SIX MONTHS UNDER HIS MARK

The lasagna was still warm when I let myself into Cade’s penthouse.

I held the foil tray in one hand and the wedding timeline in the other. Three weeks left. Venue done. Flowers done. Seating chart almost done. At lunch I had fixed two family tables because my mother kept moving Sloane closer to Cade’s parents.

I smiled at that, like it was sweet.

The key turned the way it always did. Soft click. Soft hall light. His cologne in the air, expensive and familiar. I set my bag by the shoe rack and called his name once.

No answer.

I thought he was in the shower. I thought I was early. I thought I would set the food down, kiss him, and go over the printout like we did every Sunday.

I walked toward the kitchen.

That was when I heard it.

A laugh.

Not his.

Sloane’s.

My sister’s laugh was high and bright, the kind she used when she wanted someone to look at her. It came from the bedroom. Our bedroom. The door was not fully closed.

I stopped walking.

The tray burned my palm through the foil. I did not feel it yet. I heard the mattress move. I heard Cade make a sound I knew from nights with my face in his neck. Then Sloane laughed again, softer, like she had won something.

I pushed the door with the back of my hand.

They did not hear me at first.

Cade was on his back. Sloane was over him. Her dark hair stuck to her shoulder. The white sheets were twisted around their hips. Those sheets. The ones his mother sent last month with a card that said they were for the home we would build. I had washed them twice. I had put them on the bed that morning.

His championship watch was on Sloane’s wrist. Gold. Heavy. The watch he almost never took off.

He saw me first.

His eyes went wide. His hands left her waist like her skin had burned him.

“Lyra.”

Sloane turned her head. For one second she looked young. Then her mouth opened, and nothing honest came out.

I did not scream.

The room was too quiet for screaming. The city hummed behind the glass. The air system clicked. A phone buzzed on the nightstand. Mine was still in my bag by the door.

I set the lasagna on the dresser. I set the printout beside it. My fingers did not shake until I took out my phone.

I took the first photo of the bed.

Then the clothes on the floor. His black shirt. Her pink dress. My silk robe on the chair, the one she borrowed last Christmas and never brought back.

Then the watch on her wrist.

Cade pulled the sheet up. “Lyra, wait. It is not—”

“Do not.”

My voice sounded like it still belonged to a woman with a job, a wedding, and a family on her side.

I took one more photo. Wide. Enough of their faces that no one could call it a shadow.

Sloane started crying. It was a pretty cry. She had always known how to do that.

“Lyra, please. I did not mean for you to see it like this.”

Like this. As if there was a kind way to see your sister in your fiancé’s bed.

A memory hit me without asking.

Night. Two years ago. Cade’s old apartment. He sat on the couch with his head in his hands after a bad press week. He asked me to represent him. He said he trusted me more than anyone in the building. I said yes before he finished. I built his name until people in the league said it like money.

Another memory.

Six months ago. Sloane on my couch at midnight, mascara on her cheek. She whispered that she would never find anyone. That men looked through her. That she was tired of being the pretty sister with nothing real. I made her tea. I let her sleep in my bed. I told her she would find someone.

I had believed both nights.

The warmth of those nights sat in my chest for one breath. Then it broke.

I turned away from the bed.

Cade came after me with the sheet around his waist. “Listen to me. It happened once. It was a mistake. We can—”

“Put on pants.”

He stopped talking. He looked at Sloane. She looked at him. That look was older than once.

I walked to the kitchen.

The prenup draft was on the counter under a magazine, right where I left it on Tuesday after his lawyer sent the signed copy back. My initials. His. A tab on gifts. Another tab on public statements if we ever split.

I picked it up.

Cade appeared in the doorway in sweatpants, hair messy, mouth already shaping the next line.

“I love you,” he said. “You know that. Sloane and I… it was stress. The wedding. Your hours. You have been gone so much with work.”

There it was. The usual script. I was too busy. I was too sharp. I had made myself easy to replace.

Sloane stood behind him in my robe. She had taken it from the chair.

“I am so sorry,” she whispered. “I was lonely. He said you two were already drifting.”

