I thought I randomly invented a silly nickname for my husband, until his face went completely pale.

The air in the room seemed to lose its oxygen.

Daniel looked down at the top sheet of the spreadsheet. His eyes scanned the precise dates, the transaction IDs, the flagged Uber routes, and the exact dollar figures highlighted in yellow ink.

"How... how did you get this?" he whispered.

"You left your financial records connected to our shared cloud drive, Daniel," I said, sitting down across from him at the long oak table. "You spent so many years assuming I was just the quiet wife who took care of the garden and handled the grocery lists that you forgot I have a master's degree in structural analysis and manage million-dollar restoration budgets for a living."

"Clara, listen to me about the apartment—"

"I don't want to hear another story," I cut in, my voice dropping into a register so quiet and cold that he stopped mid-sentence. "I want simple facts. Is the lease in your name or hers?"

Daniel swallowed hard. His hands were trembling slightly as he folded his fingers together on the table. "It's... it's a co-sign. She didn't have the credit rating to secure the lease on her own after her move from Chicago."

"So you put your name on a legal contract for a residential property with your twenty-eight-year-old mistress," I said. "Using our joint account for the guarantor collateral."

"It was an investment!" he blurted out, trying to grab onto a legal life raft. "I was planning to transfer the equity—"

"Stop," I said. "Just stop lying. It is exhausting, Daniel, and you are remarkably bad at it when you don't have three days to prepare your script."

I stood up, walked over to the coat rack, and put on my jacket.

"Where are you going?" he asked, jumping up from his chair. "Clara, please don't leave. We need to talk through this!"

"I am going to work," I said. "And while I am at work, you are going to call your human resources department and request a leave of absence. Because if you step foot in that office with Brooke today while I am trying to clear my head, I will have my attorney serve a third-party deposition subpoena directly to your managing director by noon."

Daniel stared at me, his face devoid of color. "You wouldn't do that to my career."