assistant, stands beside me with an expression I can’t quite read. Young, eager, clearly terrified to be approaching the boss’s wife with whatever news she’s carrying. “I’m so sorry to bother you, but there’s a situation.”
“A situation?”
Miranda’s face is pale beneath her careful makeup. “It’s - I think you should come with me. Please.”
“What kind of situation?”
“I can’t-” Her eyes dart around nervously, checking who might be listening. “Not here. Please. It’s important.”
Something flickers in Miranda’s expression. Guilt? Fear? The instinct to file it away is automatic, even as my feet start moving, following her through a service door and down a hallway lined with catering carts.
The ballroom noise fades behind us. The hallway smells like industrial cleaner and reheated appetizers.
Miranda leads me to a small office that’s been commandeered as a staging area for the event - folding tables covered in paperwork, a coffee maker that’s seen better days, fluorescent lighting that makes everyone look slightly ill.
Two men are waiting inside. Older, serious, in the expensive suits that signal board-level importance. Harrison, head of Legal, and someone else whose name escapes me. They look uncomfortable in the way people look when they’re about to deliver bad news.
“Mrs. Rowland,” Harrison begins, his voice carefully neutral. “We’ve received some… concerning information. About the Starlight Foundation.”
The Starlight Foundation. My foundation. The charitable arm of Rowland Studios that I built from the ground up. The one thing in this marriage that’s truly mine.
“What about it?”
“There are allegations.” Harrison’s discomfort is palpable. “Of financial irregularities. Misappropriation of funds.”
The room tilts. The fluorescent lights buzz overhead like angry insects.
“That’s impossible. I oversee every penny personally. The books are audited quarterly-”
“The allegations are specific, Mrs. Rowland.” He hands me a manila folder, thick with documents. “And they come from a credible source.”
The folder opens in my hands. Bank statements. Transfer records. Invoices I’ve never seen before, signed with what looks like my signature but isn’t. Hundreds of thousands of dollars moving through accounts I don’t recognize, all traced back to the Starlight Foundation.
My eyes catch it immediately. The loop on the ‘S’ is wrong. The way the ‘y’ is crossed - different. Years of signing my name have made me intimately familiar with its shape, its flow, the particular way my pen moves across paper.
These are forgeries. Good ones, but forgeries.
“This is fabricated.” My voice sounds distant, like it’s coming from somewhere outside my body. “Someone made this up.”
“Mrs. Rowland-”
“Look at this signature. I cross my y’s differently. And I never sign with just ‘S. Rowland’ - I always use my full first name. Whoever forged this didn’t know me well enough.”
Harrison’s expression doesn’t change. Professional neutrality, the kind they teach in crisis management seminars. “The source requested that Legal inform you privately, tonight, before this goes any further.”
“Who?” The word comes out sharper than intended. “Who’s making these accusations?”
Harrison doesn’t answer.
He doesn’t have to. The answer is already forming in my mind, clicking into place like the final piece of a puzzle I didn’t know I was solving.
The anonymous texts. The hotel reservations. The timing. The woman in red who appeared in my husband’s life and my Instagram feed at exactly the same moment.
Someone has been playing me. And now they’re making their move.