Chapter 10

Laurel’s POV

It was a Tuesday evening, just past eight o'clock, and the penthouse was wrapped in its usual clinical silence.

I sat at the small vanity in the corner of our master bedroom, applying a layer of night cream, trying to lose myself in the mindless rhythm of self-care. Leonard was in the adjacent bathroom, the muffled, steady roar of the shower serving as the background track to my evening.

His phone sat on top of the mahogany dresser, resting face-up under the soft glow of the recessed lighting.

I wasn't looking for anything. I had trained myself to stop looking, to accept the sterile boundaries of our arrangement. But then, the screen abruptly lit up. A sharp, metallic chime sliced through the quiet room.

I glanced over, my fingers pausing on my cheek.

An unknown number, lacking a name or a contact card, stretched across the lock screen. Beneath it, the preview text banner caught my eye.

Unsaved number.

Are you still stuck in New York, or are you coming back to play? I’m waiting in the bath…

My breath hitched. The air was instantly sucked from my lungs, leaving a hollow, freezing vacuum in my chest.

‘Coming back to play.’

It wasn't corporate jargon. It wasn't a compliance framework or a logistics update.

Before my brain could even process the violent surge of adrenaline crashing through my veins, the phone buzzed again. Another chime.

A multimedia file box appeared on the screen, followed by a blurred, low-resolution thumbnail preview that the phone’s privacy settings hadn't completely masked.

Even through the digital distortion, the image was unmistakable, the distinct, peach-toned curve of a bare torso, a flush of skin against white porcelain, and a hand pulling back a mass of dark hair.

Amanda’s venomous warnings didn't just echo in my head, they roared.

Look in the mirror, Laurel. That’s what he had told me.

He had weaponized our lost baby to make me feel small, to make me feel guilty for wanting him, all while someone else was asking him when he was coming back to play.

I stood up so fast the vanity stool scraped sharply against the hardwood floor.

Moving on pure, unadulterated instinct, my hand trembled as I snatched the phone off the dresser.

The glass felt ice-cold against my palm.

My heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

See the picture.

Just open it and see the face. Confirm it so you know you aren't insane.

I swiped up on the screen to view the message. The familiar password prompt popped up, the six blank circles waiting for the numeric code I had known by heart for the last ten years.

His birthday. The day we bought our first apartment. The sequence was hardwired into my fingers.

I typed in the numbers rapidly.

Click.

The screen flashed red, the small circles shaking violently in rejection.

Incorrect Password. Try again.

My blood ran cold.

A bead of sweat formed at my temple, I shook my head, my vision blurring with tears of frustration as I forced myself to slow down, I entered the alternate code, the one he used for his personal tablet, the date Lilibeth was born.

Click.

Incorrect Password. 5 attempts remaining.

He had changed it.

The realization felt like a physical blow to the dense network of nerves in my lower abdomen.

The man who claimed he had never broken a contract in his life, the man who prided himself on absolute transparency and corporate honor, had built a digital wall around himself.

He hadn't just locked his phone, he had locked me out of the truth.

Through the heavy frosted-glass door of the bathroom, the rushing sound of the shower suddenly stopped.

The silence that followed was terrifying.

I stared at the dark screen in my hand, the blurry shape of another woman's naked body trapped behind a six-digit code, realizing that the marriage wasn't just cold,it was a crime scene, and I was holding the evidence.

The towel in his hands slowed to a halt through the steam, but I didn’t wait for him to step fully into the room.

I couldn't, if he looked at me with that calm, lying stone face right now, I would completely lose my mind.

Before he could even speak my name, I dropped the phone back onto the mahogany dresser with a loud, hollow clack, I spun on my heel, my frame moving on pure, adrenaline-fueled instinct, and walked straight out of the master suite.

I didn't stop until I reached the dark sanctuary of my private study down the hall, shutting the heavy door behind me with a breathless, trembling click.

I collapsed against the wood, my chest heaving as the tears finally spilled over my eyelashes, hot and furious.

The space was dark, save for the weak moonlight cutting through the windows, casting long, sharp shadows across my desk.

My hands were shaking violently, I pressed my palms against my face, trying to stop the roaring in my ears, but the voices wouldn't stop.

‘If you want to know why this bed is cold, look in the mirror.’

‘Men like Leonard don't starve, they just eat somewhere else.’

The contrast was sickening.

He had made me beg, he had made me apologize on my knees for his own coldness, weaponizing our tragedy to shield his dirty little secret.

And the password, the changed password was the final, definitive proof.

A man with nothing to hide doesn't rewrite a decade and more code for no concrete reason.

I paced the length of the dark study, a frantic, trapped animal in silk.

Part of me wanted to storm back into that bedroom, throw the dresser mirror at his feet, and demand he open that encrypted app right in front of me. I wanted to scream so loud it woke up the entire building, I wanted to tear down the pristine, lying facade of Professor Leonard’s perfect life.

But a colder, more terrifying realization stopped me in my tracks.

