Chapter 2 - The Seventeen Entries
The drive from O'Hare to my parents' home in Winnetka usually took forty minutes. That afternoon, it felt like an eternity.
My father talked endlessly about the architecture of Zurich, the efficiency of Swiss trains, and how much his new knee appreciated European cobblestone streets. My mother chattered about the chocolate shops and the quaint bed-and-breakfasts they had stayed in. Every few minutes, they would ask me a question about Daniel—How is the venture capital firm doing? Is he still working seventy-hour weeks? We missed him so much at Sunday dinner.
“He’s... he’s working very hard, Mom,” I managed to say, my voice steady, though my knuckles were white against the steering wheel. “You know Daniel. Always on a plane, always closing a deal.”
“That boy works too much,” my father chuckled good-naturedly. “Reminds me of myself thirty years ago. Make sure he takes a break, Emma. A wife has to keep her husband grounded.”
Grounded. The word tasted like ash in my mouth.
After dropping them off, refusing their invitation to stay for dinner under the pretext of a sudden migraine, I pulled out of their driveway and headed south toward the city. The sun was dipping below the skyline, casting long, bruised shadows across the highway.
I couldn't go home yet. Our house in Lincoln Park—a modern brownstone we had bought together three years ago—felt like a crime scene waiting for me to walk inside.
I pulled off the highway at a brightly lit Shell gas station near Fullerton Avenue, parked beside a vacuum station, and turned off the engine. The interior of the car was dead silent except for the rhythmic clicking of the cooling engine.
I pulled out my phone, opened my browser, and navigated to an internal employee portal link: Vance-Sterling Hospitality Management - Corporate Access & VIP Logs.
As an executive board member of my family’s corporation, I had master administrative clearance across all our properties, lounges, and private transport hubs in Chicago, New York, London, and beyond. Every time someone used a corporate VIP card or private transit lane, the system logged the timestamp, location, and associated membership ID.
I logged in using my biometric passkey.
Search Parameters: Member ID - Daniel Vance-Ashworth (Spouse Tier 1).
The screen refreshed. A dense list of digital logs populated the display, stretching back over the last six months.
My breath hitched.
Daniel had used our private Chicago VIP access lane seventeen times in the last six months alone.
Seventeen times.
My mind raced backward, matching dates and airline codes. Daniel had told me he was in London for a fintech merger last November. The log showed a VIP terminal entry at O'Hare at 6:00 AM on a Tuesday. He had claimed he was flying to New York for a board meeting in January. The log showed a private tarmac arrival in Miami.
Out of seventeen recorded entries, I only knew about four. Four legitimate business trips where he had either asked me to book his transport or mentioned it casually over breakfast.
The other thirteen trips were absolute ghosts. Phantom journeys to destinations he had never mentioned, or worse—trips where he claimed to be halfway across the world while he was clearly right here in the United States, or returning from romantic getaways.
My fingers trembled as I scrolled further down the screen, expanding the guest metadata fields for each entry.
Then I noticed something that made my blood run instantly cold.
Eleven of those seventeen entries listed a secondary authorized guest under Daniel’s primary membership profile.
A name I had never seen on any corporate document, never heard at a dinner party, and never suspected in a million years.
Vanessa Reed.
I stared at the name on the screen, the glowing letters burning into my retinas.
Vanessa Reed.
I opened a new browser tab and typed her name into Google.
The search results populated instantly. LinkedIn profile: Senior Marketing Consultant at Apex Media Solutions, Chicago. Corporate headshot: a striking woman with long caramel-blonde hair, smiling confidently in a charcoal blazer. Instagram profile: public, filled with photos of luxury beach resorts, first-class airline seats, rooftop champagne bars in downtown Chicago, and weekend getaways in Cabo San Lucas and Aspen.
My chest tightened so painfully I could barely draw breath.
I clicked through her Instagram feed, scrolling back through months of posts. And there she was, smiling beside a sleek chartered yacht in Miami last October—a weekend Daniel had claimed he was stuck in a windowless hotel conference room in Dallas hashing out a software acquisition.
Then I clicked on a group photo taken at a charity gala in downtown Chicago six months ago.
I zoomed in on the background, my hands going completely numb.
In the reflection of a polished glass sculpture behind Vanessa stood Daniel. He wasn't looking at the camera. He was looking at her with a look of such raw, unfiltered adoration and intimacy that it felt like a dagger twisting in my ribs.
They weren't just having a casual fling.
They had been living a parallel life right under my nose for over half a year, funding their luxury getaways with my family’s corporate perks and hiding behind the respectable facade of my reputation.
I dropped my phone onto the passenger seat, gripping the steering wheel so hard my fingers ached.
The grief and shock I had felt at the airport began to curdle, boiling away into something dark, heavy, and lethal.
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I didn't cry anymore. Tears were for women who didn't know the truth. I knew the truth now. And truth, in the hands of a Vance, was a weapon.
I turned the ignition key, put the car in drive, and pointed the hood toward Lincoln Park.
