CHAPTER 8- YOU WERE RIGHT

I didn't sleep that night.

I sat in the nursing chair long after my baby settled, the door closed, the room swallowed in darkness, turning the same sharp images over and over in my mind until they cut deeper each time.

The way Celeste stood in that doorway. The way she had looked at my son.

Not with warmth. Not with the soft, involuntary pull that babies draw from almost anyone. No—this was measured and deliberate.

Like she was studying something that already belonged to her. The memory sat cold in my stomach, refusing to loosen its grip.

By morning the decision hardened inside me. I was going to talk to Dominic.

Not about the messages. Not yet. Just about this—about a woman who was in our home for less than two weeks and was already standing outside my baby's room at nine at night like she had every right.

I would stay calm and specific. I would say exactly what I saw and force him to respond.

That was the plan.

I waited until I heard the front door click shut behind Celeste at eight-fifteen.

I counted to ten, slow and deliberate, then walked to the bedroom.

Dominic stood at the mirror adjusting his tie—those automatic motions, hands working without thought, his mind already miles away.

He caught my reflection and asked, “Everything okay?”

“I want to talk to you.”

His hands paused for half a second on the silk. “I’ve got a nine o’clock meeting.”

“This won’t take long.” I sat on the edge of the bed, deliberate, anchoring myself there so he’d understand this wasn’t casual hallway chatter.

“It’s about Celeste. I'm uncomfortable with her presence.”

He turned from the mirror then. Really looked at me. “Uncomfortable how?”

“She makes me uncomfortable.” My voice stayed level, but I felt the strain in my throat.

“I need you to hear that clearly—not as some complaint, but as something I’m telling you because you’re my husband and I need you to know.”

He waited.

“She’s been here less than two weeks and she’s already rearranged the kitchen to your preferences. Not mine. Yours. She sits at our dinner table and steers conversations I can’t even get a foothold in. She’s inserting herself into the center of this household, and you’re letting her do it like it’s completely normal.”

I swallowed. “And last night I found her standing in the nursery doorway, just… looking at Luca.”

“She heard him—”

“He didn’t cry. He stirred. There’s a difference.”

I held his gaze, my pulse loud in my ears. “And the way she was looking at him, Dominic… It didn’t feel like someone who heard a baby and got worried. It felt like something else. I can’t explain it better right now, but I need you to take this seriously.”

Silence stretched between us.

For one fragile moment I thought—he’s going to hear me. He’s actually going to hear me.

Then he reached for his jacket draped over the chair.

“You’re being insecure, Amara.”

He said it flatly, like stating tomorrow’s weather. Already decided. He picked up his phone from the nightstand and glanced at the screen, the conversation apparently over.

I kept going anyway, words tumbling out about the dinner table, the kitchen, the way Celeste moved through our home like she already knew its rhythms.

Three sentences in, I realized he wasn’t listening at all. He was scrolling, I stopped mid-sentence.

He didn’t even glance up.

I sat there on the edge of our bed, watching him scroll, the silence pressing in like a weight on my chest.

I stopped talking and he didn’t notice. Not because he was distracted—because what I was saying was already dismissed, filed away under insecure.

I stood up, legs unsteady.

“I need to get Luca up,” I said quietly.

“Mmm.” Eyes still on the phone. “I’ll be late tonight.”

I left before my voice could crack.

I had Luca strapped against my chest in the carrier and was out of the apartment by nine.

I didn’t choose a direction. My feet simply moved, the city rising around us, Luca’s warmth the only steady thing while my mind spun in the same tight, painful loop.

“You’re being insecure “, the words chased me all the way to Nina’s building.

I pressed her buzzer before I could second-guess myself.

The intercom crackled. “Hello?”

“It’s me.”

A short pause. Then the door buzzed open.

She was waiting in the hallway when the lift doors opened—still in her scrubs from the night shift, hair pulled back tight, mug clutched in both hands like it was the only thing keeping her grounded.

One look at my face and she stepped aside without a word. No questions, just quiet space.

I stepped inside.

I sat at her kitchen table and poured it all out.

Nina listened without moving, her face tight with focus. When I finished she set her mug down carefully.

“You were right,” I whispered, voice raw. “About everything. You’ve been right for weeks and I kept telling you I was fine.”

She looked at me for a long moment, something heavy in her eyes.

“I know darling,” she said quietly.

No triumph in it. Just the quiet grief of someone who would have given anything to be wrong.

She reached across the table and covered my hand with hers, warm and steady.

“Okay,” she said. “So now we gotta figure out what we’re actually dealing with.”

“I don’t even know what it is yet,” I said, the words catching. “I don’t know if she and Dominic are—I don’t know what—” I couldn’t finish.

“I know.” She squeezed my hand tighter. “But we need to understand what we’re looking at before you do anything.” She stood. “Stay there.”

She disappeared into the living room. I heard her open her laptop.

When she returned she sat right beside me instead of across the table, turning the screen so we could both see. She typed, scrolled, then stopped.

“I did some digging after our last conversation,” she said, voice low. “I hope that’s okay.”

“What kind of digging?”

“The quiet kind.” She angled the laptop toward me. “Look at this.”

It was a professional event photo—glossy, polished, full of people in expensive clothes with performance connection.

Near the right edge was unmistakably Celeste. She was laughing at something the man beside her said, turned toward him with easy familiarity.

The man was silver-haired, broad-shouldered, radiating the kind of power that doesn’t need to announce itself.

“Do you know him?” Nina asked.

Something about his face tugged at a memory—business pages, maybe. “No,” I said slowly.

“His name is Richard Holt.” Nina’s tone stayed careful. “Senior director of acquisitions at Renford Capital.”

The name landed like ice in my veins.

Renford Capital.

Dominic always spoke about it with that particular tightness—the rival that had been circling Sinclair Group for over a year. The one that made his board nervous.

The name I overheard in hushed, angry conversations behind closed doors. His most dangerous competitor.

Nina gave me a moment to absorb it.

“It might be nothing,” she added. “Celeste runs in those circles. She could know people from Renford through—”

“It’s not nothing,” I cut in, sharper than I meant.

Nina went quiet.

I kept staring at the photo—at the settled ease between them. Not stiff networking politeness. Something deeper. Like two people who didn’t need to pretend.

“It’s not nothing,” I repeated, softer this time, almost to myself.

Nina closed the laptop with deliberate slowness.

We sat there in her kitchen, the weight of it settling over me. Everything that had been building since that moment on the bathroom counter, since the nursery doorway, since “you’re being insecure, Amara”, it shifted and hardened. It took on a shape I could finally see.

This wasn’t just about my marriage anymore.

This was something bigger and darker. And I was only beginning to understand how deep it went.