The Ticket Was Never for His Mistress Chapter 04

The Ticket Was Never for His Mistress Chapter 04

Eleven hours later, in a London hotel, I opened the home security app.

I told myself I only wanted to make sure he’d found the letter.

Grant walked into our bedroom holding a birthday cake. Two weeks late.

He saw the envelope.

He read the first line.

And then he dropped to his knees.

But that wasn’t what made my blood run cold.

It was what he found in my vanity drawer five minutes later.

The camera in our bedroom was a tiny thing in the corner of the bookshelf. Grant had installed it himself,

years ago, after a break–in scare. He’d forgotten it existed.

I hadn’t.

On my phone screen, he stood frozen, the cake tilting in his hand. The frosting read: Happy Birthday Hazel.

I’m sorry I’m late.

He set it down. Picked up the envelope. Tore it open.

Inside were three things.

Signed divorce papers.

A formal notice from Diane Park: the Lumen licensing agreement between Hazel Quinn and Mercer Dynamics

was terminated, effective in sixty days, per Clause 9. The clause said the license existed “only so long as the

marriage remains in good faith.” Grant had initialed it on our wedding day, laughing, saying “Good faith? Babe,

forever.”

And a note. My handwriting. Six words.

I took the ticket. Don’t wait.

I watched him read it once. Twice.

I watched him understand.

The ticket. The one he thought was for Brooke. The one I’d “booked for her.”

Brooke had a ticket too. I’d made sure of it. Same city. Different flight.

But the plan had never been to get rid of her.

It had been to get rid of me.

Grant made a sound I had never heard from a human being. Something between a roar and a sob.

He swept the cake off the dresser. It hit the wall with a wet thud.

He grabbed his phone. Called me. The robotic voice answered: “The number you have dialed is not in service.”

He texted. Red exclamation mark.

Blocked.

“Hazel!” He was screaming into the empty room now. “I sent her away! I did what you asked! What more do

you want from me?!”

He punched the nightstand. The wood split. His knuckles bled onto the white carpet I’d chosen.

I should have closed the app.

My thumb hovered over the button.

Then he stumbled to my vanity, pulling drawers open like a madman, looking for anything. My passport. A

clue. A note.

The bottom drawer.

My old sketchbooks.

And beneath them, wrapped in tissue, the pregnancy test.

Two pink lines.

He went completely still.

For ten full seconds, Grant Mercer, the man who never lost control, didn’t breathe.

Then he sank to the floor, holding that little plastic stick in both shaking hands like it was made of glass.

“No,” he whispered. “No, no, no.”

He looked up.

Straight into the camera.

Straight into me.

As if he knew. As if he’d always known I was watching.

“Hazel,” he said, voice breaking. “Tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”

My hand flew to my stomach. My heart slammed against my ribs.

“Tell me you didn’t sit alone at that doctor,” he whispered, “while I was at the lake with her.”

He pressed the test to his forehead.

“I didn’t sleep with her. I swear on my life. I swear on our baby. She kissed me and I pushed her off. I pushed her off, Hazel. I drove her to the airport at dawn.”

Tears ran down his face.

“Come home. Please. Just come home.”

I closed the app.

My hands were shaking so hard the phone slid onto the hotel carpet.

I didn’t know if he was lying.

I didn’t know if it even mattered anymore.

He’d pushed her off. Fine. But he’d still been on her couch at one in the morning. He’d still missed the heartbeat. He’d still chosen her on the day my mother died.

A man doesn’t get a medal for stopping at the edge of a cliff he walked to on purpose.

I curled up on the bed, one hand on my stomach, and whispered, “It’s just you and me, little bean.”

My new phone buzzed.

A number with a London code. Only four people had this number.

A text.

“Mrs. Mercer. This is Rhys Callahan. I hear you just became the most dangerous woman in tech. Breakfast at

eight? The Savoy.”

Rhys Callahan.

Grant’s greatest rival.

The only man Grant had ever forbidden me to speak to.