I pinched the screen, zooming past their intertwined bodies.

I studied the background. There was my charcoal-gray velvet headboard. My imported silk pillowcase, rumpled beneath Vanessa’s perfectly styled blonde hair.

And there, hanging slightly askew on the wall behind them, was our framed wedding portrait. It was crooked because twelve hours earlier, Daniel had slammed the bedroom door after calling me an “unfeeling iceberg” during an argument about our finances.

For half a decade, this man had slept beside me. He’d kissed my temple at galas, playing the devoted partner while letting his extravagantly wealthy family treat me like a charity case.

I was the dull, sensible girl who could never quite provide the glamorous, chaotic life he believed he was entitled to.

Vanessa had always looked at me the way you might look at a sturdy, uninteresting piece of patio furniture. Daniel’s father, Richard, worshipped the ground she walked on.

Daniel’s two sisters mimicked her cruelty, treating me as a temporary fixture. And Daniel? Daniel had always permitted it.

“You’re projecting your insecurities, Claire,” he’d sigh whenever I pointed out Vanessa’s veiled insults about my conservative wardrobe or my quiet demeanor.

“She’s family. You need thicker skin.”

Family.

I stared at the glowing rectangle in my hand until the suffocating pain began to crystallize into something else. Something colder. Something far more useful.

It was no longer a picture of a broken heart. It was evidence.

Twenty minutes later, heavy footsteps echoed on the staircase. Daniel strolled into the kitchen, freshly showered, smelling of peppermint and expensive sandalwood.