Justin tore the seal before anyone in the room could stop him.

Audrey took one fast step toward him, but two hospital security officers had already reached the doorway.

She froze between them, chest heaving, her perfect hair loosened around a face that no longer looked frightened or loving or wounded.

It looked exposed.

The first page in the envelope was a marriage certificate from Clark County, Nevada.

Bride: Lena Voss.

Groom: Daniel Voss.

Date of marriage: eleven months earlier.

Justin read it once, then again, as though the words might rearrange into something less monstrous if he forced enough air into his lungs.

They did not.

Behind it was a printed photo of Audrey standing outside a courthouse in a white blazer, one hand looped through the arm of a dark-haired man in sunglasses.

She was smiling the same smile she had smiled at Justin over candlelight, over wine, over whispered plans for a wedding by the water.

There was no doubt.

It was her.

Folded around the photo was a note written in his mother’s shaky hand.

Justin,
I knew I knew her face.

Warren Delaney confirmed it.

She heard me calling him.

If I cannot speak, do not let her near your papers.

Check the phone and the hotel key.

Love,
Mom

Justin looked up so slowly that the room seemed to tilt with him.

Audrey swallowed.

‘It’s not what it looks like.’

The sentence was so small compared to what he had just seen that it almost made him laugh.

Instead he said, ‘Your name is Lena Voss?’

Audrey’s eyes flicked to the marriage certificate.

Then to Michelle.

Then to the hotel key card still lying in the open drawer.

‘It was a mistake,’ she said quickly.

‘An old situation.

I was going to explain it.

Daniel is an ex.

He was abusive.

I left.

None of this is what you think.’

Justin held up the certificate.

‘You married him eleven months ago.’

They had been engaged for four.

Audrey pressed her lips together.

‘It was never really a marriage.

It was paperwork.

I was trapped.’

On the bed, Michelle made a strained sound through the oxygen mask and lifted her hand again, pointing weakly toward the spilled contents of Audrey’s handbag.

One of the nurses, a compact woman with a badge that read Marisol Vega, crouched beside the bag.

She glanced at Justin for permission.

He gave the shortest nod of his life.

Marisol reached in and pulled out a second phone, black, cheap, nothing like the sleek gold one Audrey always kept in her hand.

The screen lit up before anyone touched it.

A message preview flashed across the lock screen.

From D: Did you finish? We need him signed by Friday.

No one in the room spoke.

Audrey lunged.

Security caught her by the elbows before she got two steps.

The phone slipped from Marisol’s hand onto the blanket near Michelle’s knees.

Audrey’s voice rose, sharp and ugly now.

‘Give me that.

That is private.’

‘Private?’ Justin said.

His own voice sounded distant to him, like it belonged to a man standing somewhere down the hall.

‘You tried to murder my mother in a hospital room.’

‘I did not.’ Audrey twisted against the guards.

‘She is delirious.

She hates me.

She has hated