Anderson called on a Friday, right after six. I was still at the penthouse, standing at the counter with a cutting board and a knife I wasn't using, because Liam had texted that he'd be home for dinner and some old habit in me still set out the tomatoes and the basil like it mattered.

"Georgia posted something," Anderson said. No greeting. That was how I knew it was good.

"What kind of something?"

"A photo. Deleted twenty minutes after she put it up, but not before it cached. A private estate outside London. Stone walls, a hedge maze, the kind of place that doesn't list its rates online." A pause. I heard him typing. "I cross-referenced it with Liam's assistant's travel calendar. Got that through a records request this afternoon. Ten days. They fly out next Tuesday."

I set the knife down. My hand was very steady. I noticed that, the way you notice a stranger's face in a crowd — with a kind of distant curiosity, like it belonged to someone else.

"Ten days," I said.

"A hunting lodge, technically. There's an archery range on the grounds. Georgia mentioned it in the caption before she took it down. 'Learning to shoot, wish me luck.'" He let that sit for a second. "Olivia, if we're going to get him on record, this is the place. No board members. No lawyers hovering. Just him, feeling untouchable."

The basil on the windowsill was gone now — I'd taken it to Sarah's weeks ago — and the empty space where the pots used to sit looked strange to me still, like a missing tooth I kept running my tongue over.

"Book me a flight," I said.

There was a small silence on the other end. Not hesitation. Just him, taking me in.

"Okay," he said. "I'll set it up."

---

The night before I left, Liam had a client dinner. That was what he called it when he texted me at seven — running late, client dinner, don't wait up. I used to wonder about the clients. Now I didn't wonder about anything. I just read the words and set the phone face-down on the counter and felt nothing, which was its own kind of loud.

The penthouse was too quiet without him in it, and too quiet with him in it too, so it didn't make much difference either way anymore. I sat at the kitchen island with a mug of tea I didn't drink and my suitcase already packed and zipped by the door, and I let myself feel, for one full minute, exactly how strange this was. Tomorrow I would fly across an ocean to stand in front of my husband and lie to his face so he would tell me the truth.

I called Anderson at nine.

He picked up on the first ring. "Hey."

"Hey." My voice came out smaller than I meant it to.

"You good?"

"I don't know yet."

We went through it again — the flight, the car from Heathrow, the woman at the estate's front desk who Anderson's contact had already spoken to, the exact hours the archery range was open to guests. He walked me through the wording one more time. *I'm willing to forgive everything if you're just honest with me.* Simple. Soft. A door left open on purpose.

"You don't have to convince him of anything," Anderson said. "You just have to let him talk. He'll want to talk. Men like that always want someone to know how clever they were."

"And if he doesn't take the bait?"

"He will." No arrogance in it. Just certainty, flat and clean, like a fact he'd already tested. "He's spent three years being smarter than you in a room. He's not going to be able to help himself."

I wrapped my free hand around the mug. The tea had gone cold an hour ago. Outside, the city made its usual noise — a siren somewhere far off, a bus sighing at a stop. Ordinary sounds. I found that strange too, that the world kept being ordinary while I sat here rehearsing a lie that might end my marriage for good this time, on paper, in a courtroom, in a way that couldn't be undone by a warm smile at breakfast.

"Anderson."

"I'm here."

"What if I get there and I still feel something. When I see him."

He didn't answer right away. I liked that about him — he never rushed to fill a silence just because it was uncomfortable.

"Then you feel it," he said finally. "And you still do what you came to do. Those aren't opposites, Olivia. You're allowed to grieve the marriage and end it in the same week."

I closed my eyes. Somewhere down the hall, I could hear the elevator chime — Liam, home from his client dinner that wasn't a client dinner. I didn't move. I didn't say anything about it.

"Stay on the phone," I said. "Just for a while."

"Okay."

He didn't ask me if I was sure. He didn't tell me everything would be fine. He just stayed, the small sound of his breathing on the other end, steady as a metronome, while I lay back against my pillow with the phone still pressed to my ear and the lights of the bedroom off and Liam's footsteps moving somewhere on the other side of a door I'd already, quietly, stopped thinking of as ours.

