On our seventh wedding anniversary, my husband, Lucas Bennett, handed me a heavy, goldembossed envelope containing a tenmilliondollar commercial ticket for a civilian expedition to Mars.

I reached out to take it, but before my fingers could brush the cardstock, luminous lines of translucent text—a relentless cascade of floating commentary—fractured the air before my eyes. [Finally!

My blood pressure just leveled out. This idiot has no clue the flight trajectory takes eighty years!] [God, Lucas has suffered so much.

Seven whole years sneaking around with his true love Bianca—now they can finally be together in broad daylight!] [Their twin boys can finally be legitimized on his family registry!] I froze, the breath catching in my throat.

The dining room, with its lowhanging chandelier and the scent of roasted rosemary chicken, suddenly felt entirely airless. I looked down at the sleek voucher.

Slowly, steadily, I took the pen and signed my name on the passenger line. 1 By 2044, advertisements for commercial deepspace voyages had plastered every billboard in the metropolis.

When the ink dried, a fleeting spark of triumphant relief flickered across Lucas’s eyes before vanishing beneath his usual mask of devoted tenderness. "Paige," he murmured, his voice velvety and warm as he reached out to clasp my hand. "You hold a doctorate in astrophysics.

I know standing on Martian soil has been your lifelong dream.

Being able to give you this... it makes everything I've worked for worthwhile." Above his head, the floating text rolled across my vision in a frantic, venomous tide. [Look at this dumb side character.

She’s literally signing her own death warrant and thanking him for it.] [An eightyyear drift. She’s already thirtythree.

She’ll wither away and rot into space dust long before that rust bucket ever touches Mars!] [That’s what she gets for standing between Lucas and Bianca.

Homewrecking bitch deserves every second of it!] The vitriol was dizzying, stabbing into my chest like shards of frozen glass.

For a split second, I wondered if grief or exhaustion had finally broken my mind, manufacturing vivid hallucinations out of thin air.

I forced air into my lungs, locking my hands beneath the linen tablecloth so he wouldn't see them trembling, and kept my voice level. "It’s so sudden, Lucas.

The fall semester just started at the university.

I don't know if the department chair will approve a sabbatical on such short notice." Lucas leaned across the table, his fingers gently tucking a stray lock of hair behind my ear.

His touch used to make my pulse race; now, it felt like cold oil skimming my skin. "Don't worry about the faculty board," he said soothingly. "I’ve already spoken to Dean Wallace and sorted out your leave of absence.

The transit is only three months.

When your return module touches down, Hazel and I will be waiting at the landing zone with a sea of white lilies and a welcome banner." [Look at him lying through his teeth with that angelic face.

He's probably gagging on the inside.] [Paige is just a driedup, bookish bore in oversized glasses. Bianca is soft, gorgeous, and feminine.

If Lucas didn't need the Chen family’s funding back then, he would've never touched this academic prude.] [Please don’t insult our sweet Bianca by comparing her to that driedup academic.

It’s disgusting.] Bianca Ross.

Lucas’s orphaned "niece"—the young woman he had taken in years ago, the girl he insisted sat beside him at every family Thanksgiving. 2 Before the reality of those floating words could fully settle into my bones, Lucas’s phone buzzed sharply against the polished mahogany table.

He glanced at the screen, answered in a hushed murmur, and listened.

When he hung up, a practiced mask of reluctant urgency fell over his face. "Paige, I have to run into the office." I caught his sleeve, my grip tightening until my knuckles blanched. "Tonight?

Lucas, it’s our anniversary. And it’s Hazel’s sixth birthday.

You promised her." "It’s an emergency with the board," he said, already shrugging into his tailored wool overcoat. "She stayed awake until ten just waiting for you," I said, my voice cracking beneath the weight of an unspeakable dread. "She baked a little chocolate cake with her own hands.

She hasn't even blown out the candles." "I know, sweetheart, and I’m so sorry," Lucas whispered.

He leaned down and pressed a soft, hurried kiss to the crown of my head. "Stay home and wait for me, okay?

I’ll make it up to both of you." [Bianca called and said the twins want their daddy to blow out their birthday candles, and he dropped everything!

God, this is pure romance!] [The wife is hilarious. Does she really not know Bianca’s twin boys share the exact same birthday as her daughter?] [Who cares about her?

She’s going to be launched into deep space to rot anyway!] I stared at the floating characters, feeling as though the floor beneath me had dropped into an abyss.

Every warm, tender memory of the past seven years shattered like brittle ice. When I married Lucas, everyone in our circle envied me. He was the gold standard of modern husbands.

If I offhandedly mentioned craving a specific French pastry from downtown, it would magically appear on my nightstand the following morning.

Even during highstakes executive board meetings, he replied to my texts within minutes. And with Hazel, he had seemed utterly devoted.

He read her bedtime stories every single night, doing animated character voices until she fell asleep.

When she refused to eat carrots, he never lost patience; he painstakingly carved them into tiny stars and crescent moons just to make her giggle.

