I parked in a corner of the underground garage.
At eight o'clock that night, a black Mercedes pulled in.
The door opened, and the man who stepped out was my husband of five years, Ervin Dickerson.
He was carrying a cake box, the logo on its lid from Gwendolen's favorite bakery.
His face was relaxed, almost cheerful, as he walked briskly toward the elevator bank and pressed the button for Building A.
I sat in the car, both hands locked on the steering wheel, my nails digging into my palms.
I didn't cry. I clenched my jaw until my teeth ached.
The closed-door development sprints. The constant business trips. The sacrifices he claimed he was making for our family. All of it was a lie.
He had simply gone somewhere else to live another life.
A life without me and Molly.
I sat in the car for a long time before I pulled out my phone and dialed Ervin's number.
The phone rang and rang before he finally picked up.
“Hey, babe? What's up?”
In the background, a child's voice piped through the line.
“Daddy! Daddy, come cut the cake! I want the piece with the most chocolate!”
It was the boy. Nathan.
Ervin's breathing went sharp. He covered the receiver, his voice muffled：“Hang on, buddy, Daddy's on the phone……”
Then he came back to me：“Babe, things at the office……one of my coworkers brought their family to visit. It's kind of loud in here.”
“Is that so?” I asked.
“Yeah, yeah. Have you and the baby eaten? Sorry you had to handle everything today.”
I played along：“We ate. Don't overwork yourself. Take care of your health.”
“Will do, babe. I'll head home once I wrap up. You and the baby get some rest.”
He hung up.
I held the phone in my lap and felt my lips curl into something that wasn't a smile.
We lived in the same city, yet somehow we'd been in a long-distance marriage all along.
What a joke.
I turned the car around, drove to the front gate of the complex, and stopped at the convenience store for a pack of cigarettes and a few bottles of liquor.
I didn't smoke. I didn't drink. But right now I needed both.
Back in the car, I lit a cigarette.
A plan was already forming in my head.
The next morning, I went back to Riverside Estates.
I walked into the property management office, rubbed my eyes until they were red, and turned to the manager.
“Sir, I think my husband's been scammed. He keeps coming to this complex.”
“He says he's working on some big deal, that he's invested a ton of money, and he won't listen to a word I say.”
“I'm worried sick, but I'm afraid if I confront him directly it'll hurt his pride.”
“Could you please help me? Just let me see who he's been meeting with?”
I took an envelope of cash from my purse and slid it across the counter.
“This is everything we have saved. If he's really been conned, my daughter and I are done for.”
The manager weighed the envelope in his hand, smiled, and ushered me into the security room. He pulled up a month's worth of surveillance footage from the eleventh floor of Building A.
Ervin appeared on the screen.
At least four nights a week, he was here.
He came back carrying groceries and cooked dinner. He walked downstairs with Gwendolen for evening strolls. He let Nathan ride on his shoulders.
They were a family of three.
Every closed-door sprint, every emergency business trip he'd fed me was nothing but an excuse.
I clenched my jaw and wrote down the timestamp of every key frame.
I drove home that same night, opened my laptop, and logged into our joint bank account to pull the transaction history.
That was when I found the money trail.
Every month, a sum had been routed through an investment product into an account I'd never seen before.
I followed that account and asked a friend to dig deeper.
The villa's deed was in Gwendolen Whitney's name alone.
The $500,000 down payment, made three years ago, had come from the sale of my premarital apartment, the money I'd given Ervin to launch his startup.
He used my money to buy a home for another woman and her child.
