Chapter 2
The Astor Street townhouse. Daniel and I had closed on it six weeks before the wedding, three stories of restored brick with a garden in back we'd planned to fill with tomatoes neither of us knew how to grow. I had paid for it. Every dollar. Daniel believed we'd split it down the middle, because that was the story I let him believe.
"And if she fights the divorce?" the voice asked.
"She won't know there's anything to fight," Margaret said. "Daniel will make sure of it. A few arguments in front of the right people, a story about her being unstable, and she'll walk away thinking it was her idea."
"What about the deed?"
"Already handled. Daniel has paperwork showing the down payment came from his account. We'll call it a loan from the family if anyone ever asks. She won't have the money to challenge it in court."
If only Margaret knew what I actually had.
Daniel believed I was an underpaid marketing coordinator scraping by on a Honda Civic and a studio apartment lease. He had no idea my last name, before I quietly dropped it from my email signature and my LinkedIn and every form that didn't legally require it, was Whitfield — as in Whitfield Holdings, the firm my grandfather built and my father now ran, the firm that owned half the commercial real estate between the Loop and the lake.
My mother used to say it plainly. If a man falls for your money before he falls for you, he was never going to love you at all. So I lived small. I packed my own lunches. I let Daniel pay for our first ten dates with food truck tacos and called it romantic, because it was.
Then the bedroom door opened again and a second set of footsteps crossed the floor.
"Did she suspect anything?" Daniel asked.
"Claire?" Margaret scoffed. "She's completely convinced. That girl has no idea what's coming."
May you like
A third voice joined them, younger, almost giddy. "I can't keep waiting much longer. I'm starting to show."
My ears rang.
