Part 6
The drive from Bellevue to Capitol Hill took exactly twenty-two minutes in the midnight rain.
I knew the route by heart. I had driven it with bags of expensive groceries when Chloe claimed her checking account was overdrawn. I had driven it with a cashier’s check for her first and last month’s rent after she depleted her savings on a disastrous girls’ trip to Tulum. I had co-signed the lease on the luxury loft I was currently heading toward. The automatic transfer of thirty-four hundred dollars left my account on the first of every month, ensuring my sister had floor-to-ceiling windows and a view of the Seattle skyline while she “found her passion.”
I had funded the space where she was sleeping with my husband.
I parked on the street, bypassing the lobby concierge by tailgating a resident through the security doors, and took the elevator to the fifth floor. I didn’t pound on the door of unit 504. I knocked three times—sharp, authoritative strikes, the way I would rap on a conference room table to call a meeting to order.
I heard the muffled padding of footsteps. The peephole darkened, and then the deadbolt clicked.
Chloe opened the door exactly two inches. She was wearing a silk robe I had purchased for her birthday. Her skin looked pale in the harsh hallway lighting, the guilt vibrating off her so loudly it was almost a physical frequency.
“Elena?” Her voice was a breathy, high-pitched whisper. “It’s midnight. Can we do this tomorrow?”
“Open the door,” I said.
“You can’t just show up here and—”
“I pay the rent,” I interrupted, my tone perfectly level. “Open the door, or I will stand in this hallway and lean on the buzzer until building security comes up to investigate.”
The chain rattled, and the door swung open.
I stepped into the apartment. It smelled of Santal candles and expensive dry shampoo. I looked around the living room, taking an inventory of my own money. The West Elm sectional. The smart TV mounted on the wall. The very couch where she had likely sat, typing out messages to Marcus while I was across the bridge billing hours to cover the electricity she was using.
“How long?” I asked, turning to face her.
Chloe wrapped her arms tightly around her waist, instantly shrinking into the posture of a frightened child. “How long what?”
“Do not insult my intelligence,” I said, taking one step toward her. “I spend sixty hours a week deposing corporate executives who lie for a living. You are out of your depth. How long have you been sleeping with my husband?”
“I’m not!” she cried out, her eyes welling with instant, practiced tears. “Elena, I swear to God. We were just rehearsing today. Why won’t you believe me?”
“Because I saw the way you moved together. That wasn’t an acting exercise, Chloe. That was a reflex. That was the physical fluency of two people who have spent a lot of time touching each other behind closed doors.”
“You’re making things up because you’re stressed about work!” she pleaded, taking a step back toward the kitchen island. “You always do this. You’re imagining things.”
“Am I?” I tilted my head, studying her face. “Then answer a simple question. The surgical scar on his right hip. The jagged one just below the waistband from his childhood hernia operation. How long is it?”
Chloe froze.
The color drained entirely from her face, leaving her looking like a porcelain doll. For a fraction of a second, the performance slipped, and the sheer terror of being caught flashed across her eyes. She swallowed hard, frantically searching for a lifeline.
“I… I don’t know,” she stammered. “He showed me a picture of it once. We were talking about injuries.”
“Marcus hasn’t allowed a photograph to be taken of him without a shirt on in six years,” I said, my voice dropping to a surgical calm. “He is so deeply self-conscious about the asymmetry of that scar that he turns off the bedside lamp before he changes his clothes. He doesn’t mention it. He doesn’t show it. But you recognized exactly what I was talking about before I even finished the sentence.”
Chloe didn’t answer. She stood frozen by the quartz counter, the tears finally spilling over her eyelashes, silently confirming everything I needed to know.
I looked at her, searching for some trace of the little sister I had protected since childhood. There was nothing there. Just a parasite wearing expensive clothes.
“The automatic rent transfer for this apartment will be canceled at nine o’clock tomorrow morning,” I said, walking back toward the front door. “The insurance on the Audi stops at midnight. The cell phone plan will be terminated by tomorrow afternoon.”
“Elena, wait,” she gasped, stepping forward, the panic finally breaking through the tears. “Please. You can’t just cut me off. I don’t have enough in my account to cover the rent and utilities.”
I paused with my hand on the doorknob.
“You want my husband, Chloe? You can have him. But you are going to take him on your own dime.”
I walked out, pulling the heavy door shut behind me, the mechanical click of the latch echoing loudly in the empty hallway.
My hands didn’t shake until I was safely locked inside my car on the street below. I sat in the driver’s seat, listening to the rain hammer against the windshield. I had the truth. My husband and my sister had spent the last year dismantling my life, using my resources to fund their betrayal, and they still fully expected me to stay quietly out of sight while they played a happily married couple at a hotel ballroom on Friday night.
I reached into my handbag and pulled out my phone.
Marcus wanted to bring my sister to his reunion to prove he was a success. Fine. I would attend the reunion too. And I would arrive on the arm of the one man Marcus had spent his entire life failing to measure up to.
I scrolled through my contacts until I found the name. We hadn’t spoken directly in years, but I knew he still lived in the city.
Julian. Marcus’s older brother.
I typed out a message before the adrenaline could wear off.
Hi Julian. It’s Elena. I know it’s late, and this is completely out of nowhere, but I urgently need a favor. Can we get coffee tomorrow morning? Please don’t mention this to Marcus.
I hit send, tossed the phone onto the passenger seat, and started the engine.