PART 1

At 2:00 in the morning, I lay completely motionless while my husband emptied our safe, convinced that I was fast asleep.

Before leaving, Daniel leaned over me, kissed my forehead, and whispered:

“Poor Audrey.

You never saw this coming.”

I waited until I heard the front door click shut.

Then I opened my eyes.

Daniel was dead wrong.

I had spent three weeks waiting for this exact night.

It had all started a few hours earlier when he came upstairs to our bedroom carrying a cup of tea.

“You look exhausted,” he said gently.

“Drink this and get some sleep.”

Daniel never made me tea.

He didn’t even know where we kept the teabags.

I took a tiny sip and caught a strange, slightly bitter undertone.

I couldn’t prove anything right then, but after months of observing suspicious wire transfers, fabricated business trips, and phone calls that ended the second I entered the room, I had learned a crucial lesson: when a piece of the puzzle doesn’t fit, you don’t force it.

You watch.

I waited for Daniel to head back downstairs, then poured the tea down the bathroom sink and climbed back into bed.