I don't remember falling asleep. I only remember that when I woke, gray light coming thin through the curtains, the phone was still warm against my cheek, and Anderson's voice was already there, low and unhurried, like he'd never stopped talking at all.

"Morning," he said. "Car's coming for you in an hour."

I sat up. Somewhere down the hall, the shower was running. Liam, getting ready for his day, humming something under the water, easy and warm, a man with nothing on his mind at all.

"Okay," I said. "I'm ready."

The estate looked like something from a period film. Stone walls. Gravel paths. Gardens that had been manicured for centuries. I walked through the main house and out the back terrace, where a uniformed attendant pointed me toward the archery range without my having to ask.

The range was at the far edge of the grounds, past a hedge maze and a small pond where swans moved slow across the water. I could hear voices before I saw them. Georgia's laugh. High and bright. The kind of laugh that expected to be noticed.

I stopped at the hedge line and watched.

Liam stood with his hands in his pockets, relaxed, smiling at Georgia as she pulled back a bowstring with theatrical concentration. Her form was all wrong — elbow too high, stance too narrow — but she looked good doing it, which was probably the point. The bow released. The arrow went wide. Georgia pouted. Liam laughed and said something I couldn't hear. She swatted his arm.

I felt nothing I hadn't already felt.

I stepped onto the range.

Liam saw me first. His smile didn't drop right away. It took a full two seconds — enough time for his brain to register the shape of me, the fact of me, the wrongness of me being here at all. Then his face went very still.

Georgia turned. Her expression moved through confusion, then recognition, then something that looked almost like embarrassment. She set down the bow.

"Olivia," Liam said. His voice was careful. Controlled. "What are you doing here?"

I walked closer. Stopped a few feet away. The grass was damp under my shoes. Somewhere behind me, a bird called out, sharp and sudden.

"I've been thinking," I said. My voice was soft. Open. The way it used to be. "About everything. About us."

Liam glanced at Georgia. Then back at me. "This isn't the time—"

"I just want to understand," I said. I let my voice crack a little. Not much. Just enough. "If you're honest with me, I can forgive this. I can forgive all of it. I just need to know the truth."

Georgia shifted her weight. "Maybe I should—"

"Stay," Liam said. He didn't look at her. He was looking at me now, really looking, and I could see the calculation happening behind his eyes. The same calculation that had been happening for three years. How much could he say. How much would I believe. How far he could push before I broke.

He smiled. Not the warm smile. The other one. The one that said he'd already won.

"You want the truth?" he said.

"Yes."

He laughed. It was a short sound, almost surprised, like he couldn't believe I was still this easy.

"There is no disorder, Liv," he said. "There never was."

I didn't move.

"The pills were vitamins," he continued. "B complex. Dr. Richards relabeled them. The whole thing was—" He gestured vaguely, like he was describing a business deal. "A strategy. You were getting too close. Asking too many questions. I needed you to stop looking."

"And the alternate personality?"

"A role." He shrugged. "Not even a hard one. You wanted to believe I was sick. So I let you. It worked perfectly."

Georgia was staring at him now. Her face had gone pale.

I took a breath. Let it out slowly.

"You're sure?" I said. "That's really what happened?"

"Yes." He said it with the casual satisfaction of a man who had just explained how he'd closed a particularly clever deal. "You were too trusting. That was always your problem."

I reached into my coat pocket. Took out the recording device. Small. Black. The red light still blinking.

I held it up so he could see it.

I didn't say anything. I didn't need to.

The color left his face all at once. His mouth opened. Closed. His eyes went from the device to my face and back again, like he was trying to solve an equation that had suddenly stopped making sense.

"Olivia—"

I held his gaze. I let him see exactly what I was. Not the woman he married. Not the woman he manipulated. Someone else entirely.

Then I turned and walked back toward the estate house.

I didn't hurry. I didn't look back.

Behind me, I heard him say my name again. Louder this time. Desperate.

I kept walking.

The swans were still on the pond. The gravel crunched under my shoes. The air smelled like rain coming.

I reached the terrace. Pulled out my phone. Texted Anderson.

*Got it.*

His response came before I reached the front door.

*Good. Come home.*