My Husband Made Me Apologize to His Dead Mistress

His hand hung in the air, trembling. The frantic fire in his red-rimmed eyes flickered, replaced by a sudden, pathetic confusion. I didn't break eye contact. The disgust in my chest wasn't hot or violent; it was absolute zero.

"You're crazy," he stammered, his voice cracking as he scrambled to regain his righteous fury. "You're a cold, unfeeling bitch, Tatum! She is dead because of you!"

I turned my back on him. I walked past the flickering makeshift shrine, the cloying vanilla smoke clinging to my clothes, and went straight to the master bedroom.

"Don't walk away from me!" His footsteps hammered against the hardwood, chasing me down the hall.

I pulled his heavy leather duffel bag from the top shelf of the closet. It hit the mattress with a dull thud. I opened his dresser drawers and began pulling out the silk shirts, the cashmere sweaters, the designer denim—every single thread paid for by the empire I had built for him. I shoved them into the canvas, crushing the delicate fabrics without a second thought.

"What are you doing?" he demanded, spit flying from his lips as he hovered in the doorway. "Stop it! You can't just ignore this!"

I didn't speak. I moved methodically, my breathing even, my pulse a slow, steady drum against my failing liver. I grabbed his gold watch from the nightstand and tossed it in. The glass cracked sharply against the zipper.

"You owe her!" he screamed, his hands clawing at his own hair, his perfectly curated face twisting into something ugly and small. "You owe me!"

I zipped the bag shut, grabbed the heavy leather straps, and turned to face him. He looked like a cornered animal, all bared teeth and hollow chest. I walked directly at him. He instinctively stepped back, stumbling over the threshold of the bedroom.

I didn't stop. I used the weight of the bag to back him down the hallway, through the living room, past the pathetic little candles burning for a woman who had died carrying his secret.

"Tatum, stop!" he yelled, his voice pitching into a panicked whine.

When his heels hit the entryway rug, I threw the duffel bag into his chest. He caught it with a sharp gasp, stumbling backward into the open doorway. Before he could regain his balance, I placed both hands flat against his chest and shoved. Hard.

He tumbled out into the corridor. His mouth opened, forming my name, but I slammed the heavy oak door in his face.

The deadbolt engaged with a loud, metallic *crack*.

Silence.

I stood in the entryway, the quiet ringing in my ears. I walked to the kitchen, opened the windows to let the freezing Seattle night bite through the suffocating vanilla haze, and pressed the button on the espresso machine.

While the black coffee dripped, hot and bitter, I sat at the kitchen island. I opened the top drawer and pulled out my small, leather-bound notebook. I clicked my pen. The ink flowed dark and smooth across the unlined paper.

*1. Lock infrastructure.*

*2. Sever financials.*

*3. Burn the image.*

I sat there for hours in the freezing draft, sipping the scalding coffee, drafting the exact architecture of his ruin. My body was a decaying house, but my mind had never been sharper. My hands never shook once.

***

The morning sun over downtown Seattle was blinding, cutting through the floor-to-ceiling glass of my corner office. I sat behind my walnut desk, the notebook resting closed by my elbow.

Kayla stepped into the room. She wore her usual slate-grey blazer, her posture impeccable. She held a tablet against her chest like a shield.

"You wanted to see me, Tatum?" Her eyes flicked to my face, catching something there—a tightness around my mouth, the bruised exhaustion under my eyes. She didn't comment on it. She never did.

"Sit," I said, my voice quiet.

She sat, crossing her legs, her stylus poised over the screen.

"I need a complete audit of the company's infrastructure by noon," I said, leaning forward, lacing my fingers together. "Every piece of founding legal documentation, all vendor contracts, and the master list of login credentials."

Kayla’s stylus hovered. "An audit? For the quarterly review?"

"No." I held her gaze. The air in the room seemed to thin. "I want it all transferred to a secure, encrypted server. One that only you and I have the keys to."

Her brow furrowed slightly. "Neil's access..."

"Revoke it," I said. The words tasted like iron. "Change the passwords to the main social accounts. Reroute the two-factor authentication to my personal device. Lock him out of the financial dashboards."

Kayla went completely still. She was smart. She had watched Neil take credit for my late nights, watched him charm the investors I had painstakingly courted. She didn't know about the cancer quietly eating through my abdomen, and she didn't know about the dead mistress, but she knew an execution order when she heard one.

"If I lock the main accounts," Kayla said, her voice dropping a fraction of an octave, "he won't even be able to post a story. He'll be totally dark."

"That is the point, Kayla."

A heavy beat of silence passed between us. The tug-of-war was brief; her loyalty was a predetermined victory.

She lowered her tablet, her expression smoothing into absolute, terrifying professionalism.

"Consider it done," she said.

"And Kayla?" I called out just as she reached the glass door. She paused, looking back over her shoulder.

"Not a word of this to him. If he calls, you let it ring."

She gave a single, sharp nod and walked out. I turned my chair toward the window, watching the city move below me, the countdown in my blood ticking away in perfect synchronization with the destruction I had just set in motion.