Chapter 1 - FIVE MINUTES
The sound of the clippers was the part Sarah Mercer would remember most.
Not Victoria's laughter.
Not the lock clicking behind her.
Not even the first thick strand of dark hair sliding over Sarah's shoulder and landing across the polished floor of Julian's executive office.
The clippers.
That mechanical hum inches from her ear.
“STOP!”
Sarah jerked sideways.
Victoria Lane grabbed the back of her chair.
“What are you doing?!”
Another strip of hair disappeared.
Sarah reached backward, but Victoria twisted away.
“Hold still.”
“You're insane!”
Sarah tried to stand.
Victoria shoved the chair against the desk.
The clippers passed over the side of Sarah's head again.
Dark hair spilled across her ivory blouse.
For fifteen years, Sarah had worn it below her shoulders.
Julian used to wrap it around his fingers when they lay in bed.
He had once told her it was the first thing he noticed when they met.
Now his mistress was cutting it away while smiling.
“STOP!”
Sarah finally knocked Victoria's arm aside.
The clippers flew onto the carpet.
Silence.
Sarah stood.
Her breathing was broken.
One side of her hair was nearly shaved to the scalp.
The other hung unevenly across her face.
Victoria leaned against Julian's desk.
Perfect red dress.
Perfect blonde hair.
Perfect smile.
Sarah looked toward the mirror beside the office bar.
For several seconds she did not recognize herself.
She touched the exposed side of her head.
Her fingers began trembling.
“What did you do?”
Victoria picked up the clippers.
“Fixed something.”
Sarah's eyes filled.
Victoria stepped behind her.
“Look.”
Sarah did not want to.
She looked anyway.
Hair covered the floor.
Her hair.
Pieces of herself scattered beneath the desk where Julian signed multimillion-dollar contracts.
Victoria's reflection appeared over Sarah's shoulder.
“Now you finally look as worthless as he says.”
Sarah went completely still.
Not because the words surprised her.
Because they didn't.
There were things Julian had stopped saying to Sarah's face years ago.
She had simply never known where those words went.
Apparently they went to Victoria.
The office door opened.
Julian Mercer entered holding his phone.
Forty years old.
Chief executive officer of one of Chicago's fastest-growing technology companies.
Navy suit.
Silver watch.
The expression of a man permanently irritated that the rest of the world could not move as efficiently as he did.
He stopped.
His eyes moved from Sarah—
to Victoria—
to the clippers—
to the hair covering his carpet.
Sarah turned toward him.
For one desperate second, she became the wife she had been for thirteen years.
The woman who believed there was still a line her husband would not allow another person to cross.
“She shaved my head, Julian.”
Her voice collapsed.
“She held me down and shaved my head.”
Victoria immediately stepped toward him.
“Julian, she came in here screaming at me.”
Sarah stared.
“What?”
“She attacked me.”
“You—”
Victoria touched Julian's arm.
“I was trying to get away.”
Sarah could barely process the lie.
“The clippers are in your hand.”
Victoria released them.
They landed softly on the carpet.
Julian exhaled.
Not in horror.
Not in anger.
Annoyance.
“Sarah.”
She stared at him.
“Look at me.”
“I am looking at you.”
“No.”
She pointed at her head.
“Look at me.”
His eyes flickered upward.
Then away.
“Stop being dramatic.”
Something inside Sarah became silent.
Victoria moved closer to him.
Julian instinctively pulled her behind his shoulder.
Protected her.
From Sarah.
His wife stood shaking, half her hair on the floor, tears streaking down her face—
and Julian protected Victoria.
Sarah looked at his hand around Victoria's wrist.
Then at his face.
“You chose her.”
Julian's jaw tightened.
“This isn't the time.”
Sarah laughed once.
It sounded nothing like laughter.
“No.”
She picked up her handbag.
“You're right.”
“Sarah—”
She walked out.
Nobody followed her.
The elevator descended forty-seven floors.
Sarah watched herself in the mirrored wall.
Uneven hair.
Red eyes.
Mascara streaked beneath them.
She cried until the elevator reached parking level B3.
Then she stopped.
Something changed between the forty-seventh floor and the garage.
Not healing.
Not forgiveness.
Something colder.
Clarity.
Sarah entered her car.
She locked the doors.
Then opened her phone.
There were three missed calls from a number saved as:
Megan Price — Attorney.
Sarah ignored them.
Instead she called Julian.
He answered on the second ring.
“What now?”
Victoria laughed faintly in the background.
Sarah stared at herself in the rearview mirror.
“You have five minutes.”
Silence.
Julian sighed.
“For what?”
“Bring Victoria to Megan Price's office.”
“What?”
“Make her apologize.”
Julian laughed.
Actually laughed.
Victoria asked something in the background.
Sarah heard Julian cover the phone.
Then he returned.
“You drove away just to make some ridiculous threat?”
“Five minutes, Julian.”
“Sarah, go home.”
“Four minutes and fifty seconds.”
His voice hardened.
“I'm not participating in another one of your emotional episodes.”
Sarah closed her eyes.
There it was.
The phrase he had begun using six months ago.
Emotional episode.
As though sadness were pathology.
As though questions were instability.
As though betrayal became reasonable if the betrayed person cried loudly enough.
“Four minutes thirty.”
“Or what?”
Sarah opened her eyes.
For the first time since Victoria switched on the clippers, her hands were completely still.
She looked at the woman in the mirror.
The hair was gone.
But something else had returned.
“You want to know?”
Julian said nothing.
Sarah's voice became almost gentle.
“Your entire world ends today.”
Julian laughed again.
Then disconnected.
Sarah placed the phone on the passenger seat.
A notification appeared.
Not from Julian.
From Megan.
Are we proceeding?
Sarah stared at the message.
Then at the digital clock.
4:54 p.m.
Six minutes before five.
She typed one word.
Yes.
May you like
And somewhere forty-seven floors above her, Julian Mercer still believed the worst thing that had happened that afternoon was his wife embarrassing him.
He had no idea what Megan Price was holding inside a sealed blue folder.
