I hadn’t asked that question with any particular plan in mind. I filed the information away the same way I file away most things — carefully, quietly, in case I ever needed it.
Two weeks before the wedding, I found the proof I’d been half-dreading and half-expecting.
Julian left his laptop open on the kitchen counter one evening while he showered, still logged into his cloud photo backup, which had automatically synced a set of pictures from his phone — including several from a hotel room in Charleston, taken during a trip he’d told me was a solo site visit for a client. Kayla was in three of those photos. So was a receipt, still visible in another photo he must have snapped to expense the trip, dated the same weekend, itemizing a single king suite instead of the two separate business-class rooms Ashford Capital typically booked for staff travel.
I sat at that counter for a long time after I found it, feeling something in my chest go very cold and very still.
I also learned something else that same week, almost by accident, from Renata, a mutual acquaintance who worked in Ashford Capital’s compliance department and mentioned it in passing at a work function, having no idea what she was actually handing me.
Kayla was married. Had been for four years, to a firefighter named Desmond Preston, a man who, by every account I later gathered, had absolutely no idea what his wife had been doing on her business trips.
I didn’t call off the wedding.
