The Dog Cam that Ended My Marriage (Wives Who Bite Back #11)

1. Meeting Notes, Dallas

Chapter one

Meeting Notes, Dallas

The glow of my phone screen was the only light in the hotel room. It was nine fifty-eight at night in Dallas, which meant it was nine fifty-eight at night in Chicago. I was exactly where I always was: managing everyone else’s life from the palm of my hand.

I lay flat on the stiff duvet, still wearing the gray slacks and white silk blouse I’d sweated through during eight hours of marketing strategy meetings.

My feet throbbed. The recycled air of the conference center still coated the back of my throat.

I felt hollowed out, carrying the kind of exhaustion that a good night’s sleep hadn’t touched in years.

But the phone in my hand was a tether, vibrating with a steady stream of minor catastrophes that apparently only I could solve.

There was a text from my mother, Diane: Piper is in tears over the rehearsal dinner menu. Spencer wants BBQ. Can you talk to him? You know how rigid he gets. Just smooth it out, Gemma.

Twenty minutes later, a text arrived from Piper, my younger sister: Spencer is literally ruining my life. It’s my wedding. Why do I have to compromise on the catering? Tell Mom to talk to him. I can’t deal.

I stared at the screen without typing a reply.

Piper was twenty-seven, three years younger than me, and engaged to a genuinely kind orthodontist named Spencer Novak.

Spencer was a steady, reliable man who remained completely bewildered by the sheer force of Piper’s demands.

He thought her impulsivity was charming, a bright splash of color against his quiet life.

He didn’t realize her spontaneity was entirely funded and cleaned up by the people around her—which usually meant just me.

I ignored both messages and checked the time at the top of my screen.

Nine fifty-nine.

I swiped the texts away and opened the camera app for our living room.

It was time for Tucker’s pill. Our eight-year-old golden retriever had a bad thyroid and achy hips, and he needed his medication wrapped in a single slice of sharp cheddar cheese at exactly ten o’clock.

Otherwise, he would spend the entire next day sluggish and miserable.

Ian, my husband, loved the dog in the same way he loved his expensive watch or the stock market articles he quoted at dinner parties.

He liked the idea of Tucker, and he enjoyed tossing a ball in the park when the weather was nice.

But he despised the unglamorous maintenance of keeping another living thing healthy.

Left to his own devices, Ian would forget the pill, fall asleep on the couch, and act deeply offended when I pointed out the oversight.

Connecting, the app read, while a gray wheel spun on the black screen.

I sat up and leaned back against the headboard, just wanting to see if Ian was in the kitchen getting the cheese. If the room was empty, I would call him. It was a routine we’d fallen into over the last year, where I acted as the manager and he played the employee requiring constant supervision.

The wheel stopped spinning, and the feed from the living room bookshelf snapped into high-definition focus.

The space was lit only by the warm glow of the floor lamp in the corner. I looked at the gray sectional sofa, fully expecting to see Tucker’s golden bulk curled on the cushions.

Instead, I saw a tangle of limbs.

My brain stalled, registering the image on the screen as nothing more than shifting shapes and shadows.

I squinted against the glare, trying to make the geometry fit.

I saw a bare leg, pale against the dark fabric of the upholstery.

Then another leg, and a man’s arm wrapped tight around a woman’s waist.

My fingers clamped down on the edges of the phone until the plastic bit into my palms.

The woman was straddling the man, her hips rising and falling in a slow grind. Her back was arched and her head was thrown backward. She was naked from the waist down, and her top—a silk camisole that caught the lamplight—was bunched up under her breasts.

The man was Ian. He lay back against the armrest, wearing the blue button-down shirt I’d picked up from the dry cleaners just yesterday.

His hands were buried in her long, styled hair, gripping the strands as she rode him.

The silver watch on his left wrist caught the light, and I instantly recognized it as the one I’d bought him for his thirtieth birthday.

The woman was Piper. My sister.

It was the hair that gave it away first, that expensive, honey-blonde balayage she’d complained about the price of right before she put it on my credit card.

I almost wanted to deny it, to pretend it wasn’t true.

That my sister, at least, hadn’t betrayed me.

Then she turned to kiss him, her face illuminated by the lamp, and her profile was unmistakable.

