Chapter 2
For eleven years, I believed my wife was the one person who would never betray me.
Now she stood in our living room whispering another man's name.
"Damian?"
The word hung between us.
I stared at her.
"Why would you say that?"
She opened her mouth.
Nothing came out.
I felt my chest tighten.
"Nia, I didn't mention a name."
She looked down.
Then laughed nervously.
"You're trying to trick me."
I shook my head.
"No."
She pointed toward the lottery ticket.
"You're trying to keep my money."
I looked at her.
"Your money?"
She straightened.
"We're married."
The irony was almost unbearable.
Three minutes earlier, she had told me she didn't need me anymore.
Now marriage suddenly mattered.
I took a slow breath.
"Nia, the prize hasn't even been claimed. We need legal advice before anybody makes assumptions about ownership."
She rolled her eyes.
"Don't start acting like a lawyer."
"I'm not."
I placed the ticket inside a clear protective sleeve.
Then put it in a folder on the coffee table.
"I want us to deal with this properly."
She stared at the folder.
Then at me.
"How much did we win?"
I hesitated.
The ticket matched a jackpot advertised at twenty-four million dollars.
But the actual payment would depend on claim verification, whether other winning tickets existed, taxes, and the payout option.
I wasn't going to pretend a headline number was already sitting in our bank account.
"The advertised jackpot is twenty-four million."
Nia covered her mouth.
For one moment, her face lit up.
Then she remembered what she had said.
Her smile disappeared.
"Marcus..."
I turned away.
I couldn't bear to look at her.
She stepped closer.
"Baby, I was upset."
I closed my eyes.
"Don't."
"I didn't mean it like that."
I turned.
"You said you didn't need me anymore."
She began crying.
"I was overwhelmed."
I stared at her.
"You told me you were leaving."
She reached for my arm.
I stepped back.
"Where were you going?"
She looked away.
I felt something cold settle inside me.
"Nia."
Her lips trembled.
"To a hotel."
"Which hotel?"
She said nothing.
I nodded slowly.
Then I reached for my phone.
I opened a bank alert from the previous afternoon.
A transfer of forty-eight thousand dollars.
From our joint emergency account.
To an account I didn't recognize.
I turned the screen toward her.
"Explain this."
Her face went pale.
"Marcus..."
"Where did the money go?"
She swallowed.
"I was moving it."
"To where?"
"A temporary account."
I stared.
"Whose account?"
She began crying harder.
I waited.
Finally, she whispered,
"Damian's."
I felt as though someone had kicked the air out of my lungs.
Damian Price.
Thirty-nine years old.
A financial adviser at the investment firm where Nia worked.
He had been coming to our house for almost a year.
I had cooked dinner for him.
Helped him move furniture into his apartment.
Loaned him my truck.
And listened while he complained about his failed marriage.
I remembered Nia laughing at his jokes.
The way she touched his shoulder.
The way she defended him whenever I said he seemed too comfortable in our home.
I had trusted both of them.
I sat down.
My hands were shaking.
"How long?"
Nia stared at the floor.
"Marcus, please."
"How long?"
She covered her face.
"Six months."
The room seemed to tilt.
Six months.
Six months of lies.
Six months of secret messages.
Six months of my wife coming home and kissing me goodnight after spending time with another man.
I felt tears roll down my cheeks.
"Did he know you were planning to leave?"
She nodded.
I swallowed.
"And the money?"
Her voice became barely audible.
"He said we'd need something to start over."
I stared at her.
She had transferred our emergency savings to another man.
Money we had built together.
Money we had promised never to touch unless something serious happened.
I remembered working seventy-hour weeks to rebuild that account after my father's medical expenses.
Nia had helped save it too.
That made the betrayal even harder to understand.
I looked at her.
"Was he going to give it back if things didn't work out?"
She shook her head.
"I don't know."
I laughed bitterly.
"You don't know?"
She began crying.
"I thought I could trust him."
I stared at her.
The words almost destroyed me.
She thought she could trust him.
But apparently she couldn't trust the husband who had stood beside her for eleven years.
I stood slowly.
"Have you talked to him today?"
She hesitated.
"Yes."
"What did he say?"
"He told me to bring the ticket."
I froze.
"What?"
Nia looked frightened.
"He said we should keep it somewhere safe."
I stared.
"Damian knew about the lottery ticket?"
She nodded.
Then I remembered something.
Damian had been at our house two nights earlier.
He watched while Nia and I laughed about buying two lottery slips.
He even joked that if we won, he wanted a job managing our investments.
At the time, I thought it was harmless.
Now I wondered whether he had been planning this moment longer than either of us understood.
I looked at Nia.
"Where is Damian now?"
She swallowed.
"At the Bellmont Hotel."
My chest tightened.
"Waiting for you?"
She nodded.
I closed my eyes.
Then I heard my phone vibrate.
It was my younger sister, Jasmine.
She worked as an accountant and had been helping me understand unusual transactions from our household accounts.
I answered.
"Jasmine?"
Her voice sounded urgent.
"Marcus, are you with Nia?"
I looked at my wife.
"Yes."
Jasmine took a breath.
"You need to call the bank's fraud department immediately."
My stomach dropped.
"Why?"
"Because the forty-eight-thousand-dollar transfer wasn't the only one."
I felt cold.
"What?"
She continued.
"I found three additional transfers from accounts connected to your business."
My heart pounded.
"How much?"
Jasmine hesitated.
"Almost ninety thousand dollars."
I sat down.
Across the room, Nia covered her mouth.
Jasmine continued.
"And Marcus, there's something worse."
My hands trembled.
"What?"
"The receiving company belongs to Damian."
I looked at my wife.
Her face was white.
Then Jasmine said something that made me stop breathing.
May you like
"Marcus, I think they've been moving money out of your construction company for months."
And suddenly, the lottery wasn't the biggest problem in our marriage.
