Chapter 2: The truth

BRENDA

I had two choices. Stand here and cry. Or make them pay.

I chose the second one.

I set the champagne down on the counter. Picked up my phone and opened the camera to check that the cloud backup was on.

I created a new email address that Alexandre had never seen. I forwarded the backup confirmation to it.

From upstairs I could hear them—the sounds I had buried for three years.

The sounds I had explained away and forgiven until my husband smiled at me through a cracked windshield and my baby stopped kicking.

Never again. I climbed the stairs.

The bedroom door was slightly open. I stood outside it for one second.

I let myself feel the incoming pain of what was on the other side — not the shock of the first time, not the naive devastation of a woman who had not seen it coming, but one of an angry, aggrieved woman.

I pushed the door open with my legs and just like before Alexandre was in our bed with Sophia underneath him.

They kept moving while looking straight at me. Same as before. The script had not changed because in their version of this story, I was supposed to be calm after being gaslighted.

I raised my phone and pressed the record button.

"Brenda." Sophia propped herself up on one elbow with a smile on her face.

Her dark hair fell across her shoulder and shamelessly, she said, "You were always too vanilla for him sis. Men like Alexandre don't stay with vanillas."

I looked at my older sister.

I thought about her standing over me on a road in the middle of nowhere. Tucking my hair behind my ear. Telling me her baby was grateful to me, her aunt.

Meaning, she would be pregnant soon. I should help them as long as I am still here.

"Say that again," I said coldly, returning her smile. "I want it clear for the camera."

“ What?” Sophia blinked as if finally being jolted from whatever silly world she was in.

"What you just said. Repeat it big Sis."

Alexandre sat up. "Put the fucking phone down Brenda."

"How long?" I kept recording. "Both of you. How long has this been going on?"

"Brenda…"

"Six months," Sophia answered smugly. Still smiling. "We have been together for six months. And he loves me. He has always loved me."

"Thank you," I said, honestly. Whatever I had planned for them now, I won't have to feel bad when I carry it out.

I stopped recording and backed it up immediately. I forwarded it to the new email.

I uploaded it to three separate cloud locations before Alexandre had fully gotten off the bed.

He lunged for my phone.

I stepped back into the hallway and held it out of reach. "It's already uploaded. You can break this phone and it won't matter."

He stopped. Something murderous passed in his expression.

"We can talk about this," he said. “Baby. Just put the phone down and we can…"

"Baby?" He called me baby. I began laughing hysterically.

He fucking ran me a few hours ago, I don't even know what's happening and I am back here reliving this mess.

"Brenda…"

"My lawyer's name is Patricia O'Neil." I pulled my coat off the hook by the bedroom door. "Any conversation you want to have with me goes through her from this point."

Sophia appeared in the doorway behind Alexandre. "You think you're going to do what exactly? Walk away? With what money? The prenup says—"

"I know what the prenup says." I looked at her. "I also know about offshore accounts. The one in Alexandre's name that has been draining for the last fourteen months."

Alexandre went very still. I turned and walked down the hallway.

"Brenda." Alexandre's voice followed me. Sounding irritated now. "Brenda, don't you walk out that door."

I walked out the door, knowing I was never going to look back. I called Patricia from the lobby.

She picked up on the second ring.

"Patricia O'Neil speaking."

"My name is Brenda Clarke. I need to file for divorce today. Not tomorrow. Today." I pushed through the building's front door into the cold morning air. "I have video evidence of an ongoing affair and documentation of concealed assets. I need you to move fast before my husband starts hiding things."

A pause. "How fast?"

"As fast as you have ever moved in your life."

Another pause."Come in at noon. Bring everything you have."

"I'll be there at eleven."

I hung up and stood on the pavement outside my building. The morning air was cold and biting against my skin.

Around me, the city moved as if nothing had happened. I just couldn't understand the concept of being alive again.

I feel pain, and I even bleed. So what does this mean? How am I still alive?

I checked my phone, went online, and what I saw should have been fictional but it's not.

I was indeed ‘ reborn’ or more like ‘ regress’ tears streamed down my face. “ Thank you, universe,” I said between sobs.

If this was my second chance at life then I was going to need one man. Dimitri Volkov.

In my first life, I had never known this name until it was too late. Alexandre had kept us deliberately apart.

Every family event, every occasion where we might have crossed paths had been managed and controlled by him.

If remembered correctly, Alexandre stole from him. I had spent the last months of my first life trying to repay his debt before that camping trip.

I knew things about Dimitri Volkov that his own people probably didn't know.

And in this life, I was going to use every single one of them to fuck Alexandre and Sophia's life up.

My phone buzzed and it was Riley. I picked it up before it rang twice, needing to hear her voice.

"Brenda." Her voice sounded half asleep. "Why are you calling me at eight in the morning?"

"I need you tonight," I said. "We need to go to a club in the Meatpacking District. The one with no sign on the door that you have been persuading me to go with you."

A pause and then I heard the sound of someone sitting up. "Are you serious? What about your husband? Won't you give your signature ‘ I need to cook for Alexandre’."

I don't blame her. I had indeed been stupid."Can you get us in or not?"

A longer pause as if realizing I was serious. "My cousin works at the door. But Brenda, what is going on? You sound—"

"Different," I said. "I know. I'll explain later." I started walking. "Pick me up at nine tonight. And Riley — wear something that says we are getting smexed"

I hung up before she could ask more questions. I had a lawyer to see. A husband to destroy. And a very dangerous man to find before the day was over.