All Chapters of Too Late Mr SINCLAIR : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

I poured two cups of coffee that morning as always. One for me, one for my husband. He stopped touching my coffee for months now. But I kept making it anyway. A part of me was still waiting for the version of him who used to drink it standing right behind me, one hand on my waist, complaining that I made it too strong. I missed even his complaints. I stood at the counter and watched steam curl off his cup and disappear into nothing, the same way so many small things between us had started disappearing. "Still hot," I said. To no one. Just to hear something other than the silence pressing in around me. My baby was still sleeping. Four months old, and his sleep was this fragile, unpredictable thing that somehow held my whole day together. I heard the bedroom door open quietly. Dominic never did anything loud. He came out fully dressed — charcoal suit, tie knotted with that precision he never had to think about, hair done, every part of him composed. He looked like a photograph

Every time I closed my eyes I saw that name, glowing on a dark screen, sharp as a paper cut. Celeste Vane. A name I had never heard in my life. A name that shouldn't have mattered at all. And yet it sat in my chest all night, refusing to leave. By three in the morning Dominic was asleep beside me, breathing slow and even, completely unaware, while I lay staring at the ceiling and feeling something shift quietly underneath me — the floor of my own marriage, tilting half a degree in a direction I didn't want to look at. When had I gone from trusting this man to lying awake building a case against him? The worst part was hating myself for even asking the question. For years he'd given me no reason to doubt him. Busy, yes. Distracted, yes. But never, not once dishonest. At least, that's what I'd always believed. And believing it had felt like standing on solid ground. Now the ground had a crack in it, and I couldn't stop staring at the crack instead of looking away like a sensib

I spent most of the afternoon trying to talk myself out of how I felt. People hosted business associates all the time. Dominic ran a billion-dollar company — meetings happened, partnerships happened, important people traveled and needed somewhere to stay. None of that was strange. I told myself that three or four times, like repetition, could make it true. So why did I feel like someone had cracked a window open in the dead of winter and let the cold pour straight into my home? Luca was asleep against my chest when I heard the elevator doors open down the hall. My stomach tightened before I even understood why. The penthouse was quiet enough that I could hear footsteps crossing the foyer. Then Dominic's voice, low and easy, in a tone I hadn't heard him use with me in weeks. "Watch your step." A woman's laugh followed it. Soft, confident. Comfortable. I stood slowly, careful not to wake Luca. Dominic appeared in the living room a few seconds later. He looked tired — tie loosen

The doorbell rang just as Luca finally drifted off. I checked the camera on my phone — eyes closed, fists loosened, fully gone, and crossed the apartment before the bell could ring again. Nina swept in with two shopping bags and enough energy to power the building. "Tell me you haven't been crying." "Hello to you too." "I'm serious." She shut the door and looked me over. "You look tired." "I have a four-month-old." "You look emotionally tired." "There's a difference?" "A huge one. One requires sleep. The other requires therapy and possibly violence." She dropped the bags on the island and started pulling out containers. "I brought food because I know you forgot lunch again." "I had lunch." "When?" I opened my mouth, then closed it. Nina pointed at me, triumphant, and I laughed — the first real laugh all day. We'd known each other since university. Loud, opinionated, completely incapable of minding her own business. That combination had saved me more times than I could

I stopped defending myself and started paying attention. It happened without announcement, without a conscious decision I could point to. Just a morning where the exhausting work of explaining myself to people who had already made up their minds felt suddenly, completely pointless. Like trying to fill a container with a hole in the bottom — effort, and effort, and nothing held. So I stopped. And the moment I did, everything sharpened. Dominic left early again. He barely looked up from his phone while Luca reached toward him with both hands — that open, hopeful reaching that asked for something so simple and never quite got it. "Dada," Luca babbled. Dominic paused. Glanced down. Produced a smile that didn't travel past his mouth. "Busy today," he said, and he was already walking before the sentence was finished. I watched him go and said nothing. That moment should have hurt less by now. It didn't. It landed in the same quiet place it always did, like a stone dropped into sti