deed?’
No answer.
‘Did he tell you my company pays the health insurance for his staff because his clinic could not afford it last quarter?’
Richard flinched.
Alexis stared at him.
‘What is she talking about?’
Mara continued. ‘Did he tell you the eight-thousand-dollar necklace came from a joint account I fund? Or did he let you believe he was the provider?’
The room changed then.
Not loudly.
But completely.
Alexis’s embarrassment turned into anger, and Richard’s fear sharpened into calculation.
‘Mara,’ he said, his voice low, ‘let us talk privately.’
‘No.’
‘Please.’
‘You lost private when you brought public disrespect into my home.’
He looked toward Alexis. ‘You should go.’
Mara lifted one hand. ‘Not yet.’
Alexis froze.
‘What do you want?’ she asked.
‘Your father’s full name.’
The question struck harder than Mara expected. Alexis’s lips parted, and the confidence she had worn like jewelry cracked.
‘Why?’
‘Because earlier you seemed very comfortable explaining what kind of woman Richard deserves. I am curious who raised you to speak to people that way.’
‘Leave my father out of this.’
Richard snapped, ‘Mara, enough.’
She turned to him slowly.
He stepped back.
That was when Mara knew he remembered.
He remembered what company Alexis’s father worked for. Or at least he had realized the danger.
‘Name,’ Mara said.
Alexis whispered it.
Victor Hales.
Mara knew him.
Regional sales director. Fourteen years with Whitmore Lane. Strong performance. Charismatic. Recently under review because of irregular travel reimbursements, though nothing serious had been proven yet.
Mara felt the pieces shift in her mind.
Alexis Hales.
Victor Hales.
Richard’s sudden interest in attending sales charity events over the last year. The golf weekends. The dinners he claimed were networking for the clinic. The invoices that had started looking strange.
There was more here than an affair.
Mara could feel it.
She turned to Richard. ‘Pack a bag.’
His face twisted. ‘You are overreacting.’
It was such an ordinary sentence, and somehow that made it unforgivable.
‘You brought your mistress into my house while telling her I was pathetic, boring, dependent, and stupid. She put her feet on our coffee table and asked me for lemon water because she thought I was staff. You used my money to finance it. So let me be clear. The only reason you are still standing inside this house is because I am giving you ten minutes to collect what you can carry.’
Alexis whispered, ‘Richard…’
He ignored her.
‘Mara, think about what you are doing,’ he said.
‘I have been thinking since she handed me her coat.’
He tried a different face then. Softer. Injured. The face that had once worked on her.
‘I made a mistake.’
‘No,’ Mara said. ‘A mistake is forgetting an anniversary. This was a schedule.’
He looked away.
‘Tuesdays and Thursdays,’ Mara said. ‘Sometimes Saturdays. Six months. Cabo next week. Eight-thousand-dollar necklace. How many mistakes does that make, Richard?’
He had no answer.
By sunset, Richard was upstairs packing a suitcase.
Mara stood in the bedroom doorway and watched him move through drawers that suddenly seemed too intimate for him to touch. He took shirts she had bought. Cuff links from their tenth anniversary. A watch she had given him when he opened the clinic.
For a moment, grief pressed against her ribs
