How I caught my man cheating on me

I've been into tarot since I was a kid.

It started around the same time I realized I noticed things other people didn't. The cards never told me the future—not exactly. But they had a way of mapping what I already felt. Like holding a mirror up to the mess inside my head and saying, "See? This is what's eating you."

Lucky sensed my mood before I did. He trotted over and pressed his body against my leg, warm and solid. I scratched behind his ears, then reached for my deck.

Two cards.

The Tower. Upright.

Death. Reversed.

I stared at them for a long time.

The Tower meant destruction. Something was going to fall apart—fast, violent, without warning. The kind of collapse you can't rebuild from. Not easily.

And Death reversed? Endings that refuse to end. Things that should be over but keep dragging on, rotting, festering.

The air in the house felt thick. Sticky. Like the walls were leaning in.

I needed to get out.

* * *

I drove with no destination. Windows down, radio off. Just the hum of the engine and the wind and my own thoughts chasing each other in circles.

I ended up in front of our company building. Velarion. The logo shimmered on the plaza fountain, enormous and unmissable. I sat in the car, engine idling, staring up at the glass tower like it might give me answers.

Please let Daniel be okay. If something's wrong, let him tell me. Let him lean on me. I'll be right here. I'll always be right here.

I called Beth.

Beth was my college roommate. She'd been a scrappy, overachieving econ major with zero connections and a chip on her shoulder. I'd convinced my mother to hire her. Now she was VP of Human Resources—one of the most powerful people in the company. Smart, loyal, sharp as a blade.

"Hey, is everything okay at the company?" I asked, trying to keep my voice casual. "Anything going on I should know about?"

"Going on?" She laughed. "You mean besides smashing quarterly records? Claire, we just had the best Q3 in company history. Daniel's on a warpath. In a good way."

I exhaled. "Okay. Good. That's good."

"Why? What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I just... I was in the neighborhood. Thought I'd stop by."

"Get up here, then. I'll give you the tour. Daniel's floor is basically a modeling agency at this point. Every assistant they hire is more attractive than the last."

A flicker of something ugly stirred in my gut.

I killed it fast. This was Daniel. The man who didn't even flinch when Monica Voss—literally voted the most beautiful woman on Earth by three different magazines—publicly announced she was going to "win him over." He hadn't looked at her once.

"Hey, Beth?" I asked, keeping my tone light. "Did the secretary pool hire anyone new recently?"

"Nope. Same team as last month. Why?"

I heard the disbelief creeping into her voice. "Wait. Are you—Claire Ashford, former Miss America at nineteen—feeling insecure? About Daniel? The man who has your face as his phone wallpaper, his computer wallpaper, and—I'm pretty sure—tattooed on the inside of his eyelids?"

She wasn't done.

"That man doesn't see gender, Claire. He sees you, and he sees everybody else. That's it. There's no category for 'other women.' There's just 'not Claire.'"

I shook my head at myself. She was right. Of course she was right.

* * *

I went up to Daniel's floor anyway.

His office door was open. I walked in and looked around. Everything was the same as always—sleek, minimal, organized. And there, on the wall directly across from his desk, hung an enormous photograph of me. A candid shot from our honeymoon in Santorini, where I was laughing at something off-camera, wind in my hair, the Aegean Sea behind me.

He stared at this photo all day. Every day.

I shook my head. God, what was wrong with me? I was scaring myself over nothing.

I turned to leave—and that's when she appeared.

A woman. Carrying a tea tray. She walked toward me with quiet, measured steps and set the cup down gently on the side table.

"Mrs. Ashford, your tea."

Her voice was soft. Polite. Perfectly calibrated.

I looked at her face, and my blood went cold.

Eleanor Whitfield.

What was she doing on the nineteenth floor? This close to Daniel? Working in the secretary pool?

Eleanor Whitfield was the person Daniel hated most in this world.