I looked at her. Same mouth as mine. Same eyes our father called Vance eyes. I had spent years making space for her in rooms that did not want both of us.

“Get out of my robe.”

She flinched. She did not take it off.

Cade stepped closer. “Do not do something you cannot take back. If this gets out, it hurts all of us. Your job. My season. Your parents. Think.”

I folded the prenup once and slid it into my bag with my phone.

“I am thinking.”

“Lyra.”

I picked up my bag. I did not take the lasagna. I did not take the printout. Three weeks of tables and flowers could stay on his dresser.

I walked to the door in the dress I had worn to our dinner reservation. Black. Simple. The one he liked because it made me look soft.

My hands were steady when I opened the door.

“Lyra, wait.”

I did not wait.

The hallway smelled like someone else’s dinner. The elevator took too long. I watched the floor numbers fall and felt my pulse in my throat. When the doors opened on the lobby, I walked through the glass like I still knew how to stand up straight.

Outside, the air was warm. Harbor City traffic moved like it had somewhere better to be. I stood on the curb with my bag against my hip and the prenup paper sharp against my phone.

I should have called Tessa.

I should have called a car and gone to a hotel.

I unlocked my phone instead and looked at the photos. Bed. Clothes. Watch. Faces.

They were clear.

My screen lit with an incoming call.

Mom.

I stared at her name.

Sloane was faster than shame. Of course she was. She had probably called while I was still in the kitchen, voice shaking, already writing the version where I was cruel and she was scared and Cade was confused.

I let it ring once.

Twice.

I answered because a stupid part of me still thought a mother might ask if I was all right.

“Lyra,” Vivian said. Not hello. Not baby. My name like a problem. “Come to the house. Now. Do not make a scene in public. Sloane already told us. We can handle this as a family if you do not lose your head.”

Sloane had gotten there first.

I looked back up at the penthouse windows. The bedroom light was still on.

“I am not coming tonight,” I said.

“You will. Your father is on his way home. Cade is family. We are not going to throw away a future because you walked in at the wrong time.”

Wrong time.

I ended the call.

My phone buzzed again at once. Mom. Then Sloane. Then Cade.

I turned the sound off.

The dress stuck to my back. My mouth tasted like metal. I started walking because standing still made the pictures behind my eyes too sharp.

Two blocks later I sat on a low wall outside a closed coffee shop and opened the photos again. I sent them to myself on another account. Then I sent a scan of the prenup to the same place. Then I sat there with my thumb on Tessa’s name and did not press it.

If I called her, it would become real in a second voice.

It was already real.

A couple passed me, laughing. A dog barked. Somewhere a TV in an open window played sports highlights. I heard a commentator say Cade Ellison’s name like it still belonged to a man people trusted.

I stood up.

My phone lit one more time.

Mom.

I did not answer.

A text followed, fast, all in one bubble.

Sloane is here crying. Cade is coming. Do not embarrass this family tonight. Be the bigger person, Lyra. We raised you better than a public tantrum.

I read it twice.

Be the bigger person.

I put the phone in my bag next to the signed prenup and the photos of my sister wearing my future on her wrist.

Then I started walking again, because the night was not finished with me, and my mother had already chosen the story she wanted to keep.

I went to the house because some part of me still wanted to be wrong.

Not about the bed. I had photos for that. I wanted to be wrong about my mother. I wanted the text to be panic, not a plan. I wanted Grant to look at me and see his daughter first, not a problem that needed smoothing.

The Vance house sat behind a neat lawn and a porch light that had not changed since I was sixteen. I parked at the curb because Cade’s car was already in the driveway. Sloane’s too.

Same night. Same dress. I had not gone home. I did not have a home that felt safe enough to change in.

I sat in the car for a full minute with my hands on the wheel. The prenup paper was still in my bag. The photos were still on my phone. My mouth was dry.

Then I got out and walked to the door.

Vivian opened it before I knocked.

She had put on lipstick. She had put on the pearl earrings she wore when she wanted the room to behave. Her eyes moved over my dress, my hair, the f