Chapter 2 - A MAN’S VOICE INSIDEThe handle stopped moving.
So did my breathing.
For one terrible second, I thought Claire had realized someone was outside.
But the lock remained in place.
The man said something I could not hear.
Claire answered with a whisper.
“Not yet.”
I stepped away from the door.
My chest felt hollow.
Claire and I had spent six years trying to have a child.
There had been doctors.
Injections.
Surgeries.
Two miscarriages.
I had held her on the bathroom floor while she cried into my shirt and asked why her body kept betraying her.
When she finally became pregnant, I had believed the worst years of our lives were behind us.
I had built the nursery myself.
I had read parenting books on airplanes.
I had learned how to assemble a crib at two in the morning because Claire was afraid the delivery company would damage it.
Now another man was standing inside my bedroom, talking about my unborn child as if the baby belonged to him.
I looked down at the white roses scattered around my shoes.
A petal had landed against the bottom of the door.
Inside, Claire moved closer to the stranger.
Her champagne-colored maternity dress brushed against something.
The bed, perhaps.
Or him.
“You promised me,” the man said.
“I know.”
“You said once everything was transferred, we could stop pretending.”
My pain changed shape.
This was no longer only an affair.
Transferred.
The word remained in my mind.
“What exactly are you waiting for?” he asked.
“For Daniel to sign the final documents.”
“And if he reads them?”
“He won’t.”
Claire sounded amused.
“He signs whatever I put in front of him.”
My jaw tightened.
Three days earlier, she had asked me to sign documents concerning the mansion’s family trust.
She had said the changes were necessary before the baby arrived.
I had not signed them.
My lawyer had called during the San Francisco trip and told me one page looked unusual.
That concern was the reason my meeting ended early.
It was also the reason I had come home without warning.
Inside the room, the man sighed.
Then his voice softened.
“Come here.”
Silence followed.
Not empty silence.
The kind filled by bodies moving close together.
I wanted to break the door down.
Instead, I took out my phone and turned on the audio recorder.
My hands were trembling, but my voice remained silent.
Claire spoke again.
“After tomorrow, this house will legally be mine.”
The man chuckled.
“And Daniel?”
“He’ll be gone before the baby is born.”
Then he said the words that finally made me recognize him.
“Just like we planned.”
Ryan Carter.
May you like
My wife’s private financial adviser.
And one of the few men I had trusted inside my home.
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