“You’re gorgeous,” he whispered, and Marcella could feel the press of him, hungry against her hip. But Marcella wasn’t in the mood.

She reached up, nails dragging down his stubbled cheek. “You hungry, sweetheart?”

“Always,” he growled against her neck.

“Good,” said Marcella, stepping away and smoothing her skirt.

“Dinner’s ready.”

* * *

A bead of red wine slid like sweat down the side of the raised glass, tracing its way toward the white tablecloth. Marcella had filled it too full, her hand made clumsy by her worsening mood. Marcus didn’t seem to notice the stain. He didn’t seem to notice anything.

“To my beautiful wife.”

Marcus never prayed before meals, but he always made a toast, had since the night they met. It didn’t matter if he had an audience of twenty or if they ate alone. She’d found it endearing on their first date, but these days the gesture felt hollow, rehearsed. Designed to charm instead of being genuinely charming. But he never failed to say the words, and perhaps that was a kind of love. Or perhaps Marcus was simply a creature of habit.

Marcella lifted her own glass.

“To my elegant husband,” she answered automatically.

The rim was halfway to her lips when she noticed the smudge on Marcus’s cuff. At first she thought it was only blood, but it was too bright, too pink.

It was lipstick.

Every conversation she’d had with the other wives came rushing back.

His eyes start to wander yet?

Keeping his stick wet?

All men are rotten.

Marcus was busy cutting into his steak, and rambling on about insurance, but Marcella had stopped listening. Behind her eyes, her husband traced his thumb across a pair of stained lips, parting them around his knuckle.

Her fingers tightened on the wineglass. Heat was flushing her skin even as a cold weight settled in her stomach. “What a fucking cliché,”

she said.

He didn’t stop chewing. “Excuse me?”

“Your sleeve.”

His gaze drifted languidly down toward the bloom of pink. He didn’t even have the decency to look surprised. “Must be yours,” he said, as if she’d ever worn that shade, ever owned anything so tacky and twee— “Who is she?”

“Honestly, Marce—”

“Who is she?” demanded Marcella, gritting her perfect teeth.

Marcus finally stopped eating, and leaned back in his chair, blue eyes hanging on her. “Nobody.”

“Oh, so you’re fucking a ghost?”

He rolled his eyes, clearly tired of the subject, which was ironic, considering he usually relished any topic that revolved around him.

“Marcella, envy really doesn’t suit you.”

“Twelve years, Marcus. Twelve. And now you can’t keep it in your pants?”

Surprise flickered across his face, and the truth hit her like a blow—

of course this wasn’t his first time cheating. This was only the first time he’d been caught.

“How long?” she asked icily.

“Let it go, Marce.”

Let it go—as if his cheating were like the wineglass in her hand, something she’d just happened to pick up, could just as easily set down.