Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

Carlotta

I sat beside William’s bed in stony silence after Detective Del Rey left the room. I had tried my best to make William feel comfortable, to show him that I still loved him. And all he had done was berate me. I was used to that, but it still hurt. And it still made me angry.

I really had nothing to say to William right now. In that moment, I came pretty close to hating him. But at the same time, I was sure that when Detective Del Rey had asked if we remembered anything from the night Candy died, William’s eye twitched slightly as he denied it. Did it mean he was starting to remember?

I didn’t know, and the way he had bitten my head off so many times since he had woken up made me reluctant to ask him. I was starting to feel guilty too. I had let my guard down this morning with the detective, way too far down, and I had told him way more than I had ever intended to. I had told him all about William’s affair, and I supposed in some ways, I had perhaps made him look guilty.

That knowledge was eating at me now. I had thrown him under the bus, however unintentionally. I had to fix this.

He had protected me and now I had to protect him.

The phrase kept on going around and around in my head like a mantra, my guilty conscience over what I had told Detective Del Rey eating at me.

I had to fix this, and I knew exactly how I was going to do it. The detective had said we were talking off the record, but I wasn’t na?ve enough to think that meant anything. He would still use everything I had told him against William and me if he could. But if I could destroy the proof of any such an affair happening, then he wouldn’t be able to do anything with it. It would just be William’s word against mine when he denied the affair, and I could play it in such a way that I just looked like a jealous and insecure wife. I didn’t relish playing that role, but I would do whatever it took to fix this .

I looked at William as my plan started to come together in my head. I was a little surprised to see that he had fallen asleep. I had expected him to be awake, raging that he was stuck in the hospital. The crash and the pain meds must have taken more out of him than he was letting on. I watched him for a moment. He looked so much younger when he was asleep, peaceful, with none of the stress of all of this playing across his face.

I reached out and gently stroked his cheek. He murmured something unintelligible, and he turned his head slightly so that his cheek nuzzled against my hand, but he didn’t wake up. I gently moved my hand away. William’s being asleep made my plan so much simpler, and I didn’t want to risk waking him up now.

He had begun to delete the texts and calls from Candy from his cellphone, and I was sure he would have ignored my advice and kept going with that. Although I was sure the police would be able to get his call logs, that wouldn’t tell them what was said in the texts. And more importantly, I could check his emails and get rid of the sexy thread between William and Candy, something I was sure William wouldn’t have parted with.

As quietly as I could, I pulled open the small drawer in William’s bedside cabinet and pulled his cellphone out. If he woke up now, I would say I was going to call work for him, and I had left my own cellphone at home.

I clicked into his messages. His inbox was empty except for two threads. The first one was a thread between me and him which contained nothing more exciting than random texts checking what time he would be home from work from me, or the odd text from William telling me he would be late. Anger surged through me again as I thought of all those texted lies, but I ignored it.

The second thread of messages was marked as Work and I felt my stomach rolling as I opened it. I needn’t have worried. It was just a group message between William and his team, and I knew without reading any of the messages that he wouldn’t be stupid enough to send any less than professional messages into a group chat.

I checked his call log and found that he had indeed erased all mention of Candy. She wasn’t even in his contacts anymore. That just left the dreaded email, the thing I had been putting off looking at again.

With a quiet sigh, I opened up his email inbox. I started to scroll down, looking for the old thread between William and Candy, but an unopened message caught my eye. Something about a new message. I clicked into it and I instantly felt sick. It was a message from a website that claimed to be a dating site, but everyone knew it was a hookup site. It was telling William he had several new messages.

Without giving myself time to talk myself out of it, I clicked the link and was taken to William’s profile on the site. Anger surged through me again. Not only was William cheating on me in the office, but he had a fucking profile on a hookup website. Wasn’t one hunting ground enough for him? Wasn’t humiliating me at his place of work enough without doing it out in the open where any of my friends might see it?

I clicked into his messages. The first one was from someone calling herself The Blonde Honey. I looked at her picture. She couldn’t be a day over twenty. I felt sick to my stomach without even having to read the messages.

I debated replying to The Blonde Honey, telling her I was William’s wife, but I just couldn’t bring myself to lay down another layer of humiliation on myself at William’s infidelity. Instead, I closed the app and went back to William’s inbox. I deleted the email because he would know it was open and that he wasn’t the one who had opened it. I could see several other alerts from the same website, and I debated deleting them all, but I decided against it.

