Mistress Stabs, Husband Dies

Sitting in the darkness of my car, I pulled out my phone with trembling fingers. The villa's address was burned into my memory now—1247 Maple Ridge Drive. I opened the property records app I'd used countless times for our business deals, typing in the address with mechanical precision.

The results loaded slowly, each second stretching like an eternity. When the information finally appeared on my screen, the world tilted sideways.

Purchased six months ago. Purchase price: $795,000. Funding source: Graham-Hart Enterprises joint business account. Current deed holder: Sarahi Roberts.

Gift transfer. The words stared back at me in cold, legal terminology.

Eight hundred thousand dollars. Nearly a million dollars of our shared assets, transferred to his mistress as a "gift." While I'd been managing our household budget, clipping coupons, and postponing the kitchen renovation we'd discussed for years, Ryder had been buying houses for another woman.

My hands shook as I scrolled through the documents. The transfer had happened just two months after Sarahi's hiring date. Two months. He'd known her for two months before deciding she deserved a house that cost more than most people made in a decade.

A movement in the villa's front window caught my attention. I looked up from my phone to see two silhouettes moving through the warmly lit living room. My breath caught in my throat as I watched Ryder's familiar frame approach a smaller figure—a woman with long dark hair that caught the light as she turned.

Sarahi Roberts. Even from this distance, even through glass and shadows, I could see the gentle curve of her belly beneath her fitted dress. Pregnant. She was pregnant.

I watched, frozen, as Ryder's hands found her waist, pulling her close with a tenderness I recognized—the same way he used to hold me in our early days. She tilted her face up to his, and even without hearing their words, I could read the intimacy in their body language. This wasn't just physical attraction or a momentary lapse in judgment. This was love. Deep, committed, future-planning love.

The kind of love I thought we still shared.

Sarahi's hand rested on her rounded belly as she spoke, gesturing animatedly about something. Ryder nodded, his own hand covering hers in a gesture so protective, so devoted, that bile rose in my throat. When was the last time he'd touched me like that? When was the last time he'd looked at me with such focused attention?

I crept closer, abandoning my car to position myself near a large oak tree that provided cover while giving me a clearer view through their front window. The autumn air bit at my skin, but I barely felt the cold. Every nerve was focused on the scene unfolding before me.

"—that little ceramic thing from your office," Sarahi was saying, her voice carrying through the slightly open window. "The one on your bookshelf."

My heart stopped. The ceramic sculpture. The one I'd spent weeks crafting for our first anniversary, pouring my love and hope for our future into every curve and detail. It sat on Ryder's office bookshelf, a daily reminder of what we'd built together.

"You mean the sculpture Liberty made?" Ryder's voice was hesitant.

"I don't care who made it," Sarahi replied, her tone sharp with entitlement. "It's beautiful, and I want it for our nursery. It would be perfect on the shelf above the crib—a symbol of new beginnings."

New beginnings. She wanted to use the symbol of my marriage, my love, my artistic soul, as decoration for the nursery where she'd raise my husband's child.

"Sarahi, that piece... it has sentimental value—"

"To who? To her?" Sarahi's laugh was bitter. "Ryder, we're building a life together. Our baby deserves beautiful things, not reminders of your past mistakes."

Past mistakes. That's what I was to her—a mistake to be erased, replaced, forgotten.

"Besides," she continued, moving closer to him, her hands sliding up his chest, "you promised me you were done with all that. Done with her. This is our home now, our future. I shouldn't have to compete with ghosts."

Ryder's resistance crumbled as she spoke. I watched him nod slowly, his resolve dissolving under her manipulation. "You're right. I'll bring it home tomorrow."

Home. He called this place home.

The sculpture that represented our first year of marriage, the piece I'd created with such hope and love, would soon sit in another woman's nursery, watching over the child that should have been ours—if Ryder had ever truly wanted children with me.

Standing in the shadows of their stolen paradise, I felt the last pieces of my marriage crumble into dust.