I placed the phone exactly where I had found it, half an inch from the edge of the coaster.
When Victor walked out of the bathroom five minutes later, a towel wrapped around his waist, dripping water onto the Persian rug I had bought with my first major bonus, he looked at me with those familiar, deceitful eyes.
“Everything okay, Clara?” he asked, rubbing a towel through his damp hair.
I smiled. A warm, practiced, flawless smile. “Everything is perfect, darling. What do you want for breakfast tomorrow?”
That was the exact moment the loving wife died. In her place, the architect of his absolute demise was born.
But as the years passed, the weight of the secret grew heavier, and the question loomed: would I ever get the chance to use the weapon I was forging, or would a sudden tragedy rob me of my vengeance forever?
The Final Insult
The ICU smelled of bleach, impending death, and the distinct, sickening sweet scent of rotting flesh. It was punctuated by the rhythmic, haunting beep of the heart monitor, a digital metronome counting down the final hours of Victor’s life. Stage four pancreatic cancer does not negotiate, not even with titans of commercial real estate.
