Chapter 1 - THE FIFTIETH CALL
My husband ignored fifty emergency calls from the ICU because he was drinking champagne on a yacht with his mistress.
Fourteen days later, he came home smiling.
Federal agents were waiting in our living room.
But that still wasn't the worst thing waiting for him.
He didn't know our seven-year-old daughter was dead.
And by then, I had decided I would never be the one to tell him gently.
“His phone is still off, Maya.”
The funeral director spoke softly beside me.
“You should stop calling.”
Rain soaked through my black coat as I stood beside a tiny white casket.
Inside it was Lily.
My daughter.
My whole world.
She was seven years old.
Three days earlier, she had been drawing purple butterflies on the back of a hospital menu.
Now four men were preparing to lower her into the frozen ground.
David should have been standing beside me.
Instead, my husband was somewhere near the Bahamas on a chartered yacht with Julianne Cross, his twenty-five-year-old fitness instructor.
I knew exactly where he was because Julianne had posted a photograph twelve hours earlier.
She had been sitting on the bow in a red bikini with a champagne bottle between her knees.
David's hand was visible around her waist.
The caption read:
Peace looks good on us.
I stared at that photo until my vision blurred.
Then I looked down at Lily's casket.
“Mrs. Vance?”
The funeral director touched my arm.
“We're ready.”
I nodded because I couldn't trust myself to speak.
The men began lowering my daughter.
My phone felt heavy in my pocket.
Fifty calls.
Forty-nine unanswered.
One rejected.
And three messages from David.
The first had arrived while Lily was vomiting blood.
Stop suffocating me with your anxiety.
The second had arrived while doctors were trying to control the swelling in her brain.
I'm on a digital detox for my mental health.
The third came eleven minutes before Lily died.
Do not contact me for the next two weeks.
I had read those words while Lily held my finger.
“Mommy?”
Her voice had been almost too weak to hear.
“I’m here, baby.”
“Daddy coming?”
I lied.
“Yes.”
She gave me a tiny smile.
Then her heart stopped.
I called David once more.
Straight to voicemail.
I almost screamed into the phone.
Almost told him his child was dead.
Instead, I ended the call.
That was call number fifty.
At the cemetery, the ropes creaked as Lily's casket disappeared into the earth.
Something inside me disappeared with it.
I stopped crying.
The grief was still there.
But underneath it, something colder was forming.
David wanted fourteen days without me.
Without Lily.
Without responsibility.
Fine.
I would give him exactly fourteen days.
And during those fourteen days, I would find out exactly what my husband had been doing while our daughter died.
Because Julianne wasn't the only secret I had found.
The night before Lily's funeral, I had opened David's home office safe.
Inside were three passports.
Two stacks of cash.
And a flash drive labeled:
NORTHSTAR.
I had no idea what Northstar meant.
But someone else did.
At 11:42 that night, I plugged it into my laptop.
Thirty seconds later, a warning appeared on the screen.
ENCRYPTED FINANCIAL ARCHIVE.
Then another message popped up.
A message that had not come from me.
If you found this drive, your husband is in deeper trouble than you know.
And underneath it was one name.
CALL AGENT MARCUS REED.
May you like
That was the moment I stopped being just a grieving wife.
And became the person who was going to destroy David Vance's perfect life.