If the police did ask for William’s cellphone and they saw this, then he would only have himself to blame. The message I had looked at had been new, sent just half an hour ago, so it wasn’t like William had even learned his lesson about cheating on me. It was fair game now. If the police found the messages, they wouldn’t be incriminating in the sense of showing that he’d had regular sexting conversations with Candy. But they would show everyone just what sort of a man he was. And that was enough for me.

I slipped the cellphone back into the drawer, being sure to put it back in the same spot even though I knew William hadn’t been the one to put it there. It was just force of habit to make sure he never noticed any snooping I might do.

I stood up and pulled out my own cellphone and slipped into the corridor, closing the door quietly behind me. Part of me was tempted to slam it shut loudly. Why should William get to lie there, sleeping peacefully while my fucking life was falling apart because he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants? I already knew the answer to that question. If he woke up now, he would see something in my face, something that told him more than I wanted him to know. I didn’t want him to know I had seen the messages. I couldn’t bear to have this fight with him again. I had to get my anger and hurt under control before he woke up so that I could just continue to pretend I was this stupid and clueless.

I found the number for William’s secretary and pressed Call . At least I was confident he wasn’t sleeping with her. She was ten years older than me, and she was happily married with three children. There’s no way he would try to go there. She wouldn’t stroke his ego. She would reject him and make him feel worse about himself.

“William Alden’s office, Juliette speaking,” William’s secretary said, taking my call.

“Hi, Juliette. It’s Carlotta,” I said. “I’m just calling to let you know that William has been in an accident. He’s in the hospital. It’s going to be a couple of weeks before he can return to work.”

“Oh, my goodness, Carlotta, I’m so sorry to hear that,” Juliette said. “Is Mr. Alden all right?”

“Yes,” I said. “He has a broken wrist and he’s been told to rest, but yeah, it could have been a whole lot worse. ”

“I’m glad it’s not serious. I’ll see that the CEO is informed. Thanks for calling in,” Juliette said.

“Thank you,” I said and hung up the call.

I was suddenly aware that as William’s personal secretary, Juliette knew everything about his diary. While she might not have been sleeping with him herself, she sure as hell knew he was cheating on me. I got why she didn’t tell me. Her loyalty was to William, not me. But I couldn’t help but wonder how she saw me. Does she laugh at me behind my back, thinking me too stupid to see what’s going on in my own marriage? Or does she pity me, knowing I know what William is up to and yet I stay with him, anyway?

I didn’t know, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure which option was worse. I stood in the corridor for a moment, trying to stop thinking about all of this shit, and once more, I started to feel guilty. I mean, sure, William cheated on me. But I was the one who put him even further into the line of fire with the police. I knew that no matter what William had done to me, I had to fix that.

I decided to go back into William’s room and take his cellphone and smash it. When the police asked about it, I would just say it got broken beyond repair in the accident, and that would mean they could never recover any data from it. I nodded to myself, confirming my plan in my head, and I headed back into William’s room.

When I went in, he was awake again, sitting up, his cellphone in his hand. His face went dark red as he saw me coming into the room. I knew that look. It was the look I was wearing moments ago in the corridor. It was the look of a person with a guilty conscience. I knew instantly that William was checking his messages from The Blonde Honey and whichever other unsuspecting girls he had found on the website.

You absolute bastard , I thought to myself.

That did it. There was no way I was smashing the cellphone now. I was right the first time. He might not deserve prison, but he as sure as hell deserved to be caught out for cheating on me yet again.

“I–I ... umm ... I was just about to call the office and let them know what’s happened,” William said after a moment, his face still red.

Yeah, that’s believable, considering how long it took you to think it up , I thought to myself.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve just gotten off the phone with Juliette. She’s going to let the CEO know what’s happening,” I said.

“Great, thank you,” William said .

He went back to looking at the screen on his cellphone, seemingly happy to ignore me once more now that I had served my purpose. He began to tap on the keys. The sheer fucking audacity of him. He was messaging some little online slut while I was sitting right there.

Suddenly, I was no longer in the mood to play the role of the doting wife anymore. I stood up abruptly, and William actually managed to tear his eyes off his cellphone’s screen long enough to look up at me as I glowered at him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I lied. “I’ve seen the time, and visiting hours are over. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I hurried out of the room before William had a chance to consider my words and remind me that he was in a private room so I could stay as late as I liked.