Chương 1
"“Darling, you forgot to end the video call.”
Gavin Prescott turned so violently in his chair that his elbow struck the laptop, tilting the screen toward the ceiling before he caught it.
For one strange second, nobody moved.
Camila Reyes was still sitting sideways across his lap, one hand resting inside the open collar of his shirt, while a river of diamonds lay against the bare skin above her half-buttoned blouse.
On Gavin’s monitor, thirty-two little rectangles remained perfectly visible.
Some contained frozen faces.
One showed Arthur Bell, Summit Crest Group’s board chairman, slowly removing his glasses.
Another showed the company’s general counsel staring somewhere below her camera as if she were already taking notes.
Gavin looked at the screen.
Then he looked at me.
Then Camila whispered, “Oh, God.”
She scrambled upright.
The necklace swung against her chest.
I knew it before I consciously recognized it.
Two months earlier, Gavin and I had passed Bellini & March on Madison Avenue after dinner, and I had stopped at the window because the necklace looked almost liquid beneath the display lights.
The sales card had read $110,000.
I had laughed and said it cost more than my first apartment.
Gavin had not laughed.
“You don’t need things like that anymore, Nora,” he had said.
When I asked what that meant, he reminded me that I no longer earned my own money.
Now the necklace was around Camila’s neck.
Gavin slammed the laptop shut.
The silence afterward felt worse than the voices that had been coming through its speakers.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
I looked down at the insulated dinner bag in my hand.
Rainwater had darkened one sleeve of my coat, and the paper handles had stretched because I had carried the bag six blocks after the cab driver refused to move through gridlocked traffic.
“You said you’d be working through dinner.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“I brought you food.”
Camila began fastening her blouse.
Her fingers missed one buttonhole.
“Nora, I’m sorry,” she said.
Gavin shot her a look.
Not guilt.
A warning.
I set the bag beside his office door.
The smell of rosemary chicken escaped through the zipper.
I had made it because Gavin complained restaurant food was giving him heartburn.
That detail suddenly seemed so ridiculous that I almost laughed.
Instead, I looked at Camila again.
She was twenty-four, eleven years younger than me, and frightened enough that the color had disappeared from her face.
I did not hate her yet.
I hated that I noticed she was frightened.
“How long?” I asked.
“Nora,” Gavin said.
I kept looking at Camila.
Her eyes moved toward him.
There it was.
Permission.
Even now, she needed permission.
“How long?”
“Don’t answer that,” Gavin said.
Camila’s mouth tightened.
“Almost two years.”
The number landed quietly.
Two years meant birthdays, Christmas mornings, school pickups, family photographs, the weekend Gavin held my hair while I vomited from food poisoning, and the afternoon we sat together outside Mia’s preschool because another child had pushed her off the climbing frame.
Two years meant our marriage had contained another relationship for longer than I had known my daughter’s kindergarten teacher.
Gavin stood.
“You need to calm down.”
“I am calm.”
“That’s the problem.”
I finally looked at him.
He had once told me my calmness was what he loved most about me.
Apparently it had become defective somewhere along the way.
I nodded toward the laptop.
“You were talking about moving money before I walked in.”
His expression changed.
It was slight, but I had lived with him for nine years.
I saw the calculation begin.
“You misunderstood.”
“You said the discretionary account would cover the Porsche.”
Camila closed her eyes.
Gavin stepped toward me.
“That was a joke.”
“Was the necklace a joke?”
His jaw shifted.
Behind him, Camila reached for her purse.
“Maybe I should leave.”
“No,” Gavin said.
She stopped.
I noticed that too.
He walked past me and locked his office door.
The click was small.
My skin prickled anyway.
“Nora, listen carefully because you’re upset and you’re going to make this worse.”
“For whom?”
“For our family.”
He always invoked our family when he wanted something from me.
When he persuaded me to leave my job at Hawthorne Capital after Mia was born, it had been for our family.
When he moved my savings into a joint investment account he controlled, it had been for our family.
When he canceled my personal credit card because I had “lost perspective about household spending,” that had also been for our family.
This morning, Mia had wheezed so badly that she could not finish saying the word cereal.
I had called Gavin from the pharmacy because the replacement inhaler and medication were not covered the way we expected.
He told me his personal cards were temporarily maxed out.
I had gone home, opened my jewelry box, and taken out my mother’s locket.
The pawnshop gave me four hundred dollars.
The man behind the counter had asked twice whether I was sure.
I had said yes both times.
Now diamonds worth more than a hundred thousand dollars glittered six feet away.
“I pawned Mom’s locket today,” I said.
Gavin blinked.
“What?”
“For Mia’s medication.”
He rubbed his forehead impatiently.
“Jesus, Nora, we’ll get it back.”
“You told me there was no money.”
“There are different pools of money.”
Camila stared at him.
That answer appeared to surprise even her.
I glanced at the closed laptop.
“Corporate pools?”
His face hardened.
“Be very careful.”
Something in me went still.
Not brave.
Not strong.
Simply tired.
I walked to the door and unlocked it.
Gavin caught my wrist.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“We need to decide what we’re telling the board.”
I looked at his hand until he released me.
“We?”
His voice dropped.
“You were visible on that call.”
“I was carrying chicken.”
“You heard a private conversation without context.”
“Thirty employees heard it too.”
May you like
“Executives, Nora, not employees.”
The correction was so perfectly Gavin that this time I did laugh.
