My Husband Protected His Mistress While I Bled

I took the pregnancy test with me.

It was folded inside a tissue, tucked into the inner pocket of my coat. I'd been carrying it for two days, waiting for the right moment. I told myself today was the day. Noon. His lunch break. Fifteen minutes where no one would interrupt us.

I practiced the words in the cab. *Rhodes, I'm pregnant. We're going to have a baby.* Simple. Clean. Maybe he would look at me differently. Maybe this would be the thing that finally—

I stopped that thought before it finished.

Cunningham Tower rose above Sixth Avenue in glass and steel. The lobby security waved me through without a word. They knew my face. Three years of being Mrs. Cunningham had at least earned me that.

The elevator opened on forty-two.

His assistant, Claire, looked up from her desk. Something shifted in her expression. Too quick for me to name.

'Mrs. Cunningham.' She stood. 'He's—he has someone with him right now.'

'I'll wait.'

'He said—'

I was already past her.

The glass walls of Rhodes's office meant I could see everything before I touched the door handle. He was at his desk. Jacket on, tie straight, the posture of a man in complete control of his world. And across from him, in the low chair reserved for guests, sat Aleena Fox.

Her eyes were red. Her hands were folded in her lap. She looked small and soft and wounded in that pale blue cardigan.

I pushed the door open.

Rhodes looked up. His face didn't change.

'Sofia.' Not a greeting. A notation.

Aleena turned in her chair. Her eyes went wide. That expression she did so well—startled, fragile, a little afraid.

'I need to speak with you,' I said. 'Privately.'

Rhodes didn't ask Aleena to leave. He reached across his desk and picked up a prescription bottle. He set it down on the edge closest to me with a soft, precise click.

'Your doctor's office called this morning,' he said. 'You missed your medication. Again.'

I stared at the bottle. The label had my name on it. The pharmacy was one I recognized. Everything about it looked exactly right.

'I didn't miss anything,' I said.

'The office said otherwise.' His voice was quiet. Controlled. The temperature in the room dropped two degrees. 'Your erratic behavior this week. The scene last night. I won't have it, Sofia. Not here. Not in front of people I'm responsible for.'

I felt Aleena watching me. I didn't look at her.

'Rhodes. I need five minutes alone with you. Please.'

'Take the medication first.'

Something moved through my chest. A cold, crawling wrongness. I looked at the bottle again. The pills inside were small and white. My prenatal vitamins were small and white.

But something felt wrong.

I couldn't name it. I couldn't point to it. I had no evidence, no proof, nothing but a sick, low hum behind my sternum that said *don't.*

Rhodes's eyes were on me. That flat, waiting contempt. The look that said I was already proving his point just by hesitating. That I was unstable. Difficult. Embarrassing.

Aleena sat very still.

Claire appeared in the doorway with a glass of water. She set it on the desk beside the bottle without meeting my eyes.

I picked up the bottle.

The cap came off with a soft pop. Two pills in my palm. White. Smooth. Nothing.

I swallowed them with the water.

The glass was cold. The water went down easy. The pills dissolved into nothing.

Rhodes watched me the whole time. When I set the glass down, he nodded once. Like a box had been checked.

'Good,' he said. He pulled his chair back toward his desk. Back toward his papers. Back toward the world that had nothing to do with me. 'I have a call in ten minutes. We can talk tonight if you need to say something.'

The word was right there.

*Pregnant.*

It sat at the back of my teeth. I could feel the shape of it. The weight of it. Everything I'd rehearsed in the cab, everything I'd whispered to myself in that cold bathroom with my hand pressed against my flat stomach—

He had already turned away.

Aleena was looking at her hands. Her lips were pressed together. Something moved across her face so fast I almost missed it.

Not relief. Not guilt.

Satisfaction.

I picked up my purse. The tissue with the folded test was still inside it. I pressed my hand against my stomach once, very briefly, through the fabric of my coat.

Then I walked out.

The elevator doors closed behind me. I watched my reflection in the polished steel. The cut on my temple had faded to a thin dark line.

The lobby was bright and cold and full of people who didn't look at me.

I stood on the sidewalk outside Cunningham Tower and breathed the February air. Exhaust and cold concrete and the distant smell of rain.

I never got to say the word.

I didn't know yet that it was already too late.