Page 46 of Circle of Strangers
“I thought you had class? You said you were going to call on your way home. Is everything all right?” Jacqueline asks. “Will? Are you there?”
She must be out on bail.
With my heart in my throat, I can’t end the call fast enough. Hands shaking from the rush of adrenaline fueling through me, I text her from his phone—Sorry. Pocket dialed. Teaching now.
I delete the text and delete the call from the call history.
The room spins, but I anchor myself by locking my focus on a single spot—the framed wedding photo of Will and me, perched above the fireplace like some laughable emblem of trust. My fists curl at my sides, nails biting into my palms.Jacqueline.Of all people.
The woman who went to great lengths to ruin our marriage, to tear our perfect little family apart. The woman who tried to have me committed. The woman who implied I was an unfit mother.
While she’s far from Lucinda, she’s equally as deplorable.
Will and I agreed—many times—Jacqueline was no longer welcome in our lives and never would be again.
I let out a sharp exhale that does little to douse the fire spreading in my chest.
This isn’t infidelity. It’s worse. It’s betrayal with roots that run deep—a twisted, poisonous vine strangling the trust I thought we’d built. He didn’tsleepwith her; heviolatedmy trust, and that’s a different kind of unforgivable.
I pace the length of the living room, my movements mechanical, my breathing shallow, thin. I’m trying not to lose control, though I’m not yet sure what I’m going to do.
All I know is I don’tdomessy. Messy is for people who aren’t smart enough to channel their rage into something useful.
Something final.
Will doesn’t deserve my rage.
He deserves my precision.
My next step has to be calculated—every word, every look, every move orchestrated to perfection until he won’t know what hit him.
Sliding the phone onto the coffee table, I sit on the edge of the couch and close my eyes, my mind whirring as I pull threads together, crafting a plan. Jacqueline’s back in his life, yes ... but what if I’m the one who pulls her strings?
I could remind Jacqueline why I’m the last person she should underestimate.
I could remindWillwhy my trust is a currency he can’t afford to spend so carelessly.
She tried to break me.
He betrayed me.
They’re about to learn exactly what happens when they forget who they’re dealing with.
The beginnings of a smile tug at the corners of my mouth, and it feels foreign—almost. I’ve always been good at fixing problems, at making inconveniences disappear.
Will’s about to realize he didn’t just marry someone far more dangerous than his mother ever was ... he married Lucinda’s daughter.
33
“I told Mara to stay away from us.” I blurt out the words that’ve been on the tip of my tongue for hours. Now that I’ve established Mara is no longer the threat I thought she was, I’m still going to play that whole thing to my advantage. It’s an easy trick—like distracting someone while you pick their pocket.
Will looks up from his laptop, one eyebrow half raised, but there’s no shock in his expression. “Good.”
I sit down across from him at the kitchen table, watching him carefully, waiting for him to tell me I’m making too much out of nothing. He’s unnervingly calm. When he got home from work earlier, he’d asked if I’d seen his phone. I told him I accidentally grabbed his by mistake when I was leaving his office—an easy mistake seeing as how we both have the same model iPhone, both of them silver. He frowned, almost as if he doubted it, then he shrugged it off.
It took everything I had not to go ballistic on him over the Jacqueline thing, but I’m still plotting, still planning.
“You don’t think I overreacted?” I bait him.
