Three months ago, my IVF had just succeeded.
Not long after, my inbox started filling with anonymous emails.
I opened them. All of them held the same kind of ugly little photos.
Donald's face in profile, asleep. Donald's personal teacup with a lipstick print on the rim. A hand wearing Donald's wedding ring.
I never gave them a second thought.
Because I knew Donald wouldn't cheat.
These photos looked more like a taunt from someone who wanted him and couldn't have him.
I put all my energy into the baby.
Anything that might upset me, I stopped so much as opening.
Until one rainy night, twenty-eight days ago.
Donald said the company had a thirty-million-dollar project to rush, and everyone was working overtime.
He'd suggested keeping the housekeeper at home to look after me. I told him no.
Neither of us liked a crowd.
Instead of a big house full of staff, we preferred squeezing into a small space, just the two of us.
So after we married, the housekeeper and driver we hired both lived elsewhere.
I never once imagined that one small decision would cost me my child that night.
That evening I'd curled up on the couch, listening to music.
It was part of the prenatal routine.
Halfway through, the music cut off.
I reached for my phone to see what was wrong.
That was when I realized the phone seemed to have caught a virus.
The whole screen was taken over by one particular photo of a couple in bed. I couldn't close it, couldn't back out of it.
On the wine-red sheets, two hands of very different sizes were locked together, gripping hard.
The one on top had veins standing faintly along the back of it, everything about it charged.
A man's wedding ring had been slipped off the hand.
One end of it teased up by a woman's long, slender fingers, the other end tucked into a fold of the sheet.
In the dim, flickering light, I saw a small black mark on the man's elbow, and my composure gave out all at once.
I jabbed at the phone, trying to force that image out of it.
I wanted to call Donald, to hear him tell me it was fake.
But no matter how fast or how hard I tapped, that photo stayed exactly where it was.
I was so upset I smashed the phone, then went downstairs barefoot to ask the front desk for help.
Just as I stepped out of the elevator, something slammed hard into my right shoulder from behind.
I stumbled forward a few steps, and my belly hit the sharp corner of the fire cabinet.
And just like that, the baby was gone.
It's not that I never thought about telling Donald.
But I'd smashed the phone. The evidence was gone.
These past two months, I've felt hollow, panicked.
I turned sensitive, fragile.
So I kept calling Donald, over and over, asking whether he blamed me.
Donald said he didn't, but he came home later and later, until even a few extra words seemed to wear him out.
So I made myself forget about it.
But now, I want the truth.
I want to know who schemed this carefully, who stopped at nothing, to frame me.
Paige has a childhood friend named Finn Smith, a bit of a computer genius.
At eighteen he'd gone head to head with national security.
Handing this to him to trace was nothing at all.
Except, when the results came back, I could hardly believe my own eyes.
The real IP addresses behind those emails all pointed to one place——
the private office on the very top floor of Henson Group.
"There's no mistake?" Paige asked Finn.
"Relax, no mistake." Finn tapped the stack of data. "When I climbed the wall, I saw that this IP had extremely high access. Best security system too."
"In a whole company, top-level access on a computer, top-level security, that can only be the CEO."
"No way. Then why would he send Lottie these pictures? To force her to file for divorce herself?"
"What are you thinking?" Finn flicked Paige on the forehead, his face full of disdain. "Who says that just because it's his computer, he's the one who sent them?"
His eyes slid over to me, full of mockery.
"Maybe he's got a mistress stashed away somewhere."
I didn't answer. I just packed the data files back into the envelope, one by one.
"Him or someone else, I'll know once I go look."
Those two months after I lost the baby, I was always guessing, always turning it over.
Now, I'm done guessing.
I'm going to do it the direct way, and drag that person out——into the open.