If I confronted him right now without any evidence, he would spin it.

He would call me paranoid. He would corporate-lawyer me into a corner, call Amanda a cancer, and turn the tables until I was the one apologizing again.

And then there was Lilibeth. She was asleep just down the hall, finally excited about her new institute program, finally seeing a soft glimpse of a happy family.

If I blew the house up tonight, she would be caught in the blast radius.

I sank into my desk chair, staring blindly at the stacks of lecture notes. For eighteen months, I had been trying to analyze my way out of a broken marriage.

But as I sat alone in the dark, listening for the sound of his footsteps in the hallway, I realized the analysis was over. I didn't know whether to walk back into that bedroom and fight, or pack a bag and never look back.

All I knew was that the man sleeping in my bed wasn't a grieving father, he was a stranger, and I was officially living with the enemy.

The four walls of the study began to close in on me, the air turning thick and entirely unbreathable.

Every shadow in the penthouse felt like a witness to my humiliation, and the distant, muffled sounds of the apartment, the faint hum of the refrigerator, the ambient ticking of the ancient clock, sounded like a countdown to my own undoing.

I couldn't stay here. I couldn't sleep in that bed, and I couldn't sit in the dark waiting for morning to force me into a fake smile for Lilibeth.

Moving silently so as not to wake our daughter, I grabbed my trench coat from the entryway closet. My fingers fumbled in the ceramic dish by the door, wrapping around the cold, heavy weight of my car keys.

I didn't take a bag, I didn't take a coat for the morning, I just needed out.

Minutes later, I was in the garage, the engine of my SUV roaring to life with a low, echoing growl that felt entirely synchronous with the rage vibrating in my chest.

I hit the gas, peeling out of the building and bursting onto the slick, rain-washed streets.

It was past nine now, and the city was ablaze in a blur of neon yellows and bleeding brake lights. I drove without a destination, my hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles turned a ghostly white.

The cool air from the vents blasted against my face, but it did nothing to cool the blistering heat under my skin.

Every time I stopped at a red light, the locked screen of Leonard’s phone flashed behind my eyelids.

‘Are you coming back to play?

The words replayed on a loop, a cruel, mocking soundtrack. I thought about the sheer calculation it took to look a woman in the eyes, evoke the memory of her lost pregnancy, and then turn around to protect an encrypted mistress.

For months, I had confined myself to the rigid perimeter Leonard had built for us. I had been the perfect faithful wife, the mourning mother, the woman who took up as little space as possible so as not to disrupt his grief.

But as I swept across the city’s bridge, the tires humming against the metal grating and the black expanse of the water yawning below, a dangerous, unfurling clarity began to take hold.

The apology in the bedroom had been my last.

I had driven out into the city tonight to escape the suffocating lie of my marriage, but as the skyline loomed vast and indifferent in my rearview mirror, I realized I wasn't just running away. I was waking up.

The campus was the only place left that belonged entirely to me.

It was a space where I wasn’t Leonard’s grieving wife or a mother trying to shield her daughter from a fractured household, I was Professor Laurel Cruz Leonard.

I pulled into the faculty parking lot, the gravel crunching beneath my tires in the quiet night.

The gothic stone buildings of the university loomed against the dark sky, casting long, familiar shadows across the quad.

The campus at this hour was a ghost town, stripped of its daytime bustle, leaving only the amber glow of the security lamps to light my path, and few students who were a significant distance apart.

I crossed the courtyard, the cool night air whipping the hem of my trench coat around my ankles. My heels clicked sharply against the pavement, a steady, rhythmic sound that anchored me against the chaotic spinning of my own mind.

When I reached the humanities building, the heavy iron doors were locked. I swiped my faculty ID badge against the electronic reader. A clean, mechanical beep echoed, followed by the heavy click of the latch releasing.

I stepped inside, the familiar scent of old paper, floor wax, and air conditioning instantly washing over me, wrapping around me like a protective shield.

The corridors were dark, but I didn’t bother turning on any lights. I knew these hallways by heart.

I walked past the empty lecture halls and the closed doors of my colleagues' offices until I reached the end of the third-floor corridor.

Seeing my name printed on the frosted glass felt like a lifeline, I unlocked the door and stepped inside, shutting the world out behind me. I didn’t turn on the main light, opting instead for the small brass banker's lamp on the corner of my desk.

A warm, green-tinted glow spilled across the room, illuminating rows of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, stacks of ungraded essays, and the comfortable leather armchair in the corner.

I sank into my office chair, my body finally relaxing as I let the silence of the room envelope me.

I rested my elbows on the desk, buried my face in my hands, and let out a long, shuddering breath. Here, surrounded by the words of writers who had spent centuries dissecting the complexities of human betrayal, tragedy, and survival, I felt a strange, cold clarity take over.

Leonard could lock me out of his phone. He could rewrite our history and weaponize our grief to keep me small.

But he couldn't touch this room. He couldn't strip away my mind, my intellect, or my autonomy.