I was hanging from a suspended window-cleaning platform forty stories above the street when one of my safety cables suddenly dropped and slammed me against my wife’s office window. I wiped the soap off the glass and found Claire in another man’s arms—kissing her wealthy boss like our marriage meant nothing. I thought the worst part of that day was the moment she finally turned, saw me through the glass, and went pale with shock. I was wrong, because less than an hour later a building engineer quietly told me my cable had not failed by accident.

The platform dropped so hard my teeth snapped together.

One second I was dragging my squeegee across a sheet of soapy glass on the fortieth floor of Hawthorne Tower. The next, one of the safety cables jerked, screamed through its guide pulley, and the whole suspended platform fell several feet before my harness caught me.

The bucket slammed into the railing.

My shoulder struck metal.

I grabbed the side bar with both hands and swore into the wind.

“WHAT THE HELL?!”

Below me, traffic streamed through downtown like nothing had happened. Above me, the remaining cables trembled. The platform swung out, then back toward the building.

I was alive. My harness held. My gloves bit into the stabilizing rope as I hauled myself upright.

The platform bumped the exterior glass of the executive offices. Soap smeared the view into a white blur.

Then I saw movement behind it.

Two people.

Close.

Too close.

I pressed forward, breath punching out of me, and wiped a broad arc of foam from the glass with my gloved hand.

Claire.

My wife.

Long blonde hair spilling over one shoulder, cream blouse wrinkled beneath a man’s hand.

And Richard Mercer—her boss, the CEO whose name sat in silver letters on every corporate plaque in that building—had his hands on her waist while she wrapped both arms around his neck and kissed him.

My squeegee slipped from my hand and swung uselessly from its safety cord.

“CLAIRE…?”

She didn’t hear me.

Neither of them did.

I stepped closer to the glass, shock curdling into something hot and sick. Then I slammed one gloved palm against the window so hard the sound cracked across the façade.

“CLAIRE!”

Inside, they broke apart only slightly, still touching, still tangled together. Claire turned her head, confused by the impact. Richard followed her gaze with one hand still around her waist.

Then she saw me.

Claire jerked backward as if someone had struck her.

Her arms fell away from Richard.

Her mouth opened.

Her face turned white.

“ETHAN…?”

Everything stopped.

The city noise below me. The wind. The blood in my ears.

Then Richard moved first. He stepped in front of Claire, not protectively, but possessively. Even through the glass, I could read the calculation in his face.

A minute later, a building engineer burst onto the roof-level service catwalk above me and shouted that emergency protocol had been activated. They reeled the platform to a safer line and brought me inside through the maintenance access corridor.

My knees were still shaking when the engineer, a gray-haired man named Luis whom I’d known in passing for years, helped unclip my harness.

“That cable didn’t just slip,” he murmured.

I looked at him.

He lowered his voice even further.

“The locking shackle was half-turned open by hand.”

I stared at him, still tasting betrayal and adrenaline at the same time.

“You mean it was tampered with?”

Luis glanced over his shoulder toward the corridor that led to the executive wing.