The movement was small, but everyone in the room saw it.

So did he.

Something tightened in Preston’s eyes, then disappeared beneath concern.

He touched the rail of the bed instead of her hand.

“Do you remember what happened? Lucia found you.

The paramedics said you fell.”

“I didn’t fall,” Meredith said.

The room went still.

“You hit your head,” he said gently.

“Maybe you’re confused.”

“Sloan was behind me.”

His jaw tightened for one fraction of a second.

Then he exhaled as though exhausted by unreasonable stress.

“Sloan stopped by to discuss nursery fabrics.

She left before lunch.

Meredith, don’t do this right now.”

Nursery fabrics.

That had been the lie for months.

Sloan Whitmore was supposedly a consultant Preston had brought in to help redesign one of the upstairs guest rooms into a nursery.

She was polished, striking, and overly comfortable in Meredith’s house from the first day she arrived.

She knew where the better coffee cups were kept.

She laughed too easily at Preston’s private jokes.

She wore a perfume that seemed to linger long after she left.

At first, Meredith had told herself she was imagining things.

Pregnancy made people emotional, she had said to Harper.

Preston was busy.

Sloan was just one more woman from his business circle who knew how to act like every room belonged to her.

Then Meredith found a lipstick mark on one of the whiskey glasses in Preston’s study three days earlier.

Deep rose.

Sloan’s exact shade.

When Meredith had asked him about it, Preston smiled and kissed her forehead and said one of the assistants must have brought in the wrong glass from a charity event.

He always had an explanation.

He had one now too.

“Get out,” Meredith said.

Preston looked at her as if he had misheard.

Harper stepped forward.

“She said get out.”

For a brief second the gracious husband vanished and the man beneath him looked directly at Harper with open annoyance.

Then he smoothed his expression.

“I’ll be just outside when she’s ready to be reasonable,” he said.

When the door shut behind him, Meredith began to shake so hard the monitor picked it up.

Harper leaned in immediately.

“Listen to me.

Lucia told me Sloan arrived at the house after Preston left for the office.

Thirty minutes later she heard you scream.

Sloan ran out the front door before the ambulance arrived.”

Meredith stared at her.

“Then why isn’t she under arrest?”

“Because Preston told responding officers you got dizzy and fell.

Sloan backed him up by phone.

Lucia only saw Sloan leaving, not the push.

And you were unconscious when they questioned everyone.”

Meredith closed her eyes.

The panic came quickly, cold and suffocating.

Her husband and his mistress had decided the story before she even woke up.

Then Harper reached into her bag and pulled out Meredith’s phone.

“It’s not just your word against theirs,” she said.

Meredith frowned.

Harper unlocked the phone using her fingerprint, opened an app, and turned the screen toward her.

The pale icon made Meredith’s breath catch.

Two weeks earlier, Harper had given her a smart baby monitor as a shower gift.

Because the nursery painters were still working upstairs, the installer had mounted it temporarily above a narrow console table outside the nursery door.

He