Chapter 3 - The Vice President
The first time Emily truly saw Sloan Whitmore, everything changed.
Emily was seven months pregnant and attending a massive Alder Crest charity gala.
The event was held at a luxury hotel near Bryant Park.
Sloan was the company’s brilliant Vice President of Strategic Partnerships.
She was thirty-two, elegant, blonde, and incredibly comfortable in expensive rooms.
Sloan seemed to change the very temperature of a room when she entered it.
Emily noticed the exact moment Brandon noticed Sloan.
That was the true beginning of the end.
His exhausted shoulders immediately straightened.
His tired, annoyed expression completely disappeared.
When Sloan lightly touched his sleeve, Brandon smiled.
It was a genuine, glowing smile that Emily had not seen directed at her in months.
Emily stood twenty feet away, completely ignored by her husband.
She placed one hand beneath her enormous belly as one of the twins kicked hard.
She whispered to the baby that she saw the betrayal too.
Later that evening, Emily stumbled slightly near the decadent dessert table.
She felt dizzy and grabbed the table for support.
Brandon looked directly at her from across the crowded ballroom.
He did not come over to help his pregnant wife.
Instead, Sloan leaned in and whispered something directly into his ear.
Brandon laughed loudly.
And then, he placed his hand intimately against the small of Sloan’s back.
It was a tiny, fleeting gesture.
But Emily knew that intimacy often revealed itself in those tiny gestures.
Emily decided to go home alone, calling a cab in tears.
When Brandon finally returned to the penthouse long after midnight, Emily was awake and waiting.
She directly asked him if he was sleeping with Sloan.
He froze for less than a single second.
Then he laughed dismissively, a cruel sound that echoed in the quiet room.
He accused her of leaving a work event without telling him just to stage an ambush.
He berated her for waiting four hours just to accuse him of cheating.
Emily calmly repeated her question.
Brandon completely deflected, asking what had happened to the strong woman he married.
He accused her of being overly emotional, suspicious, and crying over everything.
He used her difficult twin pregnancy as the weapon to dismiss her concerns.
He walked toward the bedroom, leaving her standing alone in the hallway.
When she tried to follow him, he turned sharply and snapped.
He claimed he was exhausted from twelve-hour days and shouldn't be put on trial because a coworker stood too close to him.
He leaned in close and aggressively told her to stop creating problems that didn't exist.
But the second file on the USB drive proved every instinct Emily had was correct.
It was a series of high-resolution photos taken by a private investigator.
They showed Brandon and Sloan entering a luxury hotel suite together on the very night Emily had been hospitalized for high blood pressure.
But the final photo was the one that made Emily scream.
It wasn't just Brandon and Sloan in the hotel room.
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There was a third person sitting on the bed, holding a folder full of Emily's medical records.
It was Emily's own doctor.
