The Mistress

“I said, give me the phone, Victoria.”

I backed away until my calves hit the edge of our king-sized bed, my fingers trembling as I gripped the cold, sleek device. The screen was still glowing with the message I wasn’t supposed to see. A photo of Daniel—my Daniel—his face buried in the neck of a woman with vibrant, pop-art hair, I can’t even see her fucking face.

“Stop it, Vic. You’re scaring Ethan.”

Daniel’s voice was like velvet over a blade. He didn’t even look up from his tablet as I stood trembling in the middle of our bedroom, my hands shaking so hard I nearly dropped the phone.

“I’m scaring him?” My voice was shrill, breaking in the air. “I’m the one who found these, Daniel! Photos of you and that woman in a hotel in Lovin. You told me you were at a shipping conference in Cagaya!”

Daniel finally looked up. He didn’t look angry. He looked bored. He sighed, the way a father sighs at a toddler throwing a tantrum.

“Cagaya, Lovin… Vic, do you even hear yourself? You’ve been having these ‘episodes’ for weeks. Dr. Aris told me the stress of the gallery opening might trigger your old… instability.”

“Instability? This is a photo!” I lunged forward, shoving the screen in his face. “That is you! That is her! I saw it with my own eyes!”

Daniel didn’t even glance at the screen. He gently, firmly, pushed my hand away. “All I see is a blank screen, Victoria. You didn’t even turn the phone on.”

I looked down. The screen was bright. The photo was right there. I could see the sweat on his skin, the smirk on Maya’s face. “What are you talking about? It’s right here! Look at it!”

“Vic…” He stood up, towering over me, his shadow swallowing me whole. He grabbed my shoulders—not a hug, but a restraint. “There is nothing there. You’re hallucinating again. Just like that night in college. Do you remember how you screamed that there were men in your room? When it was just me, trying to save you from your own mind?”

“No… no, this is different. I’m not crazy!” I tried to pull away, but his grip tightened, his fingers digging into my collarbone.

“Aren’t you?” He whispered, his breath hot against my ear. “Look at you. Snot running down your face, hair a mess, screaming about photos that don’t exist. If I called the staff in here right now, what would they see? A titan of industry and his pathetic, broken wife who can’t tell reality from a nightmare.”

“I saw you with her, Daniel! I smelled her on you!”

“You smelled paint, Victoria. You’ve been huffing turpentine in that studio for ten hours a day. It’s rotting your brain.” He let go of me suddenly, and I stumbled back against the vanity. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should have a mistress. At least a mistress wouldn’t be this exhausting. At least she wouldn’t be a hollow shell of a woman who needs her husband to tell her when to breathe.”

The words felt like a physical slap. My dignity felt like it was being stripped away, layer by painful layer.

“You’re… you’re doing this on purpose,” I choked out, tears blurring my vision. “You’re trying to make me think I’m losing it.”

“I’m trying to keep you from losing it!” He snapped, his voice finally cracking with a manufactured rage. “I have spent five years protecting the ‘Vermon’ name! I took a girl who was ruined, drugged, and discarded, and I made her a queen. And this is how you repay me? With paranoid delusions? With accusations?”

He stepped closer, his face inches from mine. I could see the cold triumph in his eyes.

“Go to the bathroom. Look at yourself in the mirror. Look at that pathetic creature staring back at you and tell me: who else would ever want you? Who else would ever believe a word that comes out of your mouth? Without me, Victoria, you are a patient in a psych ward. You are a ‘nothing’ that I decided to make a ‘someone’.”

“Dan, please…” I was gasping for air, the room spinning.

“Don’t ‘Daniel’ me. You’ve ruined the mood. I’m going to the club. Don’t wait up.” He grabbed his coat, stopping at the door to look back at me one last time. “And for God’s sake, wipe that disgusting red lipstick off. You look like a circus clown trying to play a tragedy.”

He walked out, the click of the door sounding like a gavel.

I stood alone in the silence, staring at the phone in my hand. The screen was still bright. The photo was still there. But as I looked at my reflection in the mirror—broken, trembling, and degraded—I found myself whispering the most terrifying question of all.

“Is it really there? Or am I finally as crazy as he says I am?”

I grabbed the blood-red lipstick from the vanity and smeared it across the mirror, over my own face, until I couldn’t see myself anymore.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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