Page 73 of Iridescent
I pull the phone away from my ear, and my stomach drops the second I see what came through.
A photo.
I open it.
A man and a woman fill the screen, bodies pressed close enough to pass for an embrace. One of his arms is locked around her, her face tipped up toward him, both of their profiles caught in damning detail.
Mine.
Isabel’s.
I know exactly when this was taken. The day I caught her before she stepped into the path of an oncoming car.
My wedding anniversary.
Another image comes through before I finish processing the first.
This one is worse.
My car is parked by the roadside, the image taken from far enough away that it should not be clear, and yet it is. The inside of the vehicle is dim, but light from the street and passing headlights catches enough through the glass to make out faces.
Isabel is leaning across the seat toward me, her body tipped into my space, her face close enough to make the frame say exactly what it wants to say.
My jaw locks.
A third image arrives: the two of us in my office just hours ago. I’m holding her wrists, and she’s smiling up at me.
Everything around me tilts.
Shit.
My pulse starts hammering so hard it feels violent.
On the other end of the line, the voice lets the silence stretch just long enough to make sure I’ve seen all of it.
“Do you understand now?”
I say nothing. Because I do.
I understand exactly what those images look like.
I understand exactly what they would do in the hands of a woman who has already spent weeks feeling me slip away from her.
My throat goes dry. The house around me is still silent. Too silent. Empty in a way that suddenly feels unbearable.
If Yara saw these before she walked out of this house, then I know exactly what story they told her.
A story I handed to them myself.
My voice comes out rougher than I intend. “If you sent those to my wife—”
“If?” the caller cuts in.
That one word lands clean and deep. Hot dread twists low in my gut.
The voice drops even lower. “You should be asking yourself how much she saw before she decided she’d had enough.”
The line goes dead.
