Craig Snyder POV
The amber liquid scorched its way down my throat, a familiar fire, yet it wasn't hot enough to cauterize the gaping wound in my chest.
It had been weeks since the accident. Weeks since Dessie’s car plummeted off that bridge.
They never found the body. Just debris. Just twisted metal and shattered glass—fragments of the life I had built and subsequently destroyed.
I sat on the floor of our bedroom. The master suite felt cavernous, stripped bare. The room she had cleaned out before she left. It was sterile. Cold. It haunted me, mirroring the way she looked at me that last night at the gala.
I reached for the bottle again, my coordination failing, and knocked over a stack of books on the nightstand.
They tumbled with a heavy thud. A small, leather-bound notebook slid out from between the pages of a novel.
I frowned, vision swimming. I didn't recognize it.
My hands shook as I picked it up. It wasn't a diary. Dessie was too careful, too private for diaries. It was a log. A log of her cycle. A log of observations.
I flipped to the last entry, dated just days before the end.
*Chanel refused wine at dinner, but I saw her drinking vodka in the powder room. Her timeline doesn't match. She isn't pregnant.*
The words blurred before my eyes.
I blinked hard, forcing the room to stop spinning. I read it again.
*She isn't pregnant.*
A cold soberness washed over me, instant and violent, replacing the alcohol-induced haze.
If Chanel wasn't pregnant, then everything she told me was a lie. The baby was the anchor, the reason I had hesitated, the reason Dessie had fled. And if she lied about the baby, what else did she lie about?
Why would she need to fake a pregnancy? Unless she needed to secure her position. Unless she needed to get rid of the competition.
I stood up. The room spun, but my mind was razor sharp for the first time in months.
I grabbed my phone, my grip tight enough to crack the screen.
"Get the car," I barked at my driver. "And bring me the security logs for the week Dessie disappeared. Every camera. Every angle."
I didn't go to the office. I went to the server room in the basement of the Snyder compound.
I sat there for hours, bathed in the blue light of the monitors. Rewinding. Watching.
I saw Chanel’s father. He met with a man near the rear exit two days before Dessie’s accident. They stood in the shadows, thinking they were hidden, but they had miscalculated the wide-angle lens on the perimeter cam.
I zoomed in.
The man had a tattoo on his neck. A spiderweb.
I knew that tattoo. I knew exactly who wore that ink. He was a cleaner. A hitman for hire who specialized in making murders look like accidents.
My stomach churned. Acid rose in my throat.
I switched the feed to the day of the accident. Chanel was smiling. She was checking her phone constantly, a look of anticipation on her face.
I pulled up her father’s phone records. I had access to everything. I was a Capo. I just hadn't looked because I was too busy playing house with a liar.
There it was. A call to the cleaner ten minutes after Dessie left the safe house.
I smashed the keyboard into the desk. Plastic keys shattered and flew across the room like shrapnel.
I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I went deadly quiet.
"Bring them to me," I told my head of security, my voice devoid of humanity. "Chanel and her father. Now."
They brought them to the warehouse. The soundproof one.
Chanel’s father was blustering, sweating through his suit, threatening to call the Commission. Chanel was crying, holding her stomach. Her flat, empty stomach.
I didn't ask questions. I threw the photos of the cleaner on the metal table between us.
"I know," I said. My voice sounded like grinding stones.
Chanel’s father went pale, his bluster vanishing instantly.
"It was for the family," he stammered, eyes darting to the exit. "She was a liability. She was leaving you. She was going to expose us."
"So you killed her," I said. It wasn't a question. It was a verdict.
"We handled the problem," he said, trying to regain his composure, straightening his tie with trembling hands. "You were too weak to do it yourself. You were obsessed with her. We freed you."
I looked at Chanel. She wasn't crying anymore. The mask had slipped. She looked defiant.
"She was in the way, Craig," she spat, venom dripping from every word. "She was a barren, useless relic. I gave you a future."
I walked over to her. I placed a hand on her stomach.
She flinched.
"There is no future here," I whispered, leaning in close. "Is there?"
She didn't answer. She didn't have to.
The rage didn't feel like fire. It felt like ice. It froze my blood. It stopped my heart.
I turned to my men.
"Lock them up. Call the Commission. We are having a trial."
I walked out into the night air. It tasted like ash.
I had let a snake into my bed, and it had eaten the only thing that ever truly loved me.
