Chapter 1 - The Necklace Around Another Woman's Neck
It was nine o'clock when I came back from a trip, and I opened the door to my husband's room and saw my lover, the head of the mafia, dozing off in my bed. It wasn't just the champagne glasses, the dress that had been left on the floor, or Dorian Kincaid without his shirt that caught my attention. It was the pale blue sapphire necklace that my mother had given me. That's what she used to wear every Sunday. What she gave me while she was dying of cancer. ""Some things should be yours before they belong to anyone else,"" she whispered that day. I wore it at her funeral.\
I held this necklace during my spontaneous abortion.\
And I kept it with me through every painful year that followed.\
Now it rested on the skin of another woman.\
Dorian finally noticed me.\
His expression changed.\
— You shouldn't be here.\
I looked at him.\
It wasn't ""I'm sorry.""\
It wasn't ""let me explain.""\
It was just an accusation, as if I had arrived at the wrong time.\
The woman moved.\
She opened her eyes.\
And I recognized her.\
Blythe Sorrell.\
Dorian's communications director.\
The woman who organized his public appearances, traveled with him for business, and smiled politely at me at family dinners.\
She pulled the necklace against her chest.\
— Audra...\
I walked towards her.\
Dorian moved.\
— Audra, wait.\
— No.\
My voice came out hoarse.\
He stopped.\
I took a suitcase from the top shelf.\
He followed.\
I pulled a brown suitcase from the drawer.\
He watched me as I started to pack.\
— Audra, what are you doing?\
— How long has it been?\
He froze.\
— We don't need to talk about this now.\
I pulled a sweater.\
— How long has it been, Dorian?\
— Ten months.\
My hands stopped.\
Ten months.\
Ten months of dinners together.\
Wedding anniversaries.\
Farewell kisses.\
And lies.\
— Did you take it to hotels?\
Silence.\
— Did our employees know?\
His jaw clenched.\
— That's not important.\
I almost laughed.\
— My husband has been sleeping with the communications director for ten months, inside our house, while people who work for us apparently knew everything. And you're telling me what's important?\
He massaged my forehead.\
— You're shaken. We talk when you're clear-headed.\
I turned to him.\
— Why are you leaving because of this?\
I looked at his face.\
— Because I'm leaving because of this?\
— Audra, we've been married for seventeen years.\
— And you gave the other woman my mother's necklace.\
His expression hardened.\
— It was just a piece of jewelry.\
Something inside me went still.\
— No, Dorian.\
My voice faltered.\
— You know exactly what that means.\
He was the one who closed that necklace around my neck on our tenth anniversary.\
He saw me cry while I remembered my mother.\
He told me that she would be proud of the life we had built.\
And now he was pretending it was just another expensive piece of jewelry.\
— I'm so sorry, Mrs. Kincaid.\
I turned to the door.\
But before I could open it, our housekeeper from so many years had appeared in the hallway.\
Her face was pale.\
— Mrs. Kincaid?\
I turned back to her.\
She looked at my bag.\
Then at Dorian.\
And suddenly, she began to cry.\
— I'm so sorry, ma'am.\
My stomach tightened.\
— What's wrong?\
She hesitated.\
The voice of Dorian cut through the hallway.\
— Margaret. Not another word.\
I walked slowly toward him.\
Because the fear in his expression was different now.\
He wasn't just afraid that I would leave.\
He was afraid that Margaret would tell him something.\
I looked back at our housekeeper.\
— Margaret, what's going on in my house?\
She wiped away the tears.\
Then she whispered:\
— Mrs. Kincaid, the necklace wasn't the first thing he gave her.\
May you like
And in that moment, I understood that my husband's betrayal was just the beginning of what I was about to discover.\
The full story is too long for this post. If you want to know what Margaret had to reveal, leave a ""I want to read"" below and I'll keep it in the comments. 👇
