My Husband Tampered with My Pregnancies to Protect His Mistress

I delivered the presentation at nine o'clock the night before the meeting. Frederick was in his study, laptop open, a glass of Scotch on the desk beside him. He barely looked up when I entered.

"Here," I said, and set the USB drive next to his keyboard.

He picked it up, turned it over in his fingers, and plugged it into his laptop. I stood there and watched him scroll through the surface slides — the clean data, the polished graphics, the narrative arc I'd crafted to make Paulina's department look indispensable. His eyes moved across the screen with the practiced efficiency of a man who had spent years reviewing presentations, looking for weaknesses, finding none.

"This is good," he said finally. "You've done well."

He didn't look at me when he said it. He was already turning his attention to something else on his screen, some email that required his immediate focus. I smiled anyway, the way I always did.

"Thank you," I said. "Goodnight."

He nodded without looking up. "Goodnight, Arlette."

I closed the door behind me and went to bed, but I didn't sleep. I lay in the dark and pressed my thumb against the inside of my wrist and thought about tomorrow. About the payload buried in the presentation, about the room full of investors and board members and press, about the exact moment when the surface would crack and everything underneath would spill out.

Nicolas was moving too. I knew that. We had agreed on the timeline, coordinated the pieces. His people would be in place by morning — key investors already primed to ask the right questions, media outlets alerted to the possibility of a story, the extraction team ready at the signal. He had been meticulous about it, almost obsessive in his preparation. I thought about him sitting in his office, probably not sleeping either, probably reviewing every detail one last time.

I wondered if he told himself it was strategy. If he admitted, even to himself, that it was more than that.

The morning came bright and clear. Frederick was gone before I woke — off early to prep for the meeting, to review his talking points, to make sure everything was perfect. I dressed carefully, chose a simple black dress that wouldn't draw attention, ate breakfast alone at the kitchen table, and sat for twenty minutes with Atlas's coin in my hand.

I thought about the list of films we never finished watching. 'The Man Who Knew Too Much' was at the top. He'd wanted to see the Hitchcock original, said the remake was too polished, too safe. We'd found a copy at a vintage video store downtown, but he'd gotten too sick before we could watch it. I still had the tape somewhere, in a box with his other things.

I thought about the piano. I used to play for him, in the hospital, when the treatments left him too weak to talk. Simple melodies, nothing complicated. He'd close his eyes and smile. I hadn't touched a piano since the funeral.

I put the coin in my pocket and picked up my bag and left.

The shareholder meeting was held in the Richards Group headquarters, a gleaming tower in Midtown that Frederick had once told me cost more than some countries' GDP. I took a seat near the back — I wasn't scheduled to speak, just the woman who prepared the slides. Nobody noticed me. Nobody ever did.

Frederick commanded the room with his usual cold authority. He stood at the podium in a perfectly tailored suit, his voice carrying effortlessly to every corner. The board members sat in their designated seats, laptops open, making notes. The investors filled the rows behind them, attentive, invested. The press sat at the very back, recorders running, notebooks ready.

And there was Paulina, three rows from the front, dressed in white as always. She sat with perfect posture, her hands folded in her lap, performing composure. She touched her collarbone when Frederick mentioned her department's achievements.

I watched them both. I watched the room. My hands were perfectly still in my lap. My thumb rested against the inside of my wrist.

The presentation was scheduled to begin in ten minutes.