He Left My Bed for His Secretary, So I Took His Brother novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Withered and Spent
On her tenth anniversary Leah lies naked in bed when Preston's secretary calls and he leaves anyway. His answer is on the garage camera, and she decides to leave him.
On the night of our tenth anniversary, I was lying naked in bed when my husband's phone lit up.
The name on the screen was Mallory Quince.
She was his executive secretary, and it was 11:40 at night.
He was still breathing hard from me. His hand was still on my hip.
He looked at the screen and picked up.
"Mallory. What is it?"
I heard her small, shaking voice through the speaker. "Sir, I'm sorry. I'm scared. I don't want to be alone tonight."
"Stay there," Preston said. "I'm coming."
He pulled his hand off my hip and sat up.
I said, "It's our anniversary."
"I know what night it is," he said.
He stood up and pulled on his trousers. He did not look at me.
"It's nothing," he said. "She's had a bad week. Go to sleep. I'll be back before you miss me."
I grabbed his sleeve.
"You were inside me ten minutes ago."
He took my fingers off his sleeve one at a time.
"Don't make this ugly, Lee."
He only called me Lee when he was lying to me.
On the dresser sat the card his mother had sent that morning. White, with one line inside, as it was every year.
I'm sorry, dear.
Constance had never liked me. I always figured it was her stiff way of saying happy anniversary.
I threw the sheet around me and followed him down to the garage.
He was already unlocking the black Bentley.
"Stop," I said. "Ten years, Preston. Ten. I cooked for you tonight. I kept your plate warm until ten, and you texted that you were stuck at work."
"I got home, didn't I?"
"After you ate somewhere else?"
He didn't answer that.
He turned around. His face was perfectly calm.
"Listen to me. Mallory is young. She's insecure. She's terrified that I'll fall in love with your body again."
I stared at him.
"My body."
"Your body," he said, and sighed, like I was the one being difficult. "Don't be naive. She needs reassurance, and I need her to stay loyal. That's all this is."
"You're sleeping with her."
He didn't deny it.
He just shrugged.
"Leah, look at yourself. You're thirty-six. She's twenty-six, and she's bright and fresh. Why would I ever settle for something withered and spent when I can have her?"
The garage was quiet.
I could hear the overhead light buzzing.
Ten years ago I'd put my father's house money into his first server. I'd cooked on one burner while he wrote code. I had held his head the night his company almost died.
And now I was withered and spent.
My hands were shaking, but my voice wasn't.
"Say that again."
"Don't be dramatic."
"Say it again, Preston."
He opened the car door.
"I have to go. We'll talk tomorrow. You'll calm down and see I was being honest with you, which is more than most men would be."
He got in. The engine started.
I said, "Go."
He looked at me through the glass, almost surprised, and reversed out of the driveway.
I stood in the open garage in a bedsheet.
Then I looked up at the corner of the ceiling.
The small white camera was blinking its green light.
Preston had installed it himself after a break-in on our street. It sent everything to an app on my phone.
I climbed back up to the bedroom and opened the app.
The video was there. All four minutes of it.
His face. His voice. Every word.
I watched him say it twice.
Then I opened the folder where we kept the household accounts. I had always been the one who checked them, because Preston said numbers bored him.
I scrolled to the company card he used for what he called client housing.
A lease. An apartment on the Gold Coast. Twenty-six thousand dollars a month.
I scrolled back three years.
It had been paid on the first of every month for all three of them.
Then I opened tonight's charges.
One charge at 8:12 p.m. from Aubrey's, the restaurant he'd told me was booked solid for months. A table for two.
The name on the reservation was Mallory Quince.
He had eaten his anniversary dinner with her. Then he'd come home, touched me, and told me he loved me.
I sat on the edge of the bed for a long time.
I copied the garage video to my own account and sent it to Dolores, my oldest friend, with one line: Tell me how to take everything.
Then I took the sheet off, got dressed, and started packing a bag.
I didn't take the diamonds or the watch he gave me for our fifth.
I took my father's wrench set from the closet and my own passport.
My phone lit up on the bed. It was Preston, texting: Don't wait up, Lee.
I put the phone in my pocket and left it unanswered.
I wasn't going to wait for him to come back and explain.
So I stepped out.
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