Detective Morrison asked again, “Do you know her?”
“Yes,” I said. “She works for my husband.”
I called Derek right there in the garage.
His first words weren’t, “Are you okay?”
They weren’t, “Is the baby okay?”
They weren’t even, “What happened?”
He said, “Where are you? I got a weird call from hospital security.”
That was the moment something inside the marriage died.
When I told him Brittany had destroyed my car, he went silent for too long. When I said I had seen the footage, he didn’t deny knowing her. He didn’t deny sleeping with her. He just exhaled and said my name like I was the problem now.
I hung up before he could finish.
Detective Morrison handed me her card and asked if I felt safe going home. I said yes, because I still needed to look my husband in the eye before deciding what kind of war I was willing to fight.
Then my phone rang again.
This time, it was the police captain.
He asked one question before his tone shifted completely.
“Mrs. Harper… are you Commissioner Robert Sullivan’s daughter?”
And just like that, the situation became far bigger than a wrecked car.
By the time I got home, Derek was standing in the nursery, pretending to consider paint colors.
That almost made me laugh.
The room was pale yellow, soft and warm, filled with small hopeful things I had chosen over the past three months: cloud-shaped shelves, neatly folded blankets, a white crib, framed prints of smiling baby animals who had clearly never encountered the reality of adult human beings. Derek stood there with his hands in his pockets like a man reviewing a renovation project, not a husband whose mistress had just terrorized his pregnant wife.
“How long?” I asked.
He turned slowly. “Elena, listen—”
“How long have you been sleeping with Brittany?”
His expression shifted—not to guilt, but to calculation. Derek always needed a moment to decide which version of himself to present. Regretful husband. Overworked businessman. Misunderstood man. Victim of his own choices. He chose remorse.
“Since January,” he said.
January.
I got pregnant in February.
That truth slid into my chest like broken glass. He had taken me to a mountain inn for Valentine’s weekend, held my face in both hands, told me he wanted a family with me—and all along, he had been sleeping with his assistant.
“You got me pregnant while cheating on me,” I said.
“It didn’t mean anything.”
