My Husband Hired Men to Ruin Me

Palmer brought me coffee on Wednesday morning. Just showed up at my side of the bed with it, already made the way I liked it—oat milk, one sugar—and sat on the edge of the mattress like he used to when we were still dating.

"I've been distracted lately," he said. "I know that. I want to make it up to you."

I took the mug. Blew on it. Didn't answer right away, because I'd learned that silence made him talk more, and talking more meant mistakes.

"There's a thing Friday," he said. "Company party. Rooftop bar downtown. I want you there. On my arm. Showing everyone what I've got."

"What you've got," I repeated.

He smiled, and it almost reached his eyes. "My wife."

I smiled back. "I'd love that."

That night I lay awake cataloguing the last three days—the coffee, the compliment about my hair on Tuesday, the way he'd told a waiter at dinner to "take good care of her, she's the best thing that ever happened to me." None of it felt like love. It felt like staging. Like someone dressing a set before the cameras rolled.

I didn't tell Regina about the party. Not yet. I just started paying closer attention to my own drinks.

---

The rooftop was all string lights and cold wind coming off the Hudson, waiters gliding through with trays of champagne that caught the light like something breakable. Palmer had his hand at the small of my back the second we stepped out of the elevator, guiding me toward a cluster of men in expensive jackets.

"Aleyna, this is Iris," he said. "Old friend from college. She just started consulting for the firm."

Iris Gomez turned toward me with a laugh already forming on her mouth, like she'd rehearsed the exact moment of it.

"Oh, I've heard so much about you," she said, and put her hand out. Warm. Soft. Her nails were the same shade of red as her lipstick. "Palmer talks about Owen constantly. You must be exhausted keeping up with that boy's energy."

"He keeps me young," I said.

Her laugh again, bright and easy, and her hand found Palmer's forearm—not a touch that asked permission, but one that assumed it. She left it there a beat too long. Long enough to say something her mouth never would.

I kept smiling. I filed it away. The hand. The laugh, timed a half-second before anything was actually funny. The way her eyes moved over me once, quick and clinical, like she was pricing furniture.

"You two go way back," I said lightly.

"Junior year," Iris said. "He was different then. Softer." Her eyes flicked to Palmer, and something passed between them, small and private, a door opening just wide enough for me to see the room behind it before it shut again.

"People change," I said.

"Some do," Iris agreed, and smiled at me like we were sharing a secret. I smiled back like I didn't know exactly which secret she meant.

A colleague of Palmer's pulled me aside a few minutes later—something about a golf trip, a wife who wanted advice on a caterer—and I let myself be drawn a few steps across the terrace, angled just enough that I could still see my champagne glass sitting on the little round table where I'd left it.

I watched from the corner of my eye. Palmer leaned toward Iris. Her hand went to her clutch. Something passed between their fingers, quick, practiced. Palmer's hand hovered near my glass for less than two seconds.

I kept talking about caterers.

When I came back, I picked up my glass and studied it under the string lights. There—right at the bottom, a faint cloudiness that hadn't been there before, like sugar that wouldn't quite dissolve.

A waiter passed with a fresh tray. I set my glass down as I reached for a canapé, and when I straightened, I had a new one in my hand. Full. Clear. Nobody watching would have seen the switch. I'd practiced smaller sleights of hand than that for years, hiding cash from a husband who thought "babe, you don't need the headache."

I let my next sentence trail halfway through. Blinked slow. Swayed, just slightly, into the back of a chair.

"You okay?" Palmer's hand caught my elbow. His voice had a new note in it—not concern. Anticipation.

"Just tired," I said, soft, syllables loose at the edges. "Long week."

"We'll get you somewhere quiet," he said, and over my shoulder I heard him murmur something to Iris. A name. A number. *Room 1408.*

I let my eyes drift closed for a second too long, then open again, glassy and unfocused, exactly the way a woman would look if the drug in her glass had actually made it into her blood.

Under the little clutch in my hand, my thumb found my phone. I didn't look down. I typed by feel, the way I used to text under the dinner table when Owen was small and needed watching.

*Meridian Grand. Room 1408.*

*It's tonight.*

Then I sent it, slipped the phone away, and let Palmer walk me toward the elevator, his hand warm and steady on my back, guiding me exactly where he wanted me to go.