How could all of it—every single gesture—be a calculated lie? [Wait, why is she grabbing her car keys?] 3 I lunged toward the entryway console, snatched my key fob from the dish, and slipped out the door into the biting autumn wind.

Whether the glowing script in the air was a manifestation of madness or some cosmic revelation, I had to see it with my own eyes. Lucas drove the silver sedan; I took the SUV.

Keeping two car lengths behind him, I tracked his taillights through the neonlit arteries of the city, watching him turn off the main expressway into Riverfront Enclave—an ultraexclusive, gated community of sprawling modern estates.

He pulled into the driveway of a glassandlimestone villa that took my breath away. It was a palace compared to the modest twobedroom apartment where Hazel and I lived.

Lucas stepped out of the vehicle. Before he could reach the portico, the front double doors flew open.

Two chubby boys, around six or seven years old, rushed down the stone steps and threw themselves into his arms. "Daddy! Daddy!" My vision blurred.

Lucas had been diagnosed with severe malefactor infertility early in our marriage.

To give him a child, I had endured eight grueling rounds of IVF, enduring dozens of hormone injections and ovarian aspirations until my body was bruised and swollen.

We finally had Hazel. Yet here were two boys, clearly older than my daughter, calling him father.

A woman stepped out onto the porch, wrapping a plush ivory cashmere coat tightly around her slender frame.

In the cold night air, she looked fragile, delicate, like a white blossom trembling on the verge of falling.

Bianca. "The boys and I have been waiting for hours," she pouted, her voice carrying a sweet, melodic whine. "Why are you so late tonight?" "How do you want to punish me, hmm?" Lucas murmured, pulling her against his chest, burying his face in the crook of her neck with an intimacy that made my stomach heave.

She nipped at his jaw playfully. "Did the old woman sign the papers?" Lucas let out a low, amused chuckle. "She trusts me blindly.

Signed the passenger manifest without reading a single line of the fine print." "Perfect," Bianca purred, resting her head on his shoulder. "She thinks she’s going on a sightseeing cruise, completely unaware it’s an experimental deepspace colony trial on an unproven eightyyear loop." Lucas stroked her hair. "Once her vessel clears low Earth orbit, I’ll bring you and the boys home properly.

A real wedding. The kind you deserve." [Awww! My teeth are rotting from the sweetness! They belong together so much!] [More scenes like this, please!

If these two don't get married right now, I'm rioting!] [LMAO, look at the wife sitting in the dark like a clown.

Lucas already transferred all his private equity to Bianca months ago. Once Paige dies out in the void, her little brat won't even have enough money left for a funeral!

Serves them right!] The tears that had been streaming down my cheeks froze instantly. A cold, razorsharp clarity severed the grief in my chest.

They could betray me, they could mock me, but I would burn the world to the ground before I let anyone touch my daughter.

Lucas ushered the two boys inside the house, but instead of following them, he and Bianca turned back toward his car, slipping into the darkened backseat. 4 I assumed they were heading out somewhere else.

Then, within minutes, the heavy luxury sedan began to rock. Rhythmic, violent, unmistakable. [Holy shit!

Lucas couldn't even wait five minutes to get inside a bedroom?] [Do we get to watch this without a premium subscription?!] [Isn't the wife disgusting?

What kind of cuckold fetish does she have, sitting out there in the cold spying on true love?] Behind the steering wheel of my SUV, the tears dried into salt on my cheeks.

I felt nothing—only a profound, deadening numbness. After nearly half an hour, the car door opened.

Bianca stepped out, her cheeks flushed a deep rose, smoothing down her disheveled cashmere coat before hurrying inside the villa.

Lucas rolled down the driver’s side window, resting an arm on the sill as he lit a cigarette, the ember glowing faintly in the dark.

My limbs felt like lead, but I opened my door, stepped out onto the pavement, and walked over to his car. I pulled open the passenger door and slid into the leather seat beside him.

Lucas flinched, the cigarette nearly slipping from his fingers. The color drained from his face. "PPaige?!

What are you doing here?" I sat rigid, staring straight ahead through the windshield. "I just finished a late meeting," Lucas stammered, words tripping over one another in a panic. "A colleague from the engineering department lives in this complex.

He didn't have a ride, so I dropped him off." The cabin reeked of heavy tobacco, but underneath the sharp smoke, there was an unmistakable, musky tang of sweat and sex.

Lucas clearly caught the scent too.

Desperation flashed in his eyes, morphing quickly into a sleazy, calculated smirk. "Paige... it’s dark out here," he murmured, leaning over the center console, his hand reaching for the buttons of my blouse. "We haven't done this in a car since college..." He was actually trying to initiate sex right here, right now, using my body to mask the evidence of his infidelity.

My hand dropped beside the seat cushion, searching for leverage to push him away, when my fingers brushed against a scrap of silky fabric tucked between the leather seams.

A pair of pale pink lace panties. The bile rose instantly in my throat. I shoved him away, threw open the door, and vomited violently onto the asphalt.