Chapter 3 - THE STRANGER IN MY BED
The bank draft was for seventy-five thousand dollars. The issuing account belonged to a private holding firm registered in Delaware, but the endorsement signature on the back was unmistakably Julian Vance’s looping, aggressive scrawl.
My entire marriage wasn't just a failure of judgment. It was a corporate infiltration.
Verity hadn't accidentally bumped into me at the charity gala in German Village last year. She hadn't fallen in love with a grieving widower. She had been bought and paid for by a competitor who couldn't beat me in the marketplace, so he decided to gut me from the inside out.
Heavy footfalls sounded on the stairs.
I didn't hide the envelope. I laid the papers, the bank draft, and Clara’s locket flat on the marble island, right beside the puddle of water that was still soaking into the grout.
Verity came into the kitchen carrying an expensive leather weekend bag. She had changed into an immaculate cream-colored trench coat, her makeup repaired, her blond hair pulled back in a neat, controlled knot. She looked poised, respectable—the picture of an upper-middle-class suburban wife unfairly accused by an unhinged husband.
Then her eyes hit the island.
She stopped three feet from the counter. Her knuckles went white against the handle of her suitcase. For the first time since I had known her, the color drained entirely from her face.
“You went through my things,” she said, her voice dropping into a register that had no warmth left in it.
“This cupboard belongs to my house,” I replied, keeping my hands resting flat against the edge of the stone. “The locket belongs to my daughter. And these contracts belong to the company you’ve been trying to destroy.”
She didn't stammer. She didn't apologize. That was the most chilling part. When caught, a cornered animal bites; a calculated professional simply recalculates.
“You think you’re so righteous, Stellan,” she said coldly, setting the bag on the floor. “You think you built an empire all on your own. You didn't. You stepped over Julian five years ago in Chicago, and you acted like he didn't exist.”
“Julian Vance lost that contract fair and square because his safety record was garbage,” I said, staring directly into her eyes. “So he hired you? To marry me? To live in my house? To torture my four-year-old child?”
“I didn't torture her!” Verity snapped, taking an aggressive step forward. “She’s an impossible, broken little brat who wouldn't stop staring at me! She looked at me like I was a criminal from the day I walked through that door!”
“Because she’s four, Verity! She has instincts! She knew you were a fake!”
“She’s a reminder of a woman you never stopped worshipping,” Verity hissed, her voice vibrating with genuine, venomous hatred. “You never looked at me the way you looked at Clara’s picture. I gave up eight months of my life playing mother to a kid who cried every time I turned off her nightlight. Julian offered me three hundred thousand dollars to pull the federal bid data before the October deadline. I earned every damn penny of that money.”
The admission hung in the air between us, ugly and bare.
“Where did you think you were taking this envelope tonight?” I asked.
“Julian has a courier meeting me at the downtown Hilton at eight,” she said, checking her gold wristwatch—a watch I had bought her for our six-month anniversary. “Which means you have about twenty minutes to decide what happens next.”
“There’s nothing to decide. The police are already on their way. Wrenna is documenting the bruises on Lottie’s arm at the clinic.”
Verity actually laughed. It was a short, sharp bark that made my skin crawl.
“Call them,” she said softly. “Go ahead, Stellan. Dial nine-one-one.”
I picked up my phone. “You think I won’t?”
“I know you won’t,” she said, tilting her head with a look of supreme confidence. “Because if the police look into my background, they won’t just find my contract with Julian. They’ll find the medical records from the private facility in Cleveland where Clara died.”
I froze, my thumb hovering over the keypad. “What does Clara have to do with this?”
“Julian didn't pick me out of nowhere, Stellan,” Verity said, her smile turning razor-thin. “Before I worked in corporate consulting, I spent six years as a patient coordinator at Lakeview Care. I was the one who handled Clara’s final admissions file. And if you send me to prison, I will make sure the board of health gets an anonymous tip about the medication errors you signed off on to end her suffering early.”
The room seemed to tilt beneath my boots. “You’re lying. Clara had terminal respiratory failure.”
“She did,” Verity purred. “But the paperwork you signed in your grief-stricken haze wasn't standard, darling. Julian made sure I kept copies. You make a single move against me, and by Monday morning, child protective services will take Lottie from you permanently while the county investigates her mother’s death as an assisted homicide.”
She reached out, picked up Clara’s locket from the counter, and dropped it into her coat pocket.
“Now,” Verity said, picking up her suitcase. “You’re going to let me walk out that door, you’re going to let me keep the car, and you’re never going to speak to Julian Vance again.”
She turned her back on me and walked toward the foyer.
I stood by the island, paralyzed by the horrific weight of her threat. But as the front door clicked open, my gaze dropped to the floor beside the refrigerator.
Lying near the baseboard was something that must have fallen from Lottie’s pocket when I picked her up earlier.
It was a small, green plastic cassette tape from an old micro-recorder.
Clara had kept a dictaphone on her nightstand during her final months at Lakeview to record bedtime stories for Lottie so the baby would never forget the sound of her voice. I thought those tapes had been lost during the move.
May you like
On the white plastic label, written in Clara’s faded, shaky pencil, were four words:
Nurse Vance — Night Shift.
