Chapter 2 - What the Coffee Shop ConfirmedI picked up my phone. It was two in the morning. Odessa answered on the second ring, almost as though she'd genuinely been waiting for the call. "Vivienne?"

I swallowed hard once. "I need real help."

"Talk to me."

I looked at Foster's own ring still sitting on my finger, metal catching the light over the kitchen sink. "Foster's business recovered three whole months ago, and he's been sending the money somewhere else entirely. To a woman named Whitney."

Odessa stayed quiet a beat. "How much total?"

"More than I ever actually put into his company."

"Vivienne..."

"I don't know exactly what this is yet. But I need to find out, before he realizes I've actually seen those accounts."

"I'll be at your office by nine sharp. Don't touch anything else on that laptop. And don't say one single word to him."

I hung up and stared hard at the name still glowing on the screen. Whitney. By sunrise, I'd decided, I would know exactly who she actually was.

For two full weeks, I kissed Foster goodbye each morning and spent my nights instead with Odessa, quietly tracing the money. "Don't confront him," she warned repeatedly, "until you genuinely know what this actually is."

Whitney's name led us straight to the LLC receiving Foster's transfers, and its own records led us to an address roughly forty minutes outside town. By that point, I wasn't really trying to determine whether Foster was lying to me anymore. I was trying instead to find out exactly what he'd bought with that particular lie.

That Saturday, I followed my husband's truck myself. He picked Whitney up at a coffee shop downtown. She was elegant, roughly Foster's own age, and smiled at him like they knew each other genuinely well. I told myself firmly that a simple smile wasn't actual proof of anything at all.

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Then they drove out to the property together and disappeared inside. For four straight hours, I tried out every innocent explanation I could think of. A room being prepared for Birdie. A legitimate business deal. An investment property. A demanding client.

Then they finally came back outside. Foster said something I couldn't quite hear from my distance. Whitney smiled, threw both arms around him, and hugged him tight. He hugged her back, without hesitation. And just like that, every single innocent explanation I'd spent four careful hours building for myself fell completely apart at once.