Chapter 4

The second I got home I started packing.

I'd just finished and was reaching for the door when a glass of ice water hit me in the face.

"How could you do that to Julian? He's your own cousin."

Ryan shoved his phone at me. There was a new post on the burner account I almost never used, all about how my wife had been sleeping with my cousin, with screenshots of the comment I'd left under Julian's photos attached to it. People who had no idea what they were looking at were already swarming Julian's page, each comment uglier than the last.

The account was mine. I'd never written the post.

"I didn't do this."

Nobody believed me. Claire's voice went flat. "Put up a statement. Say you're the one who came between us."

I stared at her. "Why would I confess to something I didn't do?"

That night I checked into a hotel. The next morning, down at the breakfast buffet, strangers started pointing.

"That's him, isn't it? The guy from that video?"

"He looks so normal. How does somebody do something that shameless?"

A notification came up on my phone. It was a video of my face, shot from the side, without my knowing. The title read, [The Most Shameless Homewrecker on the Internet: Openly Stealing Another Man's Wife].

They'd spent the night clearing Julian's name. Ryan had posted a long, tearful account of how I'd supposedly wormed my way into Julian's marriage. My own mother had gone online to condemn my behavior. Then Bennett Group's official account put out a statement: Claire Bennett had one husband, Julian Hale.

The comments turned into a mob. My phone wouldn't stop buzzing with numbers I didn't know, threats, insults. Somebody dug up my address and where I worked and posted both. It kept growing until I couldn't get a full breath.

Then Claire found me and put me in her car.

"Julian's been unstable for two days. His doctor says if it keeps up, something worse is going to happen.

"You're going to apologize to him in person."

In the room, Julian handed me a cup of water himself. "Can everyone step out? I want to talk to Ethan alone."

The door shut, and his face changed.

"I wrote the post, by the way. Ryan gave me the password to your account.

"And that fall last year, off the third floor? I set that up too. Claire knew. So did your mother."

I looked at him like I'd never met him. "Why?"

He laughed. "Because you always had more than I did. Money. Two parents who loved you. An easy life. I was the orphan. And then even the girl you were dating was better than mine. I got tired of watching you come out ahead of me in everything."

I had him by the collar before I decided to. "You already got what you wanted. Why won't you let me go?"

He smiled wider. "Because it isn't enough yet."

His hand closed around my wrist. Before I could pull loose he threw himself backward into the wall, holding on the whole way, so that anyone walking in would see me doing it to him.

The door flew open. "Julian!"

Claire shoved me off him and ran for the doctor. Ryan hit me in the face.

"We gave you a chance. If you're going to keep pushing, don't blame us for what comes next."

He hauled me down the corridor toward a storage room. I tried to fight him and my arms wouldn't answer. Everything had gone heavy and far away.

The water. There'd been something in the water.

Ryan locked the door behind us and made a call. "He's here. Come up."

"What are you doing?"

"Ethan, don't blame me for this. You're the one who pushed it this far."

Four women came in at his signal, heavily made up, none of them younger than fifty. The oldest one took my chin in her hand and turned my face toward Ryan's phone, then gave the camera a little gesture, almost a toast.

On the screen, Julian was watching. Smiling.

So that was what he meant by not enough. He didn't just want what was mine. He wanted to destroy me.

Ryan finished filming and stepped out. The key turned in the lock.

That was when I understood this wasn't a scare.

Out in the hall I heard my mother. "You're sure nothing's going to happen?"

"It's fine, Mrs. Blake. We just want to put a scare in him. Nobody's going to actually do anything."

"I suppose that's true. If anything real had happened, Ethan would have made a scene about it by now."

Their footsteps went off down the corridor, and everything left in me went with them.

I put all the strength I had into hitting the door and barely made a sound. Hands took hold of me. My shirt tore at the shoulder. I couldn't lift my arms.

Then the door came off its latch with a crash.

"Police! We've had a report of an attempted sexual assault in this room."