Chapter 4
I almost hung up.
Almost threw the phone across the room.
But then I heard her sniffle, the sound of someone trying not to cry, and I remembered Clara’s texts.
Lila was 28.
She’d lost her house as a kid.
She thought she was marrying a single man who loved her.
She was a victim too.
“Okay,” I said. “Where?”
“Café Mogul, on 5th,” she said. “Tomorrow at 10. Public place. Neutral. I’ll bring everything I have. Please come.”
I agreed, hung up, and told Mia.
She frowned, her protective instinct flaring.
“You sure?” she said. “She could be working with him. Setting you up.”
I shook my head.
“Clara is her sister,” I said. “She warned me. If Lila was working with him, Clara would have said. And besides… she sounded just as broken as I feel.”
Mia nodded, still skeptical, but said she’d sit in the car outside, just in case.
That night, Daniel texted me 47 times.
Begging.
Threatening.
Saying he’d kill himself if I left him.
Saying I’d ruined his life.
I blocked his number, then his email, then his social media, one by one, until there was no way for him to reach me.
I picked the kids up from my mom’s the next morning, my smile tight as they chattered about the movie they’d seen, the ice cream they’d eaten, how much they missed Daddy.
I didn’t tell them anything yet.
They were too little.
Too soft.
I couldn’t break their hearts before I had all the pieces.
I dropped them at Mia’s on the way to the café, kissed their foreheads, told them I’d be back soon with pizza for lunch.
Lila was already there when I walked in, sitting at a table in the back, twisting a napkin in her hands so hard it was shredded.
She was younger than me, her hair long and dark, her eyes red and puffy like she’d been crying all night.
The real diamond necklace was around her neck, glinting in the sunlight.
She stood up when she saw me, her hands shaking.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, before I could even sit down. “I had no idea. I swear to God, I had no idea he was married. That he had kids. He told me you’d separated three years ago. That you left the kids with him and moved to Florida. That you were a deadbeat who never called, never sent money, never cared.”
She pulled her phone out, slid it across the table to me.
Texts from Daniel.
Hundreds of them.
Lies about me.
Lies about his life.
Fake divorce papers with my name forged on the bottom, dated three years prior.
Photos of the kids, cropped so he was the only one in them, sent to her with captions like My whole world.
I stared at the screen, my stomach churning.
He’d used our kids as props in his lie.
Shown them off to another woman like they were trophies, not little people who loved him, who waited up for him to come home from “work trips.”
Lila sat down, her face crumpling.
“I’m three months pregnant,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “I thought I was having a baby with a man who loved me. Who was going to marry me. Instead… I’m the other woman. I helped him cheat on you. I hate myself for it.”
I reached across the table, hesitated, then put my hand over hers.
It was cold, shaking, just like mine had been 24 hours earlier.
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “He lied to both of us. Used both of us. We didn’t do anything wrong.”
She looked up at me, tears streaming down her face, and nodded.
“I have proof of everything,” she said, pulling a thick manila folder out of her bag and sliding it across the table. “Bank records of the money he sent me for rent—money I now know was from your kids’ college fund. The forged loan papers he gave me to “prove” he could afford a house for us. Text messages. Emails. All of it. I want to help you take him down. Whatever you need. I’m in.”
I opened the folder, my eyes scanning the pages, and felt a flicker of something I hadn’t felt in two days.
Hope.
Not the stupid, naive hope I’d had for my marriage.
A sharp, fierce hope.
That we could stop him.
That we could get our lives back.
That no other woman would ever have to go through what we were going through.
I looked up at Lila, about to say yes, when the café bell chimed.
May you like
I looked over.
Daniel stood in the doorway, his face red with rage, his eyes locking on us both.
