Chapter 2: The Curtain
Before heading to the hospital, I put on my makeup, dressed in a black suit, and slipped a folder containing six months of evidence gathered by a private investigator under my arm.
The moment I pulled back the curtain in the emergency room, Kenneth turned pale. Maya buried her face in the pillow.
They were covered with blankets, unable to move, surrounded by doctors who were doing everything they could not to laugh.
“Honey, this is all a misunderstanding,” Kenneth stammered.
“Of course,” I replied. “Since when do you give massages to my brother’s wife at two o’clock in the morning?”
The room fell completely silent.
I opened the folder and placed the first set of photographs on the rolling tray table between them. Hotel corridors. Restaurant tables. A parking garage at 11:40 p.m. Then the bank statements showing transfers to an account under a shell name that resolved, after three layers, to Maya. Then the audio. I pressed play just long enough for Kenneth’s own voice to fill the small space:
“I’m not leaving Sabrina. Not while the Rollins shares are still in play. Once the next voting cycle passes, we can revisit everything.”
Maya burst into tears.
Kenneth’s face went from pale to mottled.
“You set us up,” he said. “That bottle—”
“Getting married just to steal from me was the real trap,” I said. “This was simply the consequence.”
I called Justin from the corridor. He arrived twenty minutes later, soaked by the rain, still in the clothes he had thrown on when I told him only that there was an emergency involving Maya at Saint Anthony. The moment he pushed the curtain aside and understood what he was seeing, he lunged. Two orderlies and a resident caught him before he reached the bed. Maya began speaking in a rush—she had been forced, she had been manipulated, she had never wanted any of it. Kenneth, still immobilized, snapped that she had initiated everything, that she had been the one to suggest the “business trip” cover, that she had laughed about Justin’s ignorance.
May you like
They turned on each other in less than a minute.
The surgeon, who had been waiting with carefully neutral patience, cleared his throat and asked me to sign the consent form authorizing the procedure to separate them.
