Thanking Suze for her frankness, Celeste had handed the device back, hurried to the restroom, and vomited.

Oleg’s deep voice floated through the darkened car, disrupting her reverie. “There’s an accident on the parkway,” he said. “I’ll take Sunrise Highway.”

“Whatever you think is best,” Celeste said. “You know I trust you.”

His eyes in the rearview mirror smiled back at her.

Oleg and Celeste had become friends about four years ago, when he’d shuttled her home from a charity dinner. She’d been in remission by then but hadn’t quite regained her previous stamina. Gabe had wanted to stay late, drinking Scotch and schmoozing, so he’d summoned his driver to take Celeste back to the apartment. Oleg was from Moldova, a country Celeste had studied in an Eastern European history class during college. They’d had a lively discourse about his homeland’s complicated past. When they reached the Upper East Side apartment, she found she wanted to continue their conversation.

She was afforded the opportunity less than a month later, when Celeste needed a ride back to the Hamptons after a luncheon. Gabe had agreed to spare his driver for the five-hour round trip. Their Moldova discussion had segued into Oleg’s recently immigrated cousin’s legal dilemma. The man had been arrested after a fight outside a nightclub (where he’d been defending a female patron’s honor, according to Oleg) and was at risk of being deported. Celeste had offered her expert advice, had even called an old colleague who was still practicing to represent Oleg’s relative. The cousin, a man with a stocky build and startling green eyes, had had the charges dropped, in the end.

Oleg owed her. And he was her friend. She could count on him to verify Suze Weintraub’s claims. They met in Battery Park and walked the Hudson River Greenway. It pained the big European to tell Celeste about the women her husband had been seeing. The dark-haired Natalie was the latest of many. Gabe had provided his most recent paramour with a Chelsea apartment, a trip to Vermont, and monthly envelopes stuffed with cash.

The money, the apartment, the gifts were more upsetting than the infidelity. Sugar daddy. People could dress it up in flowery language, but Gabe was a john. And he had turned this girl, this Natalie, into a prostitute.

The marriage was over; it had to be. But Celeste was smart enough to know that she was in a vulnerable position. When she left Gabe, she would damage his enormous ego and he would strike back. Her husband could be cruel, ruthless . . . a shark. Celeste no longer had her own income, and she had a daughter to protect. She would consult an attorney, would get her financial ducks in a row first. In the meantime, she needed Gabe to stop seeing that girl, to stop paying Natalie for sex and companionship. She needed him to stop making a fool of Celeste, and their marriage, and their life.

Using Violet’s self-harm had felt exploitive, but she could think of no other way to have Gabe cease his affair. (She had kept the cutting from him, knowing he’d blow up, knowing he’d seize control, knowing he would make it worse.) But Violet was his kryptonite. While his narcissism prevented true parental love, he viewed his child as a reflection of himself. If she was depressed, unstable, hurting herself, it made Gabe look bad.