But courtroom microphones are strange creatures.
They catch what arrogance forgets to hide.
The sound carried.
The deputy by the door looked at her.
The clerk looked at her.
One juror from another case, waiting in the back row for voir dire, looked at her like she had just spat on a grave.
Marcus did not notice.
Marcus was busy adjusting his cufflinks.
He had chosen platinum ones shaped like falcon wings, the Vale Capital logo.
I had bought them for his fortieth birthday.
At the time, he had kissed my forehead and said, “You always know what I need.”
I had.
That was the problem.
I had known when he needed quiet after a hostile takeover.
I had known when he needed me to smile beside him while reporters asked why his hedge fund had swallowed a family-owned grocery chain and fired 1,100 employees before Christmas.
I had known when he needed a wife who could read a room, remember names, host dinners, calm investors, charm senators, and disappear whenever Savannah Cross walked into his foundation office wearing red lipstick and ambition.
I had known everything except when to stop giving.
Until the morning I found the ultrasound picture in the trash.
Not mine.
Hers.
Savannah’s name was printed in the corner.
Six weeks.
Two days.
I was twenty-eight weeks pregnant with Marcus’s child when I learned his mistress was also pregnant.
Except hers came with a plan.
Mine came with a problem.
That was what the email said.
Subject line: Problem.
