Chapter 5 - THE WOMAN IN THE RED DRESS
Rebecca Shaw entered my hospital room wearing the same red dress she had worn when my husband saved her.
A wool coat covered most of it, but I recognized the silk beneath the collar.
I remembered seeing that red fabric through the lake while my lungs filled with water.
For one violent moment, I wanted hospital security to drag her into the hallway.
Then I saw her face.
A bruise darkened her left temple.
Her lips were colorless.
She looked over her shoulder twice before closing the door.
“David can’t know I’m here.”
Maya rose from the chair beside my bed.
“You have thirty seconds to explain why I shouldn’t call the sheriff.”
Rebecca stared at her.
“Who are you?”
“Simone’s attorney.”
Fear moved across Rebecca’s face.
“That means he was right.”
“About what?” I asked.
“That you’re preparing to destroy him.”
The accusation should have made me furious.
Instead, it exhausted me.
I looked through the window toward the NICU corridor.
My daughter had survived another night.
She remained on respiratory support, but her oxygen requirements had decreased.
Every hour brought a new number to fear or celebrate.
I no longer had energy for another person’s version of David’s innocence.
“Your phone is with law enforcement,” I said.
Rebecca stepped backward.
“You read it.”
“I read enough.”
She closed her eyes.
“He told me your marriage was over.”
“Did he also tell you I was pregnant?”
“Yes.”
The honesty surprised me.
“He said you wanted the baby but not him.”
“He said you had been living separate lives for years.”
“We shared a bed three nights ago.”
Her eyes opened.
“I didn’t know that.”
“You knew he was married.”
“I knew what he wanted me to know.”
“And you accepted it because the lie gave you permission.”
The words struck her.
She folded her arms tightly across her body.
“I didn’t come here to ask forgiveness.”
“Good.”
“I came because I think David is going to blame both of us.”
Maya moved closer.
“Sit down.”
Rebecca remained standing.
She looked at me with a mixture of guilt and resentment.
“He called me after leaving your room.”
“He said you stole my phone and planned to release private photographs.”
“The phone was found near the railing.”
“I know.”
“He wanted me to report that you took it before the event.”
Maya’s expression sharpened.
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Rebecca laughed bitterly.
“Because even I’m not stupid enough to file a false police report when seventy people saw me carrying it.”
She sat near the foot of the bed.
“I thought he loved me.”
The sentence hung between us.
It was easy to hate a confident mistress in a red dress.
It was harder to understand the frightened woman who had built her future on the promises of a practiced liar.
Understanding did not require absolution.
But hatred would not give me the truth.
“How did you fall?” I asked.
Rebecca’s eyes moved toward the floor.
“I was arguing with him.”
“About what?”
“You.”
I waited.
“He told me the Juniper event would be the last time we had to pretend.”
“He said he would tell you about us before the baby arrived.”
“Yesterday morning, I realized he hadn’t spoken to an attorney.”
“I confronted him beside the dock.”
“Why were you near a closed structure?”
“It wasn’t closed.”
“The warning tape had been removed.”
“David told me it was safe.”
“Your message said he removed the ugly tape.”
She looked ashamed.
“I thought it was cosmetic.”
“You joked about an inspector’s warning.”
“I thought the inspection involved loose boards.”
“I didn’t know the railing could collapse.”
“You still knew guests were being kept away for a reason.”
Rebecca’s voice rose.
“Yes.”
“I made a selfish decision.”
“I was sleeping with your husband.”
“I believed every beautiful lie he told me because I wanted what he promised.”
“You don’t need to explain to me that I behaved badly.”
“I already know.”
Maya interrupted.
“Describe the argument.”
Rebecca inhaled slowly.
“I told him he had until midnight to announce he was stepping away from the marriage.”
“He said I was creating a scene.”
“I said I would tell you myself.”
“I tried to walk toward you.”
“He grabbed my arm.”
“Did he push you?”
“No.”
“Not exactly.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“He pulled me backward.”
“I lost my balance and struck you.”
“We both fell against the railing.”
The memory returned in fragments.
Rebecca’s shoulder crashing into mine.
David’s hand around her wrist.
Wood splintering