Chapter 2 - The Perfect Morning
Lucas behaved normally at breakfast.
That was the most terrifying part.
He wore a perfectly pressed charcoal suit.
He added one spoonful of cream to his coffee.
He folded the newspaper beneath his arm and asked whether I had remembered to approve the household insurance renewal.
“I’ll sign it tonight,” I said.
He glanced at me for half a second.
“Just sign where I marked. It’s routine.”
Routine.
I smiled.
“Of course.”
His shoulders relaxed.
He believed I was still trained.
Lucas kissed my forehead before leaving.
The gesture once made me feel loved.
That morning, it felt like a man placing his signature on property.
I watched from the front window until his car disappeared beyond the trees.
Then I remained motionless for another minute.
I needed him to believe the house had returned to sleep behind him.
Only when I was certain he was gone did I enter his study.
For thirty-two years, I had respected that room as his private space.
Lucas never entered my writing room without knocking.
I assumed the boundary was mutual.
Now I understood that privacy had protected only one of us.
The first drawer contained nothing unusual.
Pens.
Business cards.
A spare watch.
The second held tax documents I recognized.
The third was locked.
I searched the desk and found a small key taped beneath the lowest shelf.
Inside the drawer were bank statements, investment reports, and transfer records I had never seen.
At first, the numbers meant little.
Then I recognized the name of my publisher.
For twenty-six years, I had written historical novels under the name Margot Bell.
My first books sold modestly.
Then my fifth became an international success.
There were translations.
Audiobooks.
Film options.
Recurring royalties.
Lucas always told me the income was deposited into our joint investment account.
The statements in front of me showed something else.
My royalties entered an account bearing both our names.
Within twenty-four hours, most of the money moved into companies controlled solely by Lucas.
Stephens Asset Management.
Pine Ridge Consulting.
Bellweather Literary Holdings.
That last name made my hands go cold.
Bellweather used my maiden name without my knowledge.
I continued searching.
I found the receipt for the antique bracelet I sold when Lucas developed heart complications ten years earlier.
I had sold it because he claimed our insurance would not cover an experimental procedure.
The receipt showed the jewelry brought forty-eight thousand dollars.
Hospital records in the same folder showed insurance covered almost everything.
The money from my bracelet had been used as the deposit on his first luxury SUV.
A vehicle he told me was financed through business earnings.
I found more.
A property in Charleston purchased through one of his companies.
A private account in Nevada.
Payments to an attorney named Victor Lang.
Large transfers to a woman named Serena Vale.
I stared at that name for a long time.
An affair would have been simple.
Painful.
Familiar.
But the payments were labeled legal consulting, document preparation, and succession planning.
This was not romance.
It was administration.
Lucas had turned my erasure into a professional project.
At the bottom of the drawer, I found a photograph of myself at a book signing.
Someone had drawn a small pencil circle around my hand.
Around my signature.
Beneath it was a note:
Use recent sample. Tremor variation acceptable.
My stomach turned.
They were studying my handwriting.
Whether to imitate it or compare it with something they intended to make me sign, I did not yet know.
Then I heard a car door outside.
Lucas had returned.
I shoved the documents back into place, locked the drawer, and pressed the key beneath the shelf.
The front door opened.
“Margot?”
His voice carried through the house.
I stepped into the hallway with a laundry basket in my hands.
“You’re home early.”
He looked toward the study.
Then back at me.
“Forgot a file.”
I smiled.
“Anything important?”
May you like
His eyes stayed on mine.
“Nothing you need to worry about.”
