Chapter 8
CHAPTER
Gina
Present
OPENING THE FINANCIAL manager app on her phone, Gina tried to put her time to good use while she staked out the downtown offices of Luke Sideris’s tech consulting company.
She’d left the Mercedes in a nearby garage and switched over to the unmemorable—and frankly, ugly—SUV crossover that Luke had bought her for driving to their trysts.
While she appreciated his commitment to secrecy, she had to laugh at herself for accepting the crappy offering from her married lover.
Some other woman in her position, taken to the cleaners by an ex-husband, might have sought out a boyfriend who could support her in the style she’d grown accustomed to, back when she’d been a professional athlete’s wife.
But Gina was far more interested in revenge than money at this stage of her life.
So, to ensure Luke wasn’t hiding any surprises up his cheating sleeve—like a secondary mistress that would only interfere with Gina’s plans—she’d taken to staking out his office this week.
For one thing, he’d told her he was going out of town for business for a few days, yet the data from the handy GPS tracker she’d put on his car told her he was very much still in town, and that raised red flags for her.
As did the used syringes she’d found in his glovebox the last time they’d gone away for a weekend together.
She’d never seen him use drugs before. So where had those needles come from?
As a woman who’d already been cheated on, she wasn’t getting fooled by a man ever again.
Hence the stakeout. She knew he enjoyed office hook-ups.
Maybe someone was going to meet him here.
Gina had been on high alert for trouble on every front ever since she’d met Jordyn Lawson.
Gina’s antennae were up and constantly twitching, searching for any threat to her plans for revenge.
The October book club meeting was just around the corner, and she’d slated that date for the big reveal of her affair with Luke.
Along with a few other surprises to ensure her nemesis’s world was as devastated as Gina’s had been back when she’d been living another life.
Thankfully, the heavily tinted windows on the hideous little SUV allowed her to remain anonymous while she watched who came and went from his office this week. The baseball cap she wore helped.
For now, however, no one was going out of the office entrance to the three-story brick building, built to blend with the more historic structures surrounding it.
Luke’s suite had a dedicated private entrance on the less-travelled side street, and it was this one that interested her more.
Luke had given her the key to that door early on in their relationship, and she suspected it wasn’t the first time he’d arranged for women to meet him there.
While she waited, she scrolled through her account information on her financial aggregator app.
Her learning curve about money had been steep after her divorce.
Prior to that, she’d been excellent at spending it.
She’d had a lot to learn about saving it.
About setting aside enough to finance her plans to make Sophie pay.
The plastic surgery hadn’t come cheap. Not to mention the wardrobe she needed to continually update in order to blend in to Sophie Durand’s world.
Today, Gina’s account balance was stabilized.
But not large enough to finance the digital forensics tech she’d hoped to hire to uncover the story behind Jordyn Lawson’s arrival in Saratoga.
Gina’s digging online only revealed a brief mention of Jordyn’s existence during her college years.
Gina had learned Jordyn had been a student at Brooklyn College but couldn’t find a record of a graduation or a home address.
Gina knew it wasn’t cheap to maintain such a low profile online, but she herself had managed it even while married to a professional athlete.
Gina’s wealthy father had always been vigilant about his family’s digital privacy for safety purposes, which she’d despised as a teen but had grown to appreciate later in life, recognizing how competitive it could be for young women.
All of which went on to help her now. Because if there had been more photos of her online while married to her ex, she might not have been able to pull off her revenge plot now.
But there weren’t many people who were as careful with their socials. Jordyn Lawson must be hiding something.
A sound outside the car made her look up in time to see the side entrance to Luke’s office bang open in the fall breeze. Out stepped her lover himself, his attention fixed on his phone as he shut the door behind him.
Damn it.
She scrunched down in her seat and pulled the baseball cap lower on her head.
The liar. What was he doing on the street right now, at half past two in the afternoon in the middle of a work week when he’d said he was out of town?
Her brain scrambled to concoct an excuse to feed him if he spotted her.
Luckily, he headed up the street toward Broadway instead of turning toward her, making it easier for her to track his progress until he rounded a corner.
“What are you up to?” Drumming her nails against the steering wheel, Gina only waited a few seconds before deciding to follow him.
Hopping out of the car, she slid a pair of big sunglasses onto her face and hoped she wouldn’t see anyone she knew.
By the time she rushed toward the intersection, Luke was already in the crosswalk at the next block up near the post office.
How would she catch up without making it obvious she was following him?
Gina dodged a few shoppers sipping from paper coffee cups as they maneuvered strollers in front of a store window full of kids’ books.
She kept her eye on Luke’s retreating figure as he walked out of view up Church Street.
Speed-walking into another gear, she was almost to the corner when a familiar voice called her.
