Chapter 1

Three days before our wedding anniversary, Silas changed his phone password for the sixth time. I watched the unnatural twitch at the corner of his mouth―his classic tell whenever he lied. I didn't start a fight. Instead, I spent the afternoon pulling every hotel record and bank transfer from the past six months.

He had spent two hundred and eighty-three thousand dollars on a college student named Lexi. On the night of our anniversary, I didn't wait for him to come home. I spread twenty-one pages of bank statements across my mahogany desk at the law firm and called my mother-in-law.

“Mom, I did some math for you. Your son owes me over a quarter-million dollars. With a six percent annual interest rate, do you want to settle this now, or should we let the court handle it?”

1 Silas changed his phone password for the first time in March.

He had just returned from the gym and left his phone on the coffee table while he showered. I picked it up habitually―the screen lit up, but our photo from Lake Tahoe was gone. It had been replaced by a depressing, slate-gray default wallpaper.

I tried his old password. It didn't work.

Even his fingerprint settings had changed. He used to have three stored―mine, his, and a backup. Now, there was only one. His own.

“You changed your wallpaper?” I asked as I put the phone back, my tone as casual as if I were asking about dinner.

He stepped out of the bathroom, water still dripping from his hair. He stiffened for a second while drying himself. “Yeah, I got bored of the old one.”

“And the password?”

“What?”

“Your phone password.”

He walked toward the bedroom without looking at me. “Company security training. They require us to rotate them regularly.”

I wondered how long he had practiced that excuse. Silas was a concept artist for a small indie gaming studio. There were forty employees crammed into a shared office space in the Tech District. They barely tracked attendance, let alone enforced high-level data security.

I didn't push him further.

I lay in bed with my eyes closed, piecing together the fragments. He had been working late more often, rarely getting home before ten. There were new designer hoodies in his closet I’d never seen before. Last weekend, he claimed to be playing basketball with coworkers, but his shoes were spotless when he returned.

I hadn't received a credit card notification in three months. He claimed he had switched to a private account for a separate project.

I didn't ask about any of it.

It wasn't because I trusted him. It was because I was waiting to collect every single lie before I made my move.

The third change was in June. The fourth in July. The fifth in early September.

The sixth change happened on November 12th, exactly three days before our anniversary.

That night, after he fell asleep, I opened his iCloud account on my laptop in the study.

Some things don't require a password. We were on the same family sharing plan, and he had forgotten to turn off location sharing. He also forgot that every single text message―deleted or not―was backed up on the server.

At 2:15 AM, I sat in the dark and read every single message between him and someone saved as “Lexi - Junior.”

I stared at the screen, my fingers perfectly still.

I wasn’t the type of woman to break down and cry. At thirty-two, I was the youngest partner at Miller & Associates. I had handled hundreds of high-stakes divorces. I had seen men lie in every way possible―richer men, smarter men, more careful men.

In the end, they all got stripped bare by bank statements and chat logs.

Silas had no talent for deception.

He didn't even know how to properly scrub his digital footprint.

November 15th, our wedding anniversary.

I sent him a text: “7:00 PM, The Blue Veranda. I booked a table.”

He replied with four words: “Sounds good, babe. See ya.”

At 5:20 PM, I arrived early at a cafe across the street from the restaurant. At 5:40 PM, his GPS showed him at a boutique hotel downtown. At 6:15 PM, he started moving toward the University of Washington campus, five miles in the opposite direction.

At 6:42 PM, he finally pulled into the restaurant parking lot.

He walked in and straightened his collar.

“Traffic was a nightmare,” he said, sitting down with sweat on his forehead.

I smiled thinly. “It’s fine. I just got here myself.”

I raised my wine glass, watching his eyes through the crystal. I could see the flicker of guilt.

“Silas.”

“Yeah?”

“Would you mind showing me your bank statements?”

His hand froze on the menu for two long seconds.

“Why would you want to see that all of a sudden?”

“I haven't been getting the notifications,” I said, setting my glass down. “You said you changed accounts, and I just want to make sure everything is being paid on time.”

“I’ll show you later.”

“Now.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed.

“Let’s just eat first, Gwen. Don't ruin the night.”

“I’m not hungry.” I leaned back and interlaced my fingers. “Give me your phone. I’ll check it myself.”

He cared too much about his reputation to cause a scene in a place this expensive. He pulled out his phone, unlocked it, and handed it over―but not before his thumb swiped frantically to clear his background apps.

I opened his banking app.

Current Balance: $4,733.10.

I scrolled up. His June salary came in; twenty thousand dollars went out the next day. July, eighteen thousand out. August, twenty-three thousand out. In September, his fifty-thousand-dollar annual bonus was transferred to the same account in three separate chunks within seventy-two hours.

Account Holder: Lexi Xu.

I placed the phone face down on the table.

“Silas.”

“Yeah?”

“If you keep sending that much money to a college student every month, aren't you worried you’ll spoil her?”

The color drained from his face instantly.