Chapter 4 - The Mirror
As they worked, you did not speak much.
Not because you were trembling. You weren’t. That part had passed with the burning dress. What replaced it was colder, more exact. You had cried for Adrian already, and now the tears were over. All that remained was truth, and truth—when dressed properly—could be lethal.
Forty-three minutes later, you stood in front of the full-length mirror.
The woman staring back was not the wife Adrian had left in the backyard.
She was not the woman who clipped coupons in secret so he could afford exam fees. Not the one who sat in waiting rooms while he networked with men who’d never remember her name. Not the one who patched elbows on his shirts and smiled through the cheap wine he served to clients while calling it “temporary.”
She was Clara Vaughn.
Only now, finally, she looked like it.
Harrison stood in the doorway behind you, immaculate in charcoal. “The board chair’s arrival has already been announced for nine-fifteen,” he said. “No one suspects anything unusual.”
You fastened one earring. “And Adrian?”
“He arrived with Vanessa Lowell twenty-two minutes ago.”
Of course he had.
Vanessa, the director’s daughter. Glossy, strategic, born into the kind of old corporate circles that treated prestige like inheritance. She had been orbiting Adrian for months under the flimsy cover of mentorship dinners and advancement opportunities. You saw it. You knew. But some part of you had still hoped he would stop before public betrayal required witnesses.
He hadn’t.
May you like
Good.
Tonight, witnesses would matter.