I recognized her cute, sloped nose and that sharp jawline.

She was panting, her mouth parted as she dragged in shallow breaths.

I pressed my thumb to the screen and tapped the red circle at the bottom of the app.

Recording.

I sat alone in a hotel room a thousand miles away, watching my husband and my sister fucking on my couch. The hum of the mini-fridge and the distant traffic from the Dallas highway faded away entirely, leaving nothing in the world but the cruel rectangle of my phone.

I tapped the speaker icon, and the audio feed crackled to life. Now I could hear her soft moans, the rustle of discarded clothing, and the rhythmic squeak of the couch frame.

“Oh God, Ian,” Piper moaned. Her voice was wet and frantic, entirely stripped of her usual pretense. “Right there.”

“Tell me this is better than Spencer,” Ian groaned. His hips drove up, hard and fast. The sound of skin slapping against skin was unmistakable.

Piper let out a sharp, breathless cry. She threw her head back. “Spencer doesn’t even know how to touch me. Don’t stop. Deeper.”

Ian’s hips drove upward one last time before he let out a ragged groan. He slumped deeper into the armrest. Piper gasped, her body shuddering as she collapsed forward against his chest.

They lay there for a moment, chests heaving in the quiet room. Then Piper shifted, pushing herself up. A sharp giggle escaped her lips. “Did she actually sign off on the hanging orchids?”

She. Piper was talking about me.

“She will,” Ian said, his voice thick with lazy arrogance. He rolled his weight off her and reached for his shirt. “She never checks the vendor contracts. I told the florist to put the extra twelve grand under a line item for structural rigging.”

Piper giggled again. “You’re bad. She’s going to kill us if she finds out she’s paying for the hanging orchids.”

“She’s not going to find out,” Ian murmured, pulling her down to kiss her neck. “She’s too busy saving the world, or whatever she does on these trips. Besides, it’s our money. Joint accounts, babe.”

“Well, my wedding is going to be gorgeous.” Piper traced a finger down Ian’s chest. “Spencer wanted to use his guy for the flowers, some cheap nonsense from the suburbs. I told him absolutely not.”

“Spencer’s an idiot,” Ian agreed easily. “But he’s useful. He’s going to keep you in the lifestyle you deserve.”

“And you’re going to keep me sane,” Piper said, leaning down to kiss him again.

I bit down on the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper.

I listened to the sloppy mess of their kiss through the tinny speaker.

I watched Ian map my sister’s body and touch her in ways he hadn’t touched me in months.

I stared at Piper, the girl I had defended, protected, and financially carried for her entire adult life.

She laughed about stealing my money to fund her wedding while she fucked my husband—and all I could think about was, Why?

I let the recording run for four minutes and twenty-two seconds.

I needed every second on record so there would be no room for denial. No way they could claim it was a drunken mistake or a momentary lapse in judgment. The casual cruelty of their words proved this had been going on for a long time.

At the four-minute-and-twenty-three-second mark, Tucker wandered into the frame.

He looked confused, and his tail gave a low, slow wag as he approached the couch with a soft whine. He wanted his cheese, and he wanted his routine.

“Get out of here, dog,” Ian snapped, the sexual energy draining from him in an instant. He kicked a foot out, shoving Tucker hard in the snout. “Go lie down.”

Tucker lowered his head and padded sadly out of the frame.

I forced myself to swallow around the thick lump in my throat. I waited for the hysteria to hit, bracing myself for the urge to throw the phone against the wall or scream until my voice gave out.

The urge never came. Instead, a cold, hard knot pulled tight under my ribs.

I stopped the recording.

The app prompted me to save the file, which I immediately stored locally on my device. Then I opened my email and sent the video to a secure, private cloud drive I used for corporate documents. I named the file Meeting_Notes_Dallas and locked it behind a two-factor authentication password.

Only then did I let go of the phone. My hands were shaking uncontrollably.

I took a slow breath in through my nose and out through my mouth. This was what I did when a client was screaming at me over a missed deadline. It was rather sad that I needed to turn to the same method for my marriage, but I couldn’t care less.

Identify the problem, my brain whispered. Assess the damage. Formulate a plan.

The problem was that my life was a lie, my husband was a parasite, and my sister was a traitor.

