To jewelry she had never worn.
To resort weekends she had not been invited on.
And, at the end of it, to a commercial lease on a Manhattan storefront — a boutique pilates studio, with Lyra named as its director and Dorian as its sole financial guarantor.
That was the moment the affair stopped being only an affair.
Dorian had not merely betrayed her.
He had used six years of her savings to build a whole second life for another man’s wife — a car, a wardrobe, a business, a future — while his own brother worked sixty-hour weeks in the dark to pay for a marriage that was being spent behind his back.
Odette printed every page.
She backed up every statement onto the same encrypted drives that held the footage.
And then she began, very quietly, to look for a lawyer.
There was a particular grief in the money that the affair itself had not carried, and it took her a few days to understand why.