“Gina! Over here!”
Her gut sank at getting waylaid in the middle of the chase.
She tried to mask her disappointment as she slowed her step and turned to see Kaitlin Teal hurrying toward her, a yoga mat under one arm.
Just before Kaitlyn reached her, Gina tapped the earbud in her right ear as if shutting down whatever she’d been listening to.
“I thought that was you, but you were walking so fast I had to speed up to see for sure.” Kaitlin threw one arm around her for a side hug, the ends of her cashmere wrap swatting Gina in the face and making it feel like a hug from a cat. “Where are you off to in such a rush?”
Shadowing the man I’m cheating with to make sure he’s not cheating wasn’t a good answer in any world, so Gina shook her head and gave a wry laugh.
“I’m in this fitness club online, and if I don’t get ten thousand more steps in the next seventy-five minutes, I lose my gold badge streak.
” She made a show of tapping her watch screen a couple of times before putting her hand in the pocket of her cropped hoodie.
“But real-life friends are more important than bragging rights with a bunch of women I don’t even know. ”
“Well I can walk with you,” Kaitlin offered, nodding toward the street ahead of them. “Want to loop around Woodlawn and back down? I’m going to The Ascent but my class doesn’t start for twenty more minutes.”
“Sounds good.” Gina pretended to restart the fitness app she did not have on her watch and hoped there was still a chance she’d catch sight of wherever Luke had gone. “So are you off today? I thought you usually see clients in the afternoons.”
As Kaitlin and Gina rounded the corner, Gina scanned the buildings up ahead. It was quieter here, with only a handful of other people walking, none of them Luke.
“I try to give myself late lunch breaks on the days when Sophie drops new episodes of The Clean Break so I can listen.” Kaitlyn tilted her phone screen toward Gina, showing off the logo of a red heart broken in half and a push broom leaning against one side of it.
“Have you been following the split between the former boy band member and his influencer girlfriend?”
Her stomach lurched, and Gina had to steel her body against the physical effects of just seeing the stupid logo of the show that had cost her everything—dignity included.
The subject of the podcast didn’t come up all that often at book club, thank goodness, which Gina had found a little surprising at first. Over time, she’d come to realize that lack of discussion was in deference to Tara Hughes’s involvement in the show.
Sophie’s friends all danced around mentions of Tara, so it seemed like that habit extended to The Clean Break, Sophie and Tara’s joint venture.
“I don’t really tune in much. I realize Sophie provides a kind of public service for a lot of the couples who appear on her show, but personally I find it tough to listen to other people’s heartache for entertainment.
” She realized belatedly that her words might sound judgy about Kaitlin’s enjoyment of the show. “I mean, I totally see the appeal—”
“Oh my God, don’t apologize for speaking your truth.” Kaitlin shoved her phone back in her pocket before eyeing Gina with renewed interest. “And cheers to you for honoring your boundaries. I’m sure all that talk about break-ups could be very triggering if you’ve gone through a rough one yourself.”
Gina mustered up a vampish smile, leaning into the Gina Vallot character she’d created for herself. “Lucky for me, my mama taught me to be the one who does the walking away.”
How she wished that were true.
The truth was that her divorce had gutted her even before the harrowing final blow of the appearance on The Clean Break.
Finding out that her husband couldn’t turn down any opportunity to cheat on her hadn’t just been humbling.
It had been humiliating. Infuriating. And it had made her question every single one of her life choices.
As if it had somehow been her fault, when of course it wasn’t.
She’d been her husband’s loyal supporter ever since he was a college football star.
She’d invested in their relationship and told herself that her low public profile would benefit him since their private life together would never detract from his feats on the field.
And she’d been rewarded by having all the foundations of her world crumble beneath her feet.
No, they didn’t just crumble. They disintegrated. She didn’t even have the rubble of her old life to stand on since her family had never liked her choice of husband. They didn’t need to say “I told you so” when the words hung like a chill in their Garden District mansion.
As they drew even with the parking garage behind the post office, a familiar-looking ugly SUV came into view as it exited onto the street. The vehicle wasn’t Gina’s, of course, but snagged her attention because of the similarity to the one Luke had purchased for her to help hide their trysts.
The driver of the other SUV was only visible for a split second. But it was long enough for her to get a good look at him.
Luke Sideris sat behind the wheel.
What the hell?
He was obviously the owner of a second incognito vehicle as well. One that didn’t have her helpful GPS tracker attached, so she’d have no idea where her treacherous lover was headed next. Out of town with another woman? The one who used the needles she’d found in his other car?
She had no answers. But one thing became perfectly clear to her then. If Luke didn’t want her to know where he was going, that meant her shady lover could only be up to no good.