Page 12 of Dirty Rotten Cheating Husband

The promotions, the bonuses, the awards, the recognition.

Why aren’t I satisfied?

Maybe it’s because I’m a hardass perfectionist and, although the Chief would never admit it, our years-long governmental fraud investigation had one notable failure. We didn’t capture the kingpin. Harvey Adler was supposed to be the kingpin. But he wasn’t. We learned that after the exact same shit continued after he was jailed, just on a smaller scale. And there was the matter of the missing $50 million that was never recovered.

But I had done my job like I always had—by the book, following the orders I was given precisely. It didn’t do any good to break the rules.

Even though I had only done what I had to do to get the information to build a case against Harvey, I still tried to reach out to Clementine after the trial was over.

I was very uneasy about how she had behaved at the trial.

Why had she even attended?

I told her not to attend.

I left her text messages, left her voice messages, instructed her firmly not to attend.

It was going to be a long, brutal case.

Clementine did not have to testify. Her presence was not required at the trial. She was not under investigation. She had not done anything wrong.

She had always done as I instructed her before.

So why did she come?

Despite what I said, she came anyway. Every single goddamn day, sitting in the same place in the courthouse every time.

I tried to catch her eye, indicate to her that she shouldn’t be here.

But she never met my eyes.

I did my job. I answered every question truthfully, wondering why Clementine had disobeyed me.

Her silent, cool gaze slid over me, and I felt an uneasy prickling of fear at the base of my spine, but I drove it down.

After the trial was over, I went to the house we had shared, to give her some money against its sale. After all, she had done a lot to improve it, done landscaping and had a flourishing flower garden. I had paid for everything and she was still in graduate school. She would need money.

But the house was emptied of all her things.

I walked around to see if she was out back in her flower garden.

But she wasn’t there, and neither were the flowers.

They had all been hacked down, chopped into pieces.

Even the rare rose bush I had bought her on our second anniversary.

I stared at it for several long moments, then finally moved away.

Clementine was gone.

Where had she gone? Where on earth had she gotten money to move out?

I locked away my curiosity and refused to think about the answers.

Clementine was no longer my responsibility.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Chief Thomas asked.

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