Natalie rubbed her wrist and looked at him as if seeing him without flattering light for the first time.
“This was your idea,” she said.
“What was?”
“The villa.
This weekend.
Telling me you were finally going to leave Nicole.”
Andrew glanced at me.
“I never said finally.”
“You said you were going to talk to her on Monday.”
“I said I might.”
“You said she would give you the villa because she hated it.”
The room went still.
There it was.
The plan beneath the affair.
Not a legal plan, perhaps.
Andrew had never been patient enough for those.
It was an assumption built from years of watching me surrender small things to avoid exhausting arguments.
He believed he could ask for the villa during a separation and convince me that keeping it would be unhealthy.
He believed I would mistake giving up for healing.
I closed the folder.
“You thought I would hand this house to you.”
Andrew spread his hands.
“No one said that.”
“She just did.”
“Natalie is upset.”
Natalie laughed bitterly.
“Now I’m upset? Ten minutes ago, I was the love of your life.”
“I never used those words.”
“You used them yesterday.”
Leo closed his eyes briefly.
I expected the scene to feel triumphant.
It did not.
Watching two liars tear apart their own promises was not victory.
It was only confirmation that their intimacy had depended on secrecy, borrowed rooms, and invented versions of the people waiting at home.
I walked to the front door and opened it.
Cold lake air moved through the entryway.
“Both of you need to leave.”
Andrew stared at me.
“I am not leaving my own wife’s house because she threw a tantrum.”
“I revoked your access code this afternoon.”
“You can’t lock me out.”
“I can tell an unwanted guest to leave.
The rest can be discussed through attorneys.”
That word finally reached him.
“Attorneys?”
“Yes.”
“You already called one?”
“I called before I drove here.”
His confidence cracked.
For the first time since entering the villa, he seemed to understand that this night would continue after the shouting stopped.
There would be bank records, sworn disclosures, settlement proposals, and questions he could not answer with charm.
He lowered his voice.
“Nicole, let’s talk privately.”
“We had eleven years to talk privately.”
“Don’t do this in front of them.”
“You did it in front of them.
