Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 112638 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 563(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112638 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 563(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Which leaves me with one other person.
After making my way to Paul’s office, I power up his computer and log in to his company email, which is surprisingly still working. His name pops green on his company’s internal software. My heart beats hard in my chest. Oops. He’s online. Let’s hope no one thinks he’s back from the dead.
I scroll through his emails until I find what I need. A birthday sheet shared by a few of the PAs that includes all of Silver Arrow Capital employees and their birthdays.
I find Grace’s. January ninth. I make my way back to the safe, crack my knuckles, and hit the numbers 010991.
The green light flashes, and the safe slides open effortlessly. Nausea rolls through my stomach, the bile tickling the back of my throat. What a darn cheater the man was. I grab a stack of plastic cards wrapped in a rubber band from the safe’s jaws. Sort through them. Find the insurance card. I pocket it in my sweatpants with shaky hands, shoving the rest of the cards back. Something draws my attention just before I turn around to leave. A box, no bigger than a mug, in the corner of the safe. It is brown and plain. Months ago—weeks ago, even—I would have left it alone.
Now? I want to know. I grab it and flick it open. There’s a lot of scented black tissue covering whatever’s underneath. I toss the wrappers away, my heart pounding so loud I can feel its thuds between my ears. The first thing I see is a USB stick. The second thing is a piece of paper rolled like a map. No, a few pieces of paper. Square. White. I unroll the batch, and what I see stuns me.
No. No. No.
I gallop toward the bathroom, kneel in front of the toilet, and throw up, retching uncontrollably. Tears run down my face. My whole body is trembling.
Standing up on wobbly legs, I stumble back to the box, which is flung over the bed, and pick up the pictures again. Yes. It is exactly what I think it is. Ultrasound pictures, indicating a small little bean of a baby swimming safely inside its sack. I turn the picture to the other side.
First scan. 6 weeks. G + P = PJ!
Paul and Grace were pregnant.
They were going to become parents together.
Arsène was wrong. They were going to leave us for one another. Paul never would have let another man raise his child. For all his faults, he’d always wanted children. A herd of little stinkers to call my own. He’d pat my ass after we’d have sex. His way of wishing I’d get pregnant.
Which begs the question—what happened? Where had their plan gone sideways?
I examine the ultrasound photos again, more carefully now, as adrenaline gives way to far deeper emotions. Rage. Pain. Shock. The name of the clinic, and the date of the scan indicates it was done some time ago. Mere weeks after Italy.
Suddenly, I remember the picture in Grace’s Instagram account. The one that was in the private investigator’s file.
Miss my baby .
Innocently, I thought she was referring to Paul. But she wasn’t.
She was referring to her miscarriage.
That’s what went wrong for them. Grace had had a miscarriage. Bad omen? One of them had chickened out and decided to stay with their partner. Probably Grace, knowing what I now know about Paul.
Grace shone where I had failed. She almost gave him a baby.
My marriage was a sham.
The so-called love of my life was a joke.
I’m all fired up and shaking with anger as I make my way back to Paul’s office. I’ve never been this affronted, this wounded in my entire life. I can’t think clearly, and it scares me, because I’m not completely in control of my actions right now.
I shove the USB into Paul’s computer and wait for a new folder to pop up on the screen, bracing myself for the worst. Once it does, it presents a few dozen videos. By the thumbnails alone I can tell these are old videos. It is apparent that they were transferred from a videotape. I click on one and don’t recognize the people in the video. This is not Paul’s family. Not his mom, not his dad, not his siblings. These are complete, beautiful strangers. I’ve never met them in my life.
Who are they? Why did Paul have this? Was he keeping it for a friend? A colleague?
Then I realize . . . these people in the videos are not strangers at all.
At least, I know one of them. Intimately.
Gosh, Paul, why did you take part in this awful woman’s schemes?
The next half an hour passes in a daze. I shove the USB and ultrasound pictures into a FedEx envelope and call a courier to send it to Arsène’s apartment. There is no reason to pick up the phone and call him. We decided not to see each other again. It’s for the best, seeing as what I’m about to do will shock him and those around him to the core.