At his company party, my husband struck my shoulder and whispered, “Go home. She belongs beside me tonight.” His mistress stood nearby in a tight red gown, pretending not to hear. I adjusted my dress and said, “No. I think I’ll stay for the announcement.”

Part One: Ten Minutes
“Go home,” Ambrose whispered after striking my shoulder hard enough to send me stumbling into a champagne table. “She belongs beside me tonight.”

She belongs beside me tonight.

Two hundred employees stood beneath the glass chandeliers of the Belmore Grand for Meridian Systems’ twentieth-anniversary party. Conversations faltered, then resumed at the careful volume people use when they’ve witnessed something ugly but fear the man responsible for it.

Delphine Ashby stood at my husband’s side in a fitted red gown, one hand resting possessively on his arm. As Meridian’s communications director, she’d spent months appearing beside Ambrose at conferences, dinners, and “emergency strategy retreats.” Tonight she wore the diamond earrings I’d noticed missing from my jewelry box three weeks earlier.