Chapter 3

I closed the door and looked over the divorce agreement Vanessa's attorney had just sent.

Aiden could have his divorce. But the terms were mine to set.

That same night, Lena rushed to go live. She was too young to hold her nerve.

By the time I opened the stream, she had over thirty thousand viewers.

She was in a little white dress. Her eyes were badly red. Every inch the victim.

She covered her face and started to speak, voice choked.

"Hi everyone. I'm Lena Bishop. I'm a student at Yale."

"About the video, I'm really sorry for taking up so much public attention."

She wiped clumsily at her tears.

"But everything people are saying online is a lie. Professor Whitmore and I are truly in love."

The chat exploded.

"Seriously? You slept with a married man and now you're on live crying for sympathy?"

"Girls these days really will do anything for money."

"Where's the guy? Where's he hiding? Come out and face this."

Lena bit her lip and looked at the camera, doing her earnest routine.

"Professor Whitmore and his wife have been over for a long time. They were already planning to divorce."

"I'm not the other woman. I did nothing wrong."

As the comments turned uglier, she rushed to add:

"If you don't believe me, Professor Whitmore's wife is going to go live and explain everything."

"Then you'll all see I've been telling the truth."

She ended the stream at record speed.

Not long after, my phone rang. I didn't need to look to know it was Aiden.

"She's young. She can't handle this kind of pressure. Go live tomorrow and say we've been in divorce proceedings for a while."

I didn't say anything. He took it as anger, and his voice softened.

"Selene. I swear to you. This is the last time."

"This is the only way to save my project. You don't want all these years of my work to go down the drain, do you?"

I hung up. I didn't say yes. I didn't say no.

The doorbell rang. Aiden's mother stood outside with an armful of health supplements.

The moment she settled on the couch, she took my hand with a warmth I'd never seen from her.

"Selene. You've gotten thinner."

"That's Aiden. He hasn't been taking care of you. Don't worry, I'll deal with him."

She patted my hand and smiled.

"That penthouse in the city? I'll have it transferred into your name. Consider it a way of making it up to you."

"For the sake of the Whitmore family, go live tomorrow and smooth this over."

I thought about the early years of my marriage, when she had used every chance to grind me down.

She had looked down on my family, and at the same time tried to squeeze every last bit of value out of me.

I slid my hand out from under hers without making a show of it. Her expression shifted immediately.

"All right. I'll do what you want."

She caught the words and clapped her hands, springing to her feet.

"Good girl. I knew you'd see the big picture."

After she left, I went back to organizing my files, one calm step at a time.

To make sure nothing slipped through the cracks, I backed everything up to Vanessa.

A repeatedly unfaithful Yale professor. I doubted any Ivy would want him now.

I was going to watch the Whitmore family destroy their so-called century-old academic legacy with their own hands.

I logged into a new social media account and posted my first update.

"Hi everyone. I'm Selene Vance, Aiden Whitmore's wife."

"Tomorrow morning at nine, I'll be addressing the issue that's been on everyone's mind."

But before that, there was something more important I had to do. Something I would end with my own hands.