Chapter 2
Maybe because he laughed.
Maybe because not one person asked if I was hurt.
Jason glanced over his shoulder.
“Why are you still standing there? Put the food down.”
I looked at the steam rising from the stew.
Then at the back of his white shirt.
“Jason.”
He turned, irritated.
“What now?”
I tipped the bowl over his head.
The room exploded.
Jason shouted as broth, shrimp, peppers, and tomatoes slid through his hair and down his shoulders.
The stew was hot, but it had been resting long enough not to cause serious burns. Mostly, it shocked him.
He wiped his face and stared at me in disbelief.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
I touched the blood under my nose.
“You called yours a joke.”
His humiliation became rage.
He threw his beer.
It missed my face but soaked my shoulder.
Then he came around the table.
I raised my phone.
The recording app was running.
“Touch me again,” I said, “and this stops being an ugly dinner and becomes evidence.”
His hand stopped.
Nobody laughed now.
I picked up my purse.
Jason shouted after me.
“If you walk out, don’t bother coming home!”
I kept walking.
Near the elevators, I saw myself in the mirrored wall.
Blood under my nose.
Beer in my hair.
A bruise forming along my cheek.
I didn’t cry.
I called my friend Megan.
“I need you to look up the condo Jason bought in Florida last year.”
She went quiet.
“Why?”
“Because I think tonight was the first time he hit me in public.”
A pause.
“What about in private?”
I closed my eyes.
“Megan, just find the deed.”
Thirty minutes later, my phone buzzed.
The condo had two owners.
Jason Reed.
And Chloe Grant.
Chloe had been sitting two seats away from my husband at dinner.
Then another message arrived.
There’s more. Chloe is pregnant. And Jason has been paying some of her expenses through the company.
I stared at the screen.
Three months earlier, Jason had spent a weekend in Miami.
He told me he was meeting suppliers.
That night, I finally understood why he had come home with a mark on his neck—and why he had laughed when I asked about it.
But the affair was only the first thing Megan found.
By sunrise, we would discover that my husband had been hiding something far more dangerous than another woman.