Chapter 13:

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That night, I told Conrad about running into Phoebe at the office. I framed it light, almost funny — can you believe it, both of us in the same building, her face when she saw my badge — but Conrad wasn’t laughing.

He was quiet for a long time. We were in bed, the lamp casting a yellow circle on the ceiling, and his silence had that particular quality it took on when he was assembling a memory from scattered pieces.

“Love,” he said. “I suddenly remembered where I’d seen Phoebe before.”

The story came out in fragments. Before I’d returned to my country, before Phoebe and I had ever met, she’d been circling Conrad. Showing up at his events. Engineering introductions through mutual contacts. Sending gifts to his office that his secretary intercepted and returned. She’d been methodical about it, strategic, and completely invisible to Conrad, who filtered out women with the efficiency of a spam folder.

When he failed to notice her, Phoebe recalculated. If the older brother was unreachable, the younger one would do. Vaughn was still a Hadley. Vaughn still had the name, the connections, the access. She pivoted, and within months she was the deacon’s devoted girlfriend.

So when Phoebe learned that I — her friend, her confidant, the woman she went shopping with on Saturdays — was carrying Conrad’s child, she wasn’t just angry about a perceived betrayal. She was staring at the life she’d wanted and couldn’t have, living inside someone who’d gotten it by accident.

“She never wanted Vaughn,” Conrad said.

“No.” The picture had rearranged itself, and everything that had confused me made sudden, terrible sense. “She wanted you.”

We lay there for a while, not speaking, letting the revelation settle into the architecture of everything we’d been through.

* * *

Three months later, I was in the bathroom staring at two pink lines.

𝗨𝗽𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸 𝗼𝗻 𝗴𝗮𝗹𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹𝘀.𝗰𝗼𝗺
Again.

“Conrad!”

He appeared in the doorway with an expression that was trying very hard to be innocent and failing comprehensively. Guilt was written across his face in capital letters.

“Get in here right now.”

He stepped inside. Saw the test in my hand. And his shoulders sagged — not with defeat, exactly, but with the resignation of a man who knew he’d been caught and had no plausible alibi.

“You sabotaged the condoms,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

“I can explain.”

“You poked holes in our condoms.”

“Only small ones.”

The silence that followed could have cured leather. Conrad, to his credit, didn’t try to spin it. He crossed the room, wrapped his arms around me, and pressed his forehead against mine.

“I’m sorry, darling. I felt insecure and wanted to hold onto you through the baby.” His voice dropped. “But I really love you, and I love this child. Do whatever you want, but don’t hurt yourself.”

There were many things wrong with what he’d done. Layers of wrongness, stacked like geological strata. But his arms were warm, and his heartbeat was steady against my chest, and the two pink lines weren’t going away no matter how angry I got. So I filed the rage under ongoing grievances and moved on to logistics.

I quit the job. Stayed home. Took care of the pregnancy.

But staying home didn’t mean staying idle. Conrad had his company; I built mine. From the guest room that became my office, I researched markets, made investments, followed instincts that turned out to be worth more than most people’s salaries. Within months, the portfolio had grown to several million. My money. Mine. Earned on my own terms, from my own chair, answering to nobody.

The independence felt good. It felt like breathing after being underwater.

Maybe that’s why I let my guard down with Phoebe. I was busy, distracted, focused on numbers and projections, and I forgot the fundamental rule of dealing with someone who hates you: never stop watching.

Phoebe was pregnant again — her second child. She traveled to the port city for a checkup and came back glowing. A boy. Finally. The golden ticket she’d been chasing since Vaughn first told her that sons mattered and daughters didn’t.

With her belly growing, she moved back into the old Hadley Manor. We shared hallways again. She nodded at me in the kitchen. She was polite at dinner. She held doors open and asked about my health with a concern that almost passed for real.

Then one afternoon she knocked on my door, carrying a bowl of soup.

“Freya, I’m sorry. These years I’ve been obsessed. I hope you can forgive me.” She held the bowl out, both hands, steam rising between us. “Today you’ll drink this soup, and from now on we’ll get along well as sisters-in-law.”

The soup smelled extraordinary. Rich, herbal, layered with spices I couldn’t name. Phoebe’s smile was wide and steady, and her eyes were soft, and she looked more like the girl from freshman year than she had in a long time.

I reached for the bowl. My fingers touched the warm porcelain.

Then I poured it over her head.

The soup cascaded down her hair, over her face, into the collar of her blouse. She screamed — a raw, unguarded sound — and stood there dripping, mouth open, staring at me with the shock of someone who genuinely believed the performance had worked.

“Ah!”

She wiped soup from her eyes and looked at me in disbelief. Broth dripped from her chin. A piece of something green clung to her ear.

I didn’t feel bad. Not even a little. Because I knew Phoebe. And Phoebe didn’t forgive. Phoebe didn’t cook. Phoebe didn’t bring soup to women she’d spent years trying to destroy. Whatever was in that bowl, I wanted no part of it. The police would later confirm the rest: the soup was poisoned. Not enough to kill me. Enough to kill what was inside me.

Wanting to harm my children. That was her final miscalculation.

Everything she cared about — money, status, Vaughn’s attention, her place in this family — I would take it from her, piece by piece, until there was nothing left.

“Phoebe.” My voice was flat. “Have I ever told you that next time I won’t show you mercy?”

She stood there, dripping, trembling, and for the first time I saw real fear in her eyes. Not the performative kind. The kind that understands consequences.

I didn’t call Conrad. Not this time. I picked up my phone and dialed the police.

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