Upon arriving at the gated community, Booker turned off the car lights so as not to attract the attention of the guard or the neighbors. He dropped her off a few yards before the door so the sound of the engine wouldn’t give anything away. Before Zaire got out, Booker handed her a small device the size of a button.
It was a high-tech spy microphone. He asked her to hide it in a place Draymond used daily to talk or work, but where it wouldn’t be easy to detect. Zaire clenched it in her fist with determination. She got out of the car and slipped to the door of her own house as if she were an intruder in enemy territory.
She opened the lock with extreme care so it wouldn’t creak. The interior was dark and silent, impregnated with the scent of lavender air freshener that other nights had comforted her and now felt suffocating. Every corner reminded her of scenes from a life that had just proven to be a lie. The sofa where they watched movies, the table where they had breakfast together—everything suddenly seemed like a theater set.
She locked up again from the inside so nothing would draw attention when Draymond returned. Her first stop was the bathroom. She washed her face repeatedly with cold water, trying to erase the trace of tears and panic from her features.
She looked at herself for a long time in the sink mirror. She kept seeing the same woman as always, but with another soul in her eyes. There was no longer naivety, but a new lucid hardness. She whispered to herself that she could do it, that she wasn’t a helpless victim, but the daughter of a strong man who never gave up.
When she felt serene enough, she began to set the stage. Zaire took Draymond’s wallet to the living room and meditated on where it would be most logical to find it. It shouldn’t be hidden in an impossible place, but not so visible that it looked placed on purpose.
After a few seconds of reflection, she decided to leave it half wedged in the crack between the sofa cushion and the armrest, just as it could have fallen from Draymond’s pocket when he sat down for the last time to put on his shoes. The spot was perfect. Then she sat on that same sofa, turned on the television with the volume very low, left a magazine in her hands, and settled in as if she were reading until she fell asleep.
The clock struck three when she heard a car engine approach and stop in front of the house. She forced herself to close her eyes and breathe slowly and regularly, mimicking sleep. She heard the key turn brusquely in the lock and the door burst open.
Draymond entered panting with his tie loose, his face sweaty, and his expression altered. It wasn’t, however, the sweat of someone returning exhausted from traffic, but of someone who has seen a criminal plan sink before his eyes. He called out Zaire’s name loudly.
She pretended to be startled, let the magazine fall, and sat up with an exaggerated yawn. She blinked several times, as if she were disoriented, and asked what he was doing there if he wasn’t supposed to be on the plane by now. Her performance was impeccable. Draymond stood paralyzed for a second seeing her so calm on the sofa.
Then he recovered his composure and began to deploy his usual lies. With a sorrowful voice, he said that when he was on the highway to the airport, he realized he had lost his wallet. He panicked, he explained, and decided to return because he couldn’t fly without ID. He added that there had been a truck accident and traffic collapsed, thus justifying why he arrived so late.
Zaire listened to him with a worried face, nodding, although inside her blood was boiling. She knew perfectly well where he had actually been and with whom. She stood up, took him by the arm with sweetness, and commented that she had also been scared because she hadn’t been able to communicate with him.
With much naturalness, she pointed to the sofa. She told him that upon waking up, she had noticed something hard in the seat crack, and that upon looking, she had seen the wallet peeking out. Following the direction she pointed with his hand, Draymond saw the edge of the leather sticking out between the cushions.
His features changed immediately. First, immense relief, then bewilderment. He threw himself at the wallet and checked its contents rapidly. Everything was there. What he didn’t know was that Zaire had already photographed the ticket and the policy in Booker’s car to preserve evidence.
Draymond hugged her with enthusiasm, showered her with thanks, and called her his good luck charm. In that hug, Zaire caught something else: a feminine perfume that wasn’t hers, a soft and expensive scent she recognized instantly as Kenyatta’s. Her stomach turned, but she didn’t pull away.
She whispered for him to go take a hot shower and rest, because undoubtedly the traffic jam would have been exhausting. Draymond accepted the advice and went up the stairs toward the master bedroom. As soon as he disappeared from her sight, Zaire remembered the small microphone she was still squeezing in her hand.
It was the perfect moment. Pretending she was going to prepare a clean towel, she went up after him. She heard the water running in the bathroom. There was no time to lose.
Draymond’s suit was thrown on the bed, but Zaire had a more practical thought. The suit could change every day. They needed an object that went with him always. Her eyes stopped on the leather briefcase he adored, a gift from her for his birthday that he never left behind.
She opened a small interior pocket of the briefcase, normally destined for coins or keys, and placed the microphone in the deepest corner, pressing it with her finger to ensure it remained well fixed and hidden. She closed the zipper just as the bathroom door opened. Draymond came out with only a towel around his waist.
Zaire turned with a tender smile and handed him the clean clothes she had prepared, as helpful as always. He kissed her on the forehead without imagining that from that moment, every important conversation he had with that briefcase nearby would be recorded. That night they slept in the same bed, but with their souls on opposite poles.
Draymond fell into a deep sleep, convinced his failed plan had passed without leaving a trace, and perhaps planning a new strategy with Kenyatta. Zaire, on the other hand, remained awake, staring at the ceiling of the room. She was wearing discreet earphones connected to the spy microphone app on her mobile.
She knew a man like Draymond wouldn’t take long to contact his accomplice. Just before dawn, she pretended to get up to drink water and went to the kitchen with the phone in her hand. In the app, she saw that the device was active and picking up sound inside the briefcase.
She heard the noise of traffic and then the ringtone of another line. Draymond was using a burner phone hidden in the briefcase to call someone. As soon as a female voice answered on the other end, Zaire felt a chill. It was Kenyatta.
The conversation that followed was anything but romantic. There were no sweet words, but insults, reproaches, and panic. Draymond cursed the police and the operation that had ruined his plan at the airport. He shouted that the deadline to pay his gambling debts ended the next day and that he owed more than two hundred thousand dollars.
If he didn’t pay, the thugs working for the loan shark would come to his house and office, ruining his reputation and perhaps sending him to jail. Kenyatta, as nervous as he was, but more calculating, reminded him of the alternative plan: the old warehouse inherited from Zaire’s father, where they believed gold bars and deeds to land not yet titled were kept.
The problem was the same as always. Only Zaire knew the code to the safe that, according to rumors, was there. Kenyatta insisted that Draymond must get the way, deceiving, pressuring, or taking advantage of some weakness. He accepted the idea and said that this very afternoon he would go home loaded with gifts to soften her up.
Hearing all that was the final push Zaire needed. She hung up and, without wasting time, called Booker. Half an hour later, the black sedan was in front of her door again.
Zaire got into the car with a backpack in which she carried important documents she had taken from a small safe in her bedroom. She was pale, but her eyes burned with a mixture of pain and firmness. She told Booker every detail of the call. He listened in silence and then told her the first step was to protect her money and assets before Draymond made any desperate move.
Together they headed to the bank and her father’s trusted attorney. At the bank, Zaire transferred most of the money from the joint account to a new account in her name and blocked the additional cards Draymond used, claiming the wallet had been lost and she needed to cancel them for security. At the attorney’s office, she signed an asset protection document that would make it enormously difficult for any attempt to dispose of her properties without her presence.
Booker stood by her side acting like a surrogate father accompanying her in every procedure. By noon, Zaire felt a little stronger. She had just closed at least one of the main avenues by which Draymond sustained himself financially.
That same afternoon, Draymond made good on his threat. He arrived home early with a huge bouquet of red roses and a small pharmacy package. Zaire received him with a surprisingly convincing smile, appearing flattered by the gesture.
He handed her the flowers, kissed her on the cheek, and gave her the package, explaining that it was a supplement of imported vitamins—very expensive—that he had bought just for her because he had seen her looking tired and pale lately.
“I worry about your health,” he said with his best attentive husband voice.