Chapter 2
The biology building reeked of formalin and disinfectant—cold and clinical. I tightened my grip on the black folder and pushed open the heavy oak door of the tiered lecture hall.
What I saw was a rusty scalpel carving straight into my retinas.
There was no cadaver on the dissection table.
It was Lucas—shirtless, half-naked. Young, flushed skin slick with sweat. And my wife, who normally wouldn’t touch a specimen without double gloves, was barehanded.
“Watch closely—the origin and insertion of the external oblique…” Emma’s voice carried a sticky sweetness that made me sick.
Her fingers weren’t guiding anything academic. Those manicured hands slid along the edge of Lucas’s hard chest, slow, teasing—down, down—until they disappeared toward the dangerous line of his athletic shorts.
The frat boys in the back erupted in wolfish, dirty howls.
Lucas didn’t flinch. He arched his waist on purpose. He raised an eyebrow and shot Emma a smile full of implication and ownership across half the classroom.
And my wife—an untouchable Ivy League professor—blushed like a lovesick girl, her face wearing that doting warmth.
Acid surged into my throat.
I didn’t storm in and smash the podium. I didn’t want a trashy screaming match.
I wanted one fatal cut.
That ugly cheering echoed in my skull for the rest of the day—until night, when it was crushed under the pounding bass of a frat bar.
I cut through the crowd and found the sandy-golden curls in a booth instantly.
“Man, you’re insane.” A guy in a baseball cap slammed down beer. “Med school’s like a one-in-a-hundred-thousand shot!”
Lucas leaned back smugly, legs thrown on the glass table. “So what? As long as I keep that ‘iceberg professor’ happy in bed, I’ll have a full scholarship offer to pick from.”
“Her husband—some cardiothoracic chief—hasn’t noticed?”
“That boring old fossil?” Lucas snorted, swirling cheap whiskey. “The idiot can’t even tell when his wife switches perfume. He deserves the horns.”
Rage compressed until it turned lethal.
I walked straight up and sat down across from Lucas without a word, carrying the absolute pressure of a chief cardiothoracic surgeon.
The air froze. Baseball Cap’s grin stuck. He scrambled away from the booth.
“Lucas, right?” I stared into his pupils as they widened in shock. My voice was cold as a morgue table. “Sleeping with another man’s wife to buy yourself a ticket into med school—do you really think you’re walking away whole?”
Lucas went pale for an instant, but years of street-level shamelessness steadied him fast.
“Dr. James, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He leaned forward with a taunting smile. “Professor Emma just appreciates my ‘potential.’ What—your old body can’t satisfy her, so you came here to envy a young man with experience?”
As he leaned in, a flash of silver slipped from his collar like lightning hitting my skull.
An antique silver cross.
On the back was a tiny scratch—one my father left when he clutched it in his final moments ten years ago.
Two years ago, during our Florence anniversary, Emma claimed our hotel was robbed. This cross—my most precious heirloom—vanished. I sank into a month-long depression.
There had never been a thief.
The thief was my wife.
She’d given my dead father’s heirloom to her boy toy.
“Give it back.”
I lunged, grabbed Lucas by the collar, and seized the cross. I yanked hard.
Snap—
The chain broke, carving a thin bloody line into Lucas’s neck.
“Are you insane? That’s my lucky charm—Emma gave it to me!” Lucas clutched his neck and roared, trying to sound brave. But panic flashed behind his eyes.
“Lucky charm?” I looked down at the heirloom in my palm, tainted with filth, and whatever last shred of hope I had for this marriage turned to ash. “It’s your ticket to hell.”
The jagged edge of the broken cross cut into my palm. That sharp pain drove my foot onto the accelerator and sent me racing back to the cold hell called “home.”
I pulled the dashcam memory card. As soon as I backed up the bar conversation to an encrypted cloud, the front door was slammed open.
Emma stormed into the study like a furious lioness, her perfect makeup twisted by rage.
“James—what the hell is wrong with you?” She threw the black teaching folder onto my desk. “Who gave you the right to threaten Lucas in public? Do you know he was so scared tonight he couldn’t even hold a scalpel?”
I calmly pulled out the USB drive and looked up at the woman who once swore she’d grow old with me.
No explanation. No panic at being exposed.
Her first instinct was to worry about her affair partner’s feelings.
“Threaten?” I stood, my height pressing down on her. “I thought you’d start by explaining why a pre-med who can’t tell a tendon from a ligament is your ‘special talent’ worth grooming.”
“You know anything about tailored instruction?” Emma screamed, arrogance and favoritism dripping from every word. “Lucas is a genius with real talent! You’re just jealous he’s young and alive. You’re a controlling, toxic male chauvinist—someone like you can’t stand me having my own excellent academic resources!”
Watching her wrap adultery in righteous academic language, I laughed.
This was her real face—the rotting stench beneath the shiny academic skin.
