My Husband Protected His Mistress While I Bled

I wasn't supposed to be home until eight.

The rain changed my plans. It came down hard and sudden over Midtown, the kind that turns umbrellas inside out and floods the gutters in minutes. I gave up on the gallery opening, flagged a cab, and rode back to the Cunningham penthouse with my shopping bags on my lap and water dripping from my hair.

I should have called ahead. I know that now.

The elevator opened directly into the foyer. The lights in the main hall were dim, but a warm glow spilled from beneath the door of Rhodes's private study. I heard nothing. No voices. Just the low hum of the city forty floors below.

I pushed the door open.

Aleena Fox was draped across my husband's lap.

She was twenty-two years old, with wide brown eyes and the kind of soft, unfinished prettiness that made men want to protect her. Rhodes had introduced her to me eight months ago as a scholarship student he sponsored through the Cunningham Foundation—a charity case, he'd said, someone from nothing who deserved a hand up. I had believed him. I had even felt sorry for her.

Her blouse was half-undone. Rhodes's hand was in her hair. His eyes were closed.

My shopping bags hit the marble floor.

The crash was loud. Crystal and tile. Rhodes's eyes opened.

He looked at me the way you look at a lamp that's fallen over. Mild. Inconvenienced. Not a trace of guilt on that sharp, beautiful face—just cold irritation at the interruption.

Aleena scrambled upright. And then, like a switch had been flipped, her face crumpled. Her eyes filled with tears. She grabbed Rhodes's sleeve with both hands, her voice dropping into a trembling whisper.

'She's always like this,' Aleena breathed. 'When you're not around, she threatens me. She tells me to disappear. I was so scared to say anything—'

Rhodes's expression didn't flicker. He stood, stepped forward, and placed himself between us. Shielding her.

He was shielding her.

'Rhodes.' My voice came out steadier than I felt. 'Look at me. I need you to explain what I just walked into.'

'Your jealousy,' he said, 'is humiliating. It's beneath you. It's beneath this family.'

'I am your wife—'

'Then act like it.' His voice was quiet. That was always the worst sign. When Rhodes Cunningham got truly angry, he got quiet. 'Instead of making scenes over nothing.'

'Nothing.' I laughed. It came out wrong. Cracked and thin. 'You call this nothing?'

I took a step toward him. I don't know what I intended. To make him look at me, maybe. To force him to see me as a person instead of a problem.

He reached for the crystal whiskey glass on the corner of his desk.

He didn't throw it at me. I want to be precise about that, because I've replayed it a thousand times. He threw it at the wall. Beside my head. The explosion of glass was enormous in that quiet room.

One shard caught my left temple.

The pain was sharp and immediate. I pressed my hand to my face and my palm came away red.

The room went very still.

Rhodes looked at my bleeding forehead. His jaw was set. His eyes were flat.

'Clean yourself up,' he said. 'You're embarrassing.'

Behind him, Aleena watched over his shoulder. Her expression was arranged into something that looked exactly like horrified sympathy. She was very good at that. I didn't know yet how good.

I walked out.

Later, in the guest bathroom, I sat on the cold tile floor with a first-aid kit open beside me. I pressed gauze to my temple and watched myself in the mirror across the room. The woman looking back was gray. Hollow. Three years of careful, quiet erosion had done that to her face.

I reached under the sink.

The pregnancy test was still there, tucked behind a box of cotton rounds. I'd been hiding it for four days. Two pink lines. I'd taken three more just to be sure.

I pressed the test against my chest and closed my eyes.

The baby changes everything, I told myself. It has to.

The next morning I sat in the sitting room with pale yellow yarn and two small needles. I was making booties. They fit in the center of my palm. I'd already written a letter—folded small, tucked into an envelope addressed to 'my little one' in my own handwriting—and placed it with the booties inside a hatbox on the top shelf of my closet.

I would tell Rhodes tonight. I had the words ready. I'd been rehearsing them for days.

I didn't notice the shadow in the hallway. I didn't see Aleena standing just outside the doorway, watching me knit.

I didn't know she had already found the test in the trash.

I didn't know anything yet.