Chapter 1
Petra
There are many ways to discover your husband is a liar.
Mine happens to come in form of a bank statement showing $86,430.17 transferred out of our joined account.
Staring at the balance of fifteen hundred dollars on my laptop, my eyes burn from looking too long. I hit refresh. The balance stays the same, and the sick drop in my stomach only gets heavier.
“What the fuck?” The words come out quiet, but I still glance through the glass wall of my office, mostly out of habit.
Dakota is typing at her desk across the corridor, headphones in and absorbed in her screen. Further down, one of our therapists walks past with a couple for their two o’clock session. No one looks my way.
Good. The last thing I need is anyone asking why one of the senior marriage restoration specialists looks two seconds away from throwing her laptop through a window.
I click through the transaction history for the tenth time, hoping for some kind of glitch.
Transfer. Transfer. Another transfer. Large amounts, taken out over the past few months.
There should be almost eighty-eight thousand dollars in our savings. Money Nolan and I spent years putting away for emergencies. The European holiday we keep postponing because one of us is always too busy. The house we talked about. Kids, whenever we finally stopped saying “one day.”
I’ve been putting the bulk of my own salary into it lately because his work has been inconsistent, but the math was never the point. It was ours. We were building a life together.
Now, almost all of it is gone.
Fraud is the first word that hits my brain. Nolan is the second. I hate how fast my mind goes there.
But things haven’t been right between us for months. He travels more, stays away longer, and when he’s home, he’s exhausted, distracted, or glued to his phone.
Our sex life has become an embarrassing joke, something I spend way too much time pretending I’m okay with.
I have toys to take care of myself when my needs become unbearable, but sometimes you don’t want a substitute.
You want your partner. You want their hands on you, their body on yours, the feeling that they still want you. It's been more than a year since I've had that.
I pick up my phone and call the bank.
Seven minutes of security questions and hold music later, a woman finally comes back on the line. “Mrs. Coates?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve reviewed the transactions. There doesn’t appear to have been any unauthorized access to the account.”
I frown. “I don’t understand.”
“The transfers were authorized by the other account holder.”
“The other…” air leaves my lungs. “My husband?”
“Yes. Nolan Coates.”
My pulse races as I sit there in complete silence.
“Mrs. Coates? Are you still there?”
“I’m here,” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. I ask where the money went, but she can only tell me what’s already on the statements.
I barely remember hanging up because all I can think about is why he didn’t tell me. I call Nolan as soon as I can make my fingers work with me. Voicemail. I try again. Voicemail.
I pull up our text thread, my thumb hitting the screen.
PETRA: Call me. Now.
The message delivers, but there’s no response.
He’s supposed to be home today. For once, he isn’t in Singapore or Paris or Dubai or whatever city needs him to rescue another badly managed hotel. He came back last night and said he’d be working from the house all afternoon.
When I call a third time and he doesn’t pick up, I snatch my handbag, leave my office, and ignore the questioning lift of Dakota’s brows as I blow past her desk.
Thirty minutes later I pull into our driveway with so much anger burning inside me to make my hands hurt around the steering wheel.
Nolan’s blue sedan is parked in its usual spot.
Seeing it brings a quick surge of relief so intense I nearly laugh at how insane I probably look.
See? He’s here.
I’ll walk inside, demand to know what the hell he was thinking making a massive financial decision without me, and he’ll explain that he did it for a good reason and it’s somewhere safe.
Yeah… it has to be safe.
I walk inside. “Nolan?”
His suitcase is still sitting near the staircase because I forgot to carry it upstairs last night, and he was too tired to do it himself.
But right next to it is a pair of black stilettos with red soles, five-inches, way too high and too small to be mine.
My hand clamps down on the banister as my head goes light. My mind immediately tries to fix it.
Maybe they’re a gift. He probably just guessed the wrong size and forgot to show me.
I stop the thought, disgusted by my own desperation. Why am I already looking for an explanation to make this better?
Soft airy laughter floats down from upstairs, followed by the deep grunt of a man.
My heart beats faster, hammering against my ribs. For months I’ve told myself not to get suspicious, not to become the wife who snoops. Not to project every broken marriage I fix at work onto my own.
I take the stairs two at a time and nearly miss one, but I catch myself and keep moving toward the top.
As I get closer to the bedroom door, the laughter gives way to moans and the repeated squeak of the mattress springs.
“Fuck, you’re so tight for me,” I hear a man groan. His voice.
“That’s it, daddy…” a woman whimpers. “Mhm, you’re so big.”
Bile rises so fast, I think I might throw up. Every nerve ending in my skin feels like it’s being pricked by tiny needles. The urge to turn around, run back to my car, and pretend I never came home is so unbearable.
Instead, I take a deep breath, preparing myself to face this. The bedroom door isn’t fully closed. I push it wider, and there he is.
My husband. Naked. His hips driving between another woman’s thighs on our sheets.
