The smell of baked lasagna and fresh basil filled the small Brooklyn apartment.
Delinda kicked off her heels. Her toes ached. She collapsed onto the worn fabric sofa, pulling her tablet onto her lap to review the jewelry catalogs.
Berkley poked his head out of the kitchen, wiping flour off his apron. "Food's almost ready!"
Across the river, in a dimly lit private club in Manhattan, Ace sat alone in a leather booth.
A glass of Macallan neat sat on the table. Next to it was his private phone.
He stared at the black screen. His grandmother's ultimatum echoed in his head. He had to make contact.
Ace's jaw ticked. He picked up the phone and pressed the only saved number.
In Brooklyn, Delinda's personal cell phone vibrated against the couch cushions. The screen showed an unsaved number.
She swiped the screen and pressed the phone to her ear. "Hello?"
Silence.
Ace listened to the soft, tired voice on the other end. His throat tightened. He didn't know what to say to the woman who had sold her life to his family's trust fund.
He cleared his throat. "It's me," he said, his tone dropping into a freezing, authoritative register.
Delinda frowned. The voice had a familiar deep, gravelly timbre, but the connection was poor and it sounded rougher, distorted by static and the tinny speaker of her phone. It lacked the controlled, polished resonance of her CEO's voice in the quiet of his office. The loud jazz music playing in the background of the call further muddled the audio. The voice sounded deep, but she didn't connect it to the CEO she had just left at the office.
"I'm sorry, who is this?" she asked.
Ace's grip on the phone tightened until the plastic creaked. She didn't even recognize his voice.
Before he could speak, a loud, booming male voice echoed from the Brooklyn kitchen.
"Sweetheart! Lasagna is ready! Get in here before Elva eats it all!" Berkley yelled.
The words traveled through the phone speaker and hit Ace like a physical blow.
The blood drained from Ace's face. The air in the private booth turned to ice.
"Sweetheart?" Ace hissed, the word scraping against his teeth like broken glass.
Delinda didn't catch the lethal danger in his tone. She turned her head toward the kitchen and yelled back, "Coming!"
She put the phone back to her mouth. "Look, my roommate is calling me for dinner. If this is a sales pitch-"
"Roommate?" Ace interrupted.
He let out a laugh that sounded like a death rattle.
He ended the call.
Ace stood up. He slammed the phone onto the marble table with so much force the screen shattered into a spiderweb of cracked glass.
He grabbed the glass of whiskey and threw it down his throat. The alcohol burned, but it did nothing to touch the violent, consuming fire in his chest.
The image of a man's voice calling his wife 'sweetheart' seared into his brain. It wasn't just the word; it was the casual intimacy, the domestic warmth. A ferocious, possessive fury ignited within him, a dark certainty taking root that his wife was living a life with someone else, making a fool of him. The humiliation tasted like ash in his mouth.
In Brooklyn, Delinda stared at the disconnected call. She shrugged, tossed the phone onto the coffee table, and walked into the kitchen to eat.
She had no idea that in the mind of her billionaire husband, she had just signed her own death warrant.
