Chapter Two The Woman in the Picture

Elena

I didn’t expect it to happen so soon.

The phone buzzed on the kitchen counter while I was preparing lunch, a quiet hum that broke the silence in a way that felt like a warning. At first, I thought it might be a work email—an update on a patient or a scheduling issue. Something benign. Something safe. But when I saw the number, I froze.

Unknown Number.

I hesitated for only a moment. Then I unlocked the screen, heart pounding in my throat. The message was short, cryptic, but it was enough to shatter whatever illusion of calm I was clinging to.

“Is this your husband?”

There was a photo attached.

I clicked it open, breath catching in my chest.

It was blurry at first. A shot taken too quickly, too sloppily—but I could make out enough. The image of Daniel sitting at a bar, his arm around a woman whose blonde hair fell in waves around her shoulders. She was leaning in close, her lips close to his ear, whispering something he couldn’t hear over the noise.

I stared at the image for what felt like hours, my mind screaming at me to stop. To look away. To delete it and pretend this wasn’t happening.

But I couldn’t. I zoomed in on their faces. On the way she was touching him. Her proximity. The casual way he seemed to allow it.

I swallowed the bitter taste in my mouth.

I had already known. The hair on his scarf. The distant eyes. The hollow kisses. I had been living with the suspicion for days, but seeing it—seeing it—was different.

It felt like someone had gutted me, ripped out the very thing I thought I’d built my life on.

I didn’t know what I was hoping to find. Some clue, some sign that it wasn’t real. That maybe there was some explanation. But there was nothing in that photo except betrayal.

I set the phone down, my fingers trembling as I reached for the glass of water I’d forgotten about. My reflection in the window was pale, tight-lipped. A stranger in my own skin.

I didn’t feel tears. I didn’t feel anger. Not yet. It was like the air had been sucked out of the room, leaving nothing but hollow space where emotions should’ve been.

And then the next message came through.

“I think you need to know. She’s the one he’s been seeing.”

I stared at the words. I read them over and over, trying to make sense of them, but they only twisted the knife deeper.

I wanted to know who sent this. I wanted to scream at them, demand they explain themselves, but all I could do was sit there in the silence of my own thoughts.

What did I do now?

Confront him? He’d lie. He’d lie like he always did. But I knew him too well. I could already see the cracks in his carefully crafted stories.

The phone buzzed again, and my breath hitched in my chest. My pulse had quickened, and I hated how easily the truth could dismantle me. But this was real. He was cheating. And I wasn’t just imagining it.

I picked up the phone.

There was another picture. This one clearer. It was a shot of Daniel and the woman laughing together. Her fingers were curled around the side of his arm, and she was looking up at him like he was the only person in the room.

I knew that look.

I had seen it in my own reflection. When Daniel looked at me. When he made me feel like I was the center of his world.

That same look was on her face now.

A wave of nausea washed over me. But still, no tears. No rage.

Only quiet.

I set the phone down and wiped my hands on the towel. My heart beat in my chest, the sound of it like thunder in my ears.

“Breathe,” I whispered to myself. “Just breathe.”

My fingers hovered over the keys, but I didn’t send a reply. Instead, I went upstairs to our shared bathroom and splashed cold water over my face. I couldn’t escape this anymore. The truth was here, staring at me, in the form of a woman I had never met and a man I thought I knew.

But I wasn’t done yet. I wasn’t ready to confront him.

Not yet.

I needed more. I needed to understand what was going on. I needed to know how deep this went.

I couldn’t make any decisions until I knew everything.

And I would. I was patient. I would play the part.

But this time, the mask wasn’t for him. It was for me.