Clara Vance POV:
I sat on the wooden bench of the bus stop, completely ignoring the wind whipping through the glass shelter. The Chicago snow fell heavily, landing on my dark screen and melting against the warm glass. I did not wipe the water away. I could not feel the cold creeping into my wet canvas shoes. My body had shut down its pain receptors.
I used my frozen thumb to scroll down, dragging Sloan's social media timeline all the way back to her very first post from five years ago.
Five years ago. October.
The screen showed a bright, oversaturated photo of Sloan holding a crystal flute of champagne. The geotag read a private island in the Maldives. The caption was a string of heart emojis and the words "Spoiled by my king."
I closed my eyes. The blinding white snow around me vanished, replaced by the sterile, blinding lights of a hospital room from five years ago. October.
That was the day I had my first miscarriage. I remembered the rough texture of the hospital blanket under my gripping hands. I remembered Nathan kneeling beside my bed, burying his face in my sheets, sobbing uncontrollably. He told me he was a failure. He told me he could not even afford to pay my hospital admission fee, that we would be in debt for years.
My eyes snapped open. I forced my finger to keep swiping down the screen.
Three years ago. Christmas Eve.
Sloan posted a picture of her manicured hand holding a sleek black car key with the Porsche crest. In the background, a brand new white 911 sat in a driveway wrapped in a massive red bow.
I minimized the app and opened my own budget tracker. I scrolled back to the entry for that exact same Christmas Eve.
There it was. A deposit of four thousand dollars. That was the day I walked into a pawn shop in the worst part of the city and sold my mother's emerald ring, the only thing she left me before she died. I handed the cash directly to Nathan because he cried and said he needed a final push of seed money for his startup, or he would lose everything.
A city bus pulled up to the curb, the air brakes hissing loudly. The driver honked the horn, rolling down the window to ask if I was getting on.
I just sat there, staring at my screen. The driver muttered a curse word, rolled the window up, and the bus roared away into the blizzard.
I swiped back to Sloan's timeline. Last February.
A video played automatically. Sloan was sitting in the front row of a VIP viewing box at Paris Fashion Week. She was wearing a custom gown, laughing as someone off-camera handed her a macaron.
Last February. My third miscarriage.
I remembered lying on the bathroom floor of our basement apartment, staring at the mold on the ceiling as the cramps tore through my abdomen. Nathan had told me he was driving to another state to pitch to a cheap supplier. He turned his phone off for an entire week. I bled out alone, too poor to call an ambulance, too ashamed to call my old friends.
My breathing turned ragged. A violent, physical reaction ripped through my stomach.
I dropped my phone on the bench and lunged toward the metal trash can attached to the bus shelter. I grabbed the frozen rim and dry heaved. My stomach muscles contracted painfully, but nothing came out. I had not eaten a single thing all day.
I hung over the trash can, gasping for air. There were no tears. My eyes felt dry, tight, and hot. The crushing sadness I expected was not there. Instead, a terrifying, absolute numbness spread from the center of my chest to my fingertips.
My phone vibrated against the wooden bench. I stood up slowly, wiping the sour saliva from the corner of my mouth.
I looked at the screen. A text message from Nathan.
"Baby, running sales was exhausting today. My feet are killing me. Are hotdogs okay for dinner?"
I stared at the black text on the white bubble. I read the words over and over again until they looked like a foreign language. It was a joke. My entire existence for the past five years was a carefully constructed, elaborate joke.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and stood up completely straight. My spine cracked.
I did not reply to Nathan. I closed the messaging app and opened a hidden folder on my phone. I clicked on an encrypted communication app I had not opened in three years.
I scrolled past dozens of empty chats until I found a solid black avatar. I typed a single line of code into the chat box.
Three seconds later, the person replied with a single question mark.
I pressed the voice call button. The line connected after one ring.
The rapid, aggressive clacking of a mechanical keyboard filled my ear, followed by a lazy, sharp voice. "Well, look who it is. I thought you and that broke loser died in a ditch somewhere."
It was Maya. My old college roommate. She stopped speaking to me the day I dropped out of med school to work double shifts for Nathan.
"Maya," I said. My voice did not sound like my own. It sounded dead. Flat.
The typing on the other end stopped instantly. Maya was abrasive, but she was brilliant. She heard the absolute void in my tone immediately.
I looked down the street at the blurry neon sign of a liquor store cutting through the snow. "I need your help. I need you to look into someone. Tear their life down to the studs."
Maya's voice dropped, all the sarcasm gone. "Who are we looking at, Clara?"
I copied the link to Sloan's profile and pasted it into our encrypted chat.
Strip his skin off, Maya. Even if it's just lines of code, I want to see his true face.
