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"The baby monitor was still on. That's how I heard my husband moaning my best friend's name — in our daughter's nursery, on the rocking chair I'd picked out at thirty-six weeks pregnant. "God, Maren… you're everything she's not." I stood in the kitchen, holding a warm bottle of breast milk I'd just pumped, and listened to Caleb — my Caleb, the man who held my hand through forty-two hours of labor — tell our live-in nanny that my body disgusted him since the birth. Three months. My daughter was three months old. I should have screamed. Should have stormed upstairs and dragged Maren out by her perfectly highlighted hair. But my C-section scar still pulled when I moved too fast, and my milk-stained nursing bra suddenly felt like the ugliest thing I'd ever worn. So I stood there. Listening. "She doesn't even try anymore," Caleb whispered. "She smells like spit-up. She cries more than the baby. I married a woman, Maren. Not… whatever she's become." Maren laughed — that tinkling, musical laugh I'd loved since college. The laugh I'd trusted enough to invite into my home, to hand my newborn to, to say "I'm so lucky my best friend gets to help raise my baby." "You poor thing," Maren cooed. "Let me take care of you." The wet sounds that followed told me exactly how she was taking care of him. I set the bottle down carefully. My hands weren't shaking. That surprised me. I walked to the hallway mirror. A ghost stared back — dark circles carved into pale skin, hair unwashed for four days, a body still swollen and leaking and stitched together. A woman who'd grown a human being and been discarded for it. Caleb was a tech founder. Worth $300 million after his company's IPO last year. Forbes had profiled us — "Silicon Valley's Perfect Power Couple." I'd been a corporate attorney at Sullivan & Cromwell. Top of my class at Columbia Law. I'd given it all up because he said, "Our baby deserves a mother who's present, Eloise. Not a billing machine." So I'd become present. And invisible. The monitor crackled again. A small cry — my daughter, Lily, waking up in her bassinet in our bedroom down the hall from the nursery. Neither of them stopped. My baby was crying, and her father was too busy fucking the nanny to notice. I picked up Lily. She latched onto me immediately, her tiny fist gripping my shirt. I held her so tight she squeaked in protest. "I know, baby," I whispered. "Mama's here." Above us, the ceiling creaked rhythmically. I opened my laptop one-handed, Lily still nursing. Caleb thought I'd forgotten how to be a lawyer. He thought the milk and the tears had dissolved my brain. He was wrong. I typed a name into my contacts: Vivian Chen. The most ruthless divorce attorney on the West Coast. She'd represented three billionaire wives and won every time. Then I opened Caleb's cloud account — the one he didn't know I had access to — and began downloading. Everything. Texts. Photos. Financial records. The offshore account in the Caymans he thought was secret. The prenup clause he'd violated six ways to Sunday. Lily finished nursing and fell asleep against my chest, warm and perfect and mine. Upstairs, it went quiet. I heard footsteps. Caleb appeared in the kitchen doorway, hair mussed, smelling of Maren's vanilla perfume. "Hey." He didn't look at me. "Lily okay?" "She was crying." "Was she? I didn't hear." He opened the fridge, grabbed a sparkling water. "Maren's going to sleep in the guest room tonight. She had a rough day." A rough day. "Sure," I said. "Whatever she needs." He finally looked at me. Something flickered — not guilt. Irritation. Like I was a task on his to-do list he kept postponing. "You should shower, El. You look…" He trailed off, waving vaguely at all of me. Then he walked away. I looked down at Lily's sleeping face. So peaceful. So unaware that her world was built on lies. "It's okay," I murmured, pressing my lips to her forehead. "Mama's going to burn it all down. And then we're going to be free." The download bar hit 100%. I smiled for the first time in months."