My Husband’s Mistress Killed Our Baby

Three days after I walked out of that apartment with Maxie, I was sitting in Lorenzo's guest suite with a cup of coffee and my laptop when Diana called.

"It's starting," she said. Her voice had that particular crispness it gets when she's enjoying herself.

"Tell me."

"Nakamura's team pulled their supply contract this morning. Apparently Jericho's firm missed a payment. Then the Meridian vendors called. Then the printing house." I heard her nails clicking against her keyboard. "His accounts are hemorrhaging, Miss Romero. He has no idea why. He's been on the phone since six AM."

I looked out the floor-to-ceiling window at the city below. Gray morning sky. Traffic crawling. Somewhere across town, Jericho was loosening his tie and checking his phone every thirty seconds, that familiar panic rising behind his eyes.

Good.

"Let it run," I said. "Don't plug a single hole."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

I ended the call and scratched Maxie behind the ears. She was curled against my thigh, finally sleeping without flinching. The bruise along her ribs had faded to a dull yellow. I pressed my palm gently against her side and felt her breathe.

We were both still healing. But we were both still here.

---

The call from Diana came again just after noon, and this time she was barely containing herself.

"Bergdorf's," she said. "Margaret and Sophia. Twenty minutes ago."

I set down my fork. "And?"

"Margaret tried to put a fourteen-hundred-dollar handbag on the black card." A pause. "Declined. She tried again. Declined. She asked the associate to run it manually. Still declined. Sophia tried her card next. Same result. Apparently Margaret told the associate the machine must be broken." Diana's voice went very dry. "The associate assured her it was not."

I could picture it perfectly. Margaret in her good coat, chin lifted, that practiced look of bored superiority she wore like armor. And then the small, terrible moment when the card came back. The flush creeping up her neck. The associate's carefully neutral expression.

"They tried three other stores," Diana continued. "Saks. Neiman's. That little boutique on Madison that Sophia likes." She paused again for effect. "All declined."

"Good," I said quietly.

"There are witnesses, Miss Romero. Several." I could hear the smile in her voice. "Word travels fast in those circles."

I already knew that. I'd grown up in those circles. I knew exactly how fast.

---

They showed up at Lorenzo's building at four-fifteen.

I was in the lobby when the doorman called up. I told him to let them through. I wanted to see their faces.

Margaret came in first. She was still wearing the good coat, but something about her was off—her lipstick slightly uneven, her jaw set too tight. Sophia trailed behind her in a cream blazer, dark nails, phone clutched in her hand like a weapon she didn't know how to use.

They stopped when they saw me. I was standing near the window in a simple gray cashmere sweater and dark trousers. No wedding ring. Maxie sat calmly at my feet.

Margaret's eyes swept the lobby. The marble floors. The art on the walls. The quiet, expensive hush of the place. Something shifted in her expression. A small recalculation.

"Ellie." Her voice came out sharper than she intended. "We need to talk."

"You could have called," I said.

"Jericho's suppliers are pulling out," she said. "His accounts are frozen. Something is very wrong and it started the moment you decided to throw your little tantrum."

I looked at her. I didn't say anything.

"Fix it," she said. The words landed like a command. Like I was still the girl who sat quietly at her dinner table while she called me *that girl* under her breath. "Whatever you did, undo it. You are still his wife until those papers are filed."

"The papers were filed this morning," I said.

Sophia's head snapped up from her phone.

Margaret's nostrils flared. "You ungrateful little—"

"I'm going to stop you there." My voice was calm. Completely calm. The kind of calm that comes after you've already decided everything. "You came here to threaten me. To guilt me. To remind me that I owe your family something." I tilted my head slightly. "I don't."

"Jericho built everything you had," Margaret snapped. "You had nothing before him."

I almost smiled. Almost.

"Go home, Margaret," I said softly. "Talk to Jericho. Ask him to explain where his money actually came from. Ask him to explain all of it." I reached down and picked up Maxie's leash. "And when he can't—because he can't—remember this moment. Remember that you stood in this lobby and told me I had nothing."

I walked past them toward the elevator.

Neither of them said a word.

The doors slid shut. I exhaled slowly. Maxie pressed her warm head against my knee.

The bill had come due. And I hadn't even shown them the full invoice yet.