I didn’t confront Melissa.
I didn’t cancel the wedding.
I did what I do.
I gathered facts.
I built a case.
Because if I’d learned anything from watching Melissa for twenty-nine years, it was this.
If you accuse her without proof, she will tear you apart and call it your fault.
And James, I realized, had been learning from her too.
That’s when I called Daniel Morrison.
I didn’t find him through a search. I found him through my cousin Marcus, who had a talent for knowing people he shouldn’t and treating it like a party trick.
Marcus texted me at midnight.
If you need someone to dig, I’ve got a guy. Daniel. He caught Senator Walsh with another woman.
I stared at the message. My heart was pounding, not because I was scared of Daniel, but because the word dig made everything feel real. Like I was admitting, in writing, that the life I’d planned was rotten at the center.
A private investigator sounded like something from a movie.
My life wasn’t supposed to be a movie.
My life was tidy. Spreadsheets. Audit trails. Plans that made sense.
But then I pictured James’s smile when he lied. Melissa’s spark when she hurt me. And I typed back.
Send me his number.
Two days later, I met Daniel in a coffee shop on Wacker Drive, the kind of place with steel chairs and espresso machines that hissed like impatient animals. Outside, the sidewalk was busy with commuters. Inside, it was all low music and the smell of roasted beans.
Daniel was exactly the kind of man you’d expect to catch other people’s secrets.
Dark suit. Plain tie. Sharp eyes that missed nothing. He sat with his back to the wall, scanning the room like he’d done it a thousand times. He didn’t look threatening. He looked prepared.
He didn’t waste time.
“Emma Chen?” he asked.
I nodded.
He slid a file folder across the table, the cardboard scraping softly against the wood.
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