I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and stood up. My knees shook, but they held my weight. I walked over to the small laminate desk in the corner. There was a complimentary notepad sitting next to the lamp, beside a cheap black ballpoint pen.

I sat down and picked up the pen. My hands were still shaking so badly I gripped the plastic barrel tight enough to turn my knuckles white. I pressed the tip into the paper until it dug a deep groove, and finally, I calmed down.

I wrote the number one.

1. Secure the money.

Ian loved the phrase ‘joint assets’. He had never made more than half my salary, and he spent twice as much. But he firmly believed it was his money. Now I needed to know exactly how much he was funneling to Piper.

I wrote the number two.

2. The wedding.

Piper’s wedding was exactly three weeks away, structured as a lavish, hundred-and-fifty-guest affair at the country club back home. I was the maid of honor. I was the one managing the vendors, soothing my mother’s anxieties, and apparently paying for the secret floral upgrades.

I wrote the number three.

3. Tucker.

I wasn’t leaving the dog, and that wasn’t up for debate.

I stared at the practical list. It didn’t begin to cover the rot eating through the floorboards of my life, but it provided a solid floor I could stand on.

I dropped the pen and picked up my phone to open the airline app.

After canceling my return flight for tomorrow afternoon, I searched for the next available departure to Chicago and found a red-eye leaving at one thirty in the morning.

I bought a seat in first class, charging the exorbitant last-minute fare to the joint credit card.

I packed my suitcase in under ten minutes. I didn’t fold anything, choosing instead to shove my slacks and blouses into the suitcase before forcing the zipper shut. I grabbed my laptop, my chargers, and my blazer.

I was out of the hotel by eleven fifteen, and by midnight, I sat at my gate in the airport.

The terminal was entirely dead, occupied only by the slumped bodies of overnight travelers.

I sat near the window, staring out at the tarmac bathed in orange security lights.

I read the notification previews glowing on my lock screen without unlocking the phone.

I ignored Diane’s follow-up text about Spencer’s mother, and I dismissed the message Ian sent at twelve thirty that said Going to sleep. Miss you.

I just watched the planes.

The flight passed in a blur of dark cabin lights and engine noise. I kept my eyes closed, but sleep wouldn’t come. Every time I drifted, the image of Piper’s hair tangled in Ian’s fingers snapped me awake. The phantom squeak of the couch cushions echoed in my ears.

We landed in Chicago just as the sky turned a predawn purple. The air outside the terminal was crisp and cold.

I bypassed the train line and climbed straight into the back of a taxi.

“Where to?” the driver asked, checking his rearview mirror.

I thought about the house in Oak Park, the charming, two-story colonial I’d put the down payment on.

It was five in the morning, and Ian was inside, fast asleep in our bed.

He probably smelled like Piper’s expensive vanilla perfume.

Every instinct I had screamed at me to go there, to stand in the bedroom doorway and watch him sleep, knowing what I knew.

But if I walked through that front door ten hours early, everything would change. Ian would wake up startled and immediately ask questions about why I took the red-eye. Then he would scramble to ensure there was no trace of my sister left on the couch cushions.

He firmly believed he had gotten away with it. He thought I was going to land at three in the afternoon, exhausted and pliable, ready to validate his fake workday and agree to whatever wedding expenses he slid across the kitchen island.

If I wanted to dismantle his life, I needed him to believe I was exactly the woman he thought I was. I needed him comfortable, arrogant, and completely off his guard.

“Downtown,” I told the driver, giving him the address of my corporate office.

I rested my head against the cold glass of the window. The city rolled by in the dark, completely oblivious to the fact that my marriage had just ended on a camera feed.

I was going to do what I always did on early-morning arrivals.

I would head straight to work, take a shower in the executive bathroom, and get a jump on the day’s emails.

I would give myself the next ten hours to lock down my emotions and figure out exactly how to look at him without giving myself away.

He thought I was an ATM, and he thought I was blind.

I gripped the handle of my suitcase as the taxi merged onto the highway. I was going to stick to the schedule. I was going to walk through my front door at exactly four o’clock this afternoon, smile at my cheating husband, and ask him how his night was.

Let him think he was playing me. My game had already started.