Chapter 1 - The Wife at the Door
Claire Bennett had crossed three states to surprise the man she planned to marry.
The woman who opened Ryan Mercer’s apartment door was wearing Claire’s college sweatshirt.
For one stupid second, Claire thought she had the wrong address.
Then Ryan appeared behind the woman with a wedding ring on his hand.
“Claire?”
The suitcase handle slipped from her fingers.
Two years of night shifts, rent money, grocery transfers, and student loan payments flashed through her head so fast they felt like blows. Claire had worked weekends at a pharmacy in Ohio while Ryan finished graduate school in Boston. Every month, he called her his future wife.
The blonde at the door looked from Ryan to Claire. “Who is she?”
Ryan swallowed. “Vanessa, give me a minute.”
“No.” Claire’s voice came out strangely calm. “I’d love to hear this with your wife present.”
Vanessa’s face changed. “Your what?”
Ryan stepped into the hallway and pulled the door almost shut behind him. “Claire, I was going to tell you.”
“When? Our anniversary?”
“It got complicated.”
Claire laughed once. It hurt more than crying. “I paid your tuition when complicated meant you couldn’t afford textbooks.”
He lowered his voice. “Vanessa’s father helped me get into Halcyon Therapeutics. I couldn’t throw that away.”
“So you threw me away instead.”
Ryan reached for her arm. Claire stepped back.
His expression hardened. “Don’t make a scene. You’re in Boston for an interview tomorrow, right? Be smart. Halcyon knows everybody in biotech.”
There it was. Not guilt. A warning.
Claire picked up her suitcase.
Vanessa opened the door wider. “Ryan?”
Claire looked at the diamond on Vanessa’s hand, then at the man she had trusted for six years.
“You should ask your husband who paid his rent during his first year here.”
She walked away before either of them answered.
By midnight, the hotel clerk was explaining that Claire’s reservation had been canceled because the card attached to it had been reported stolen.
Claire stared at the screen. “That card is mine.”
The clerk looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I can’t override it.”
Her phone buzzed.
RYAN: Go home, Claire. Boston isn’t going to work out for you.
She stood in the lobby with one suitcase, eighty-seven dollars in checking, and an interview at nine in the morning.
Then a man in a charcoal suit stepped out of the elevator, glanced at her phone, and said, “If Ryan Mercer wants you out of Boston that badly, staying might be worth the trouble.”
Claire looked up.
She had never seen him before.
May you like
But Ryan’s next text appeared immediately.
RYAN: And stay away from Ethan Vale.
