Page 228 of My Husband’s New Fiancée

“I’m listening.”

My voice remains calm. Controlled.

“They gave you up.”

I close my eyes for a fraction of a second.

Predictable.

“And why am I only hearing about this now? Explain to me why I pay you.”

Silence.

Incompetents. All of them. I never should have relied on them.

As for Bianca and Gaspard, their betrayal doesn’t even surprise me. Annoying, but manageable.

It will take more than this to stop me.

I hang up and place another call.

The moment the head of R&D at our Amsterdam branch answers, I ask:

“Where do we stand? Have the biochemists found a way to produce the molecule?”

“No. Nothing conclusive. They still can’t stabilize the formula.”

My jaw tightens.

Still nothing.

I pay fortunes to surround myself with incompetence.

After a heavy silence, he asks:

“What if the formula was never the right one?”

I slowly straighten in my seat.

“Explain yourself.”

“We’ve been working on it for weeks. Nothing stabilizes. Nothing is scalable. What if they let us steal exactly what they wanted us to steal?”

A tense stillness lingers in the air.

For the first time, I consider a possibility I truly dislike.

What if I never had the advantage at all? What if the theft itself was part of the trap?

I grit my teeth and end the call.

Why hasn’t this plane taken off yet?

A distant noise draws closer.

I frown.

A siren.