Chapter 2 - The Screams Through the Phone and Alden’s Fatal Slip
The security footage played out like a horror movie in fast forward. I watched myself on the screen, completely unaware that my husband was calculating the exact dosage required to stop my heart while managing a double life with his assistant. My mind raced as I dialed my private investigator, instructing him to alert building security at Chloe’s Lower Broadway address immediately.
Before my investigator could confirm action, my phone rang. It was an incoming call from his cell, but the background was chaotic. Through the speaker, I heard muffled shouting, frantic footsteps, and then a woman’s terrified, agonizing scream calling for an ambulance.
My heart hammered against my ribs. I immediately dialed Chloe’s personal number, desperate to know if she was conscious, if she had already consumed the matcha, and how much time was left.
After two rings, the line picked up. But it wasn't Chloe’s voice that answered.
"Alora?"
It was Alden. His voice wasn't filled with grief or confusion; it was a tight, venomous, hyperventilating whisper.
"Alden," I said, my voice dropping into an icy, steady register that shocked even myself. "Is Chloe breathing?"
"What did you do?" he hissed furiously, ignoring my question entirely. "What the hell did you do, Alora?!"
"I didn't do anything, Alden. I'm standing in our kitchen looking at the titanium tumbler you left behind," I replied calmly. "The one laced with a cardiac toxin. The one you switched when you thought I wasn't looking."
A suffocating silence stretched across the line. You could hear the faint sirens wailing in the background through his open phone mic. For three seconds, Alden didn't deny it. He didn't ask what I was talking about. He didn't demand an explanation for the word toxin.
Instead, he made a fatal, irreversible mistake.
"Did you... did you test the drink?" he whispered, his voice cracking with sheer, unadulterated panic.
That single question transformed my lingering fear into absolute, diamond-hard certainty. An innocent man—a husband whose wife had just accused him of attempted murder—would have demanded to know what chemical, what poison, or what madness she was babbling about. Only a guilty man, trapped in his own web of deception, would immediately ask whether the evidence had been analyzed.
"You didn't just want me dead for my inheritance, did you, Alden?" I whispered into the phone, the pieces of the puzzle snapping violently into place. "You planned to get rid of me, inherit my parents' estate, and when Chloe started demanding more than a secret affair, you decided to kill two birds with one stone. You tried to frame me for her murder, or frame her for mine, leaving you as the grieving widower with complete control over our entire fortune."
"Alora, listen to me, it's not—"
"Police are already on their way to my house, Alden," I interrupted smoothly. "And an ambulance is currently hauling Chloe out of her apartment building with the exact same poison coursing through her veins. You are trapped in the exact room where your two secret lives just collided."
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Before he could sputter another syllable, I ended the call, blocked his number, and placed my phone gently on the kitchen island.
Through the front windows of our Brooklyn Heights brownstone, the flashing red and blue lights of local squad cars began to illuminate the maple trees outside. The trap had sprung, and my husband’s empire of lies was about to collapse around him.
