Chapter 2
“They weren’t improvising.”
“No.”
“They planned this.”
Her expression hardened.
“At least part of it.”
My phone rang again.
Reid.
This time, I answered.
“Nora.”
His relief came so quickly it disgusted me.
“Thank God. Where are you?”
“Why?”
“Because we need to talk before your father turns this into a corporate war.”
I stared at the resignation document on the screen.
“Where’s Camille?”
Silence.
“Reid.”
“She’s downstairs.”
“Still at our wedding?”
“It’s not like that.”
I almost laughed.
My best friend had confessed her love to my husband during our wedding reception, and somehow those four words were still available to him.
It’s not like that.
“What is CF Advisory?”
Another silence.
Longer this time.
“Camille’s consulting company.”
“You paid it three hundred twelve thousand dollars.”
“That was legitimate compensation.”
“For what?”
“She helped coordinate the acquisition.”
“What acquisition?”
“Nora, these are complicated transactions.”
“I have an MBA, Reid.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“No. What you meant was that you hoped I wouldn’t ask.”
He exhaled.
I could picture him rubbing the space between his eyebrows, the way he did when someone else was being unreasonable.
“The acquisition is confidential.”
“Apparently not from Camille.”
“She was working with me.”
“How closely?”
“Nora.”
“Was the affair before or after you started paying her?”
He went quiet.
That answer hurt more than I expected.
Not because I still believed the marriage could survive.
It couldn’t.
But betrayal is strange.
Your mind can understand something several minutes before your body accepts it.
My body was still catching up.
“How long?” I asked.
“Nothing happened the way you think.”
“Then tell me the way it happened.”
Another pause.
Finally, he said, “Six months.”
I closed my eyes.
Six months.
Christmas at my parents’ house.
Our engagement photos.
The weekend Camille and I went wedding-dress shopping.
The night Reid told me he was too exhausted to come to my birthday dinner.
Six months.
“And you married me anyway.”
“I love you.”
That sentence destroyed whatever remained.
Not because I believed it.
Because he did.
In Reid’s mind, love apparently meant keeping me while sleeping with my best friend, using my family’s money, forging my approval, and preparing paperwork to strip me of authority.
“You don’t love me,” I said.
“Yes, I do.”
“No. You love what being married to me gives you.”
“That’s not fair.”
I laughed then.
A small, exhausted laugh.
“Fair?”