As if love was a competition.
As if happiness was something you stole instead of something you built.
I should have heard the warning in her voice.
But I wanted to believe my sister could be happy for me. I wanted that so badly it made me careless.
I always wanted to believe the best.
That was the difference between me and Melissa.
She believed the worst in everyone.
And she learned how to make it true.
After I found the hotel charge, I didn’t run to my mother.
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.
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