Chapter 2 - The Mask Slips Away
The restaurant's soft jazz music seemed to fade into a hollow, deafening roar.
Tessa stared at the screen, her mouth hanging slightly open as my recorded voice filled the space between us.
"Is that... is that real?" she stammered, pulling her hand away from mine as if my skin had caught fire. "You told me she had premature ovarian failure, Daniel! You swore to me on your career that she refused treatments because she was selfish!"
"Tessa, wait, listen to me," I begged, reaching out blindly, but she recoiled into the plush leather booth.
"You let your entire family believe she was defective!" Tessa's voice spiked, turning sharp heads at neighboring tables. "Your sister told me at that dinner party three months ago that Claire was cold and frigid! You sat there eating steak and nodded along while your family mocked her!"
I opened the album again, my vision blurring with pure dread as I scrolled down the timeline.
Claire hadn't just posted the medical records that cleared her name.
She had uploaded every single bank transfer from her private design consultancy account into my struggling architectural firm over the last seven years.
Over four hundred and eighty thousand dollars.
She had paid off my college loans, funded the renovation of our Lakeview brownstone, and quietly settled the business debts I had accumulated during my reckless investments.
And right beneath the financial ledgers was a photograph of the receipt for the sapphire pendant I had gifted Tessa on her thirty-second birthday.
It had been charged directly to an American Express card under the account holder name: Claire Vance-Holloway.
"She paid for my necklace?" Tessa gasped, her hands flying to her throat to clutch the glittering jewel.
May you like
"I... I used the company operational card by mistake," I choked out, nausea rising in my throat like boiling bile.
"You sick, lying bastard," Tessa hissed, standing up so abruptly that her champagne glass tipped over, soaking the linen and pooling onto the floorboards.
