I buy the phone at a drugstore in Queens. Pay cash. The clerk doesn't look up. I activate it in the parking lot and save one number.
Diana Welles meets me three days later in a downtown office building I've never been to before. Her firm takes up the fourteenth floor. The waiting room is quiet. No one asks my name.
She's younger than I expected. Sharp suit. Sharper eyes. She shakes my hand once and leads me into a conference room with floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over the East River.
'Tell me what happened,' she says.
I do. I keep my voice level. I tell her about the staircase. About the document Sterling made me sign. About the baby I lost and the mother's urn he held hostage to make sure I complied.
Diana doesn't react. She takes notes in neat, precise handwriting. When I finish, she sets her pen down.
'This is coercion,' she says. 'Textbook duress. Any halfway competent judge will see it.'
'I need the divorce to be final before he knows it's happening,' I say.
She looks at me for a long moment. 'That's harder. But not impossible.'
'Then make it possible.'
She nods once. 'I'll start drafting. But I need you to understand—if he fights this, it gets ugly. Public. Are you prepared for that?'
I think about Angelique's hand on my arm at the top of the stairs. I think about Sterling's voice in the hospital room, measured and reasonable, explaining why I needed to protect the woman who killed my child.
'I'm prepared,' I say.
Diana slides a retainer agreement across the table. I sign it with the pen she offers. My hand doesn't shake.
'Don't file yet,' I tell her. 'I'll let you know when.'
She doesn't ask why. That's how I know I chose the right attorney.
---
I go home. I make dinner. Sterling comes in late, smelling like boardrooms and expensive cologne. He kisses my forehead in passing.
'How was your day?' he asks.
'Quiet,' I say.
He nods. He doesn't look at me. He never really does anymore.
After he goes to bed, I go into his study. The door doesn't lock—it never has. He trusts me. Or he doesn't think of me enough to distrust me. I'm not sure which is worse.
I start with the filing cabinet. Years of Henderson Group documents, organized by quarter. I photograph everything that looks irregular. Offshore accounts. Subsidiary structures that don't quite line up. A pattern of securities filings that seem designed to obscure rather than disclose.
I don't know exactly what I'm looking at. But I know enough to recognize when numbers are hiding.
I work slowly. Methodically. I have time. He thinks I'm sleeping.
When I'm done, I close the cabinet exactly as I found it. I go back upstairs. I lie down beside my husband in the bed we've shared for three years and I breathe quietly in the dark.
He never wakes up.
---
The Henderson Foundation gala is in three weeks. I know because Eleanor reminds me twice. She wants me in something elegant. Something that photographs well. The foundation is hosting two hundred guests and the press will be there.
'Angelique will be wearing dove gray,' Eleanor says on the phone. 'Perhaps you could coordinate.'
I say I'll see what I can find.
I wear black.
---
The ballroom is all white marble and crystal chandeliers. I stand beside Sterling during the cocktail hour and smile at the right moments. Across the room, Angelique holds court near the refreshments table. She's wearing the dove gray Eleanor mentioned. She looks luminous. Fragile. Three separate guests stop to tell her how radiant she looks.
I excuse myself and walk toward the table. I need water. My mouth is dry.
Angelique sees me coming. Something flickers across her face—too fast to name, gone before anyone else could catch it.
She picks up a cup of coffee. Full. Steaming.
I'm two feet away when she turns, gasps, stumbles—and the entire cup tips forward across my chest.
The heat is immediate. Searing. My skin screams. I step back, gasping, and the coffee drips down the front of my dress, across my collarbone, down my forearm.
Angelique's hand flies to her mouth. 'Oh my God. Oh my God, Leslie, I'm so sorry—'
She's crying. Loud, shaking sobs. She reaches for Sterling, who's already moving toward us, and buries her face against his shoulder.
'I didn't see her,' Angelique chokes out. 'I didn't—Sterling, I'm so sorry—'
I stand there. My skin is blistering. I can feel it. The room has gone quiet. Two hundred people, watching.
Sterling's arm is around Angelique. He's murmuring something into her hair. Soothing.
He looks at me over her head. 'Leslie. Go clean yourself up. You're making a scene.'
I don't move.
'Now,' he says. Quiet. Firm.
Across the ballroom, Eleanor Henderson is watching. She meets my eyes for one long moment. Then she turns back to her conversation.
I walk to the restroom. My hands are shaking. In the mirror, my chest is red and angry, the skin already starting to bubble. I run cold water. I press wet towels against the burns. I breathe through my teeth.
When I come back out, the gala has resumed. Angelique is seated, pale and trembling, surrounded by concerned guests. Sterling is beside her, his hand on her shoulder.
No one asks if I'm all right.
I take out the burner phone in my purse. I step into the hallway. I text Diana Welles one word.
*Soon.*
