Chapter 4
The ballroom doors opened with a soft sigh. Cool night air slid over my skin like water. The valet lane glowed beyond the hedges. My phone said 9:41.
Nineteen minutes.
I had planned everything down to the minute. Smile. Endure. Leave.
I should have gone straight to the airport.
But as I stood there under the terrace lights, something in me shifted.
Not rage. Not jealousy.
Clarity.
I thought of the journal pages in the trash. Called him again today. He didn’t answer. It’s my birthday today. Nobody remembered.
I thought of the nurses whispering that I should have looked the other way.
I thought of Lewis saying, Do I need to send you back to the facility before you start making sense?
The old me would have run.
The healed version of me suddenly understood that leaving quietly was freedom.
But telling the truth before I left was dignity.
My fingers tightened around my bag. Inside it, under my passport and boarding pass, was a slim black flash drive.
I had found it that afternoon while packing the last of my things from the master closet. It had been taped under the bottom drawer of Lewis’s watch cabinet, hidden so carelessly it was almost insulting. No label. No password. Just video files with dates.
At first I thought they were more proof of his affairs.
I was wrong.
A voice behind me said, “You look like someone deciding whether to burn the house down or bless it.”
I turned.
A tall man stood half in shadow near the terrace rail, one hand around an untouched glass of champagne. Late thirties, maybe. Dark suit, silver tie, face I almost recognized from somewhere I couldn’t place.
He had intelligent eyes. The kind that didn’t intrude but didn’t miss much either.
“I’m trying something new,” I said. “Leaving before either of those happen.”
His mouth moved slightly. “That would be the sane choice.”
“Then why does it feel unfinished?”
“Because unfinished things are what people like Lewis count on.”
My spine straightened. “You know him.”
“I know his kind.” He held out his hand. “Evan Hart.”
The name clicked. Hart Biotech. Hart Foundation. The quiet billionaire whose face appeared in business magazines beside words like acquisition and litigation and impossible recovery.
Lewis had mentioned him once with a grimace. The kind of man who never forgot a debt.
I didn’t take his hand.
“Are you here for the auction crowd or the public execution?”
“Neither. I came because your fiancé invited me to invest in a medical venture.” His gaze sharpened slightly. “Now I’m wondering whether I should report him instead.”
A chill moved through me.
I stared at him. “Report him for what?”