Chapter 2

2: 2

2

The day after the banquet, Hubert threw himself into work.

I drove straight back to the Gilbert house.

In my last life, I ached for how hard he worked. I not only handed him a billion dollars of Gilbert money to use for free, I took over every tedious detail of the company so he could pour himself into the engineering.

And he came home on time every day, told me not to wear myself out, doting on me, washing my feet, rubbing my shoulders.

I thought he truly felt guilty. I thought that affair was just a drunken mistake, and that the occasional self-reproach in him was real, that he regretted letting the whole world find out.

I never imagined he was that vicious underneath, scheming over everything I had the whole time, taking revenge for the woman he loved.

Seeing me back so early, my father laughed and teased me fondly.

"Now that's taking their side over mine. I only agreed yesterday, and here you are collecting the debt today."

Looking at that indulgent, tender smile, my eyes stung red all at once.

The day he learned I had gone missing, my father, seized by fury and panic, had a stroke, and died wretchedly in a hospital bed.

That morning, it was Hubert who came with the news. What happened in between, no one ever knew.

But my father took his medicine and had his checkups on schedule all year round. How could he have had a stroke?

I grabbed my father's hand and pulled him in long strides into the study.

The moment I sat him down in the chair, I dropped to my knees in front of him and said, gravely,

"Dad, I want to divorce Hubert."

"What I'm about to say sounds insane. You have to promise me you won't get worked up or angry."

I knew my father would believe me, because he loved me more than his own life.

In my last life, I grew up wrapped in exactly that kind of happiness, believing everyone was good at heart, and that even the ones who schemed only did it because they had no choice.

So when Hubert courted me, gentle and attentive, cherishing me in every way, I thought he was like my father, a good man, a devoted husband who valued what we had.

My father's face turned grave, and as my choked account went on, it slowly darkened into something terrible.

When I reached the part about dying, my body against a pillar, the study shook with a crack.

My father's palm slammed down on the desk, his whole body trembling.

"That animal. I'll cut him to pieces today, daring to plot against my daughter."

I caught his hand and gritted my teeth.

"Dad, killing him would let him off easy. I want him worse than dead, tortured a little more every single day, made to suffer through all of it."

My father stared at me, bewildered and shaken.

I gave a bitter smile. The Polly Gilbert who was simple and kind, who believed in love, had died long ago, in despair and humiliation and hatred.

The Polly standing here now was someone else entirely.

Right then I laid out my plan, and produced the evidence of the last few years, Hubert colluding with officials, funneling benefits back and forth.

My father didn't hesitate. He picked up the phone at once, hired the best private detective in the city, and, on my instructions, put both Winifred and Hubert under full surveillance.

At the same time he summoned the company's lawyers and had them start combing through the flow of money between the Delgados and the Gilberts, unwinding the joint projects, and quietly moving to cover the gaps the split would open up.

Detective Mercer earned his reputation as the city's finest. He moved fast.

That very night, as I walked through my own front door carrying the billion dollars, the file landed on my phone.

It went all the way back, from Winifred's college tuition that we had funded, to the fact that the two of them fell into bed together the very day she graduated.

The two of them using business trips and vacations as cover, holed up in a hotel room for three days without coming out.

Right down to her promising to give Hubert a son so the boy could inherit the Delgado empire, and Hubert bending every rule to bring her on as his assistant to make it convenient.

I thought of the day Winifred knelt begging me to let her work at the company, to repay our kindness, of Hubert looking at me, troubled, saying the company's rules weren't easy to break.

So this was her service, warming my husband's bed, giving him a son, so the boy could inherit what was mine.

In my last life, Hubert played the part too well, put on too good a show. Every time I sensed how close the two of them were, he brushed it aside with the same line, "I only think of her as a little sister. A country nobody like that, how could I ever want her?" and I let it go, again and again.

The moment I stepped inside, Hubert hurried over to meet me, anxious.

"Polly, you said your father had a condition. He isn't backing out of lending it to us, is he?"

Smiling, I took out an agreement.

"Dad loves me most. How could he not lend it?"

"He does have one condition, though. If you can't repay it down the line, you gift me ten percent of the company's shares."

Hubert froze, staring at the agreement, hesitating.

I hooked my arm through his at once and, swallowing my disgust, put on a coax.

"Silly. You get a billion dollars for nothing and you're still not happy? The shares are with me. Aren't they yours anyway?"

"Once the project hits phase two, I'll come home and work on him a few more times. When Dad's in a good mood, that's another billion."

It clicked for Hubert instantly, and he lit up with delight, picked up the pen, and briskly signed the notarized agreement.

I watched him walk out to the balcony, slide the door shut, and make his call, thrilled, while I turned and faxed the agreement to the lawyer to be filed and kept.

Add the twenty percent he'd given me when we married, and it came to thirty.

Enough to make my move.

In the days that followed, Winifred was everywhere in the South Side project office in her role as his assistant.

The two of them came and went together as if it were only natural, and even went to the hospital in the open.

Until a month later, when Detective Mercer sent through a report. Winifred was pregnant.