All Chapters of Vows Written In Poison: Chapter 1 - Chapter 6

The first time Claire tasted betrayal, it smelled exactly like her own name.She was standing on the private balcony of the Whitmore Grand Ballroom, twenty-three floors above the wet Boston streets, holding a glass of champagne that had gone flat in her hand. Below her, six hundred guests in silver and black were spraying tiny bottles of perfume onto their wrists and laughing as if someone had just given them a piece of the sky.Eternal Claire.That was the name Raymond had chosen. Her husband. The man who, forty minutes ago, had stood on that stage with tears in his eyes and told the world he had spent two years making a fragrance that no other woman would ever be allowed to wear."To my wife," he had said, lifting the crystal bottle like it was a holy thing. "The only scent worth living for."Claire smiled. She had clapped. She kissed him on the cheek in front of the cameras and whispered, "You are too much, Raymond."Now she was up here alone, pressing her palm against the cold rai

Claire didn't sleep.She lay next to Raymond with her back to him and listened to him breathe the deep, easy breath of a man who has never once been afraid of being caught. Every twenty minutes her phone would light up with a new message from the grey circle account. A photo of Raymond's car outside a building she didn't recognize. A copy of a hotel receipt for room 2317, dated tonight, signed with his full name. A screenshot of a text he had sent someone at 11:04 pm that read, "She suspects nothing. She never does."By the time the sun rose she had a folder on her phone with forty-seven pieces of evidence in it.At six thirty she slid out of bed.At six forty-five she took the sapphire bracelet off and left it on the pillow next to his sleeping face.At seven, Anthony's driver was at the front gate."Where are you going so early?" Raymond called after her from the top of the stairs, groggy, wrapped in a robe."Grace has an appointment," she lied. "I'll be back tonight.""Kiss," he mu

Vincent Whitmore had come to that luncheon for exactly one reason, and it was not the woman.He had come because his grandmother had summoned him for the first time in eleven years, and a man who wanted to know what his enemies were planning did not turn down a chance to sit across the table from them.He had not expected Claire.Or rather, he had expected her the way a man expects a piece of furniture in a house he does not visit often. He knew Raymond had married her. He knew she was quiet, and beautiful in the boring way rich men liked their wives to be beautiful, and that she had a sister in a hospital which was, according to the family gossip, "the leash." He had never bothered to look at her twice, because Raymond's things were never worth looking at twice.Then he had walked into the great hall and heard her, sweet as sugar, ask her aunt-in-law whether the candidate for Raymond's replacement wife was currently ten weeks along.And he had thought, very clearly, "Oh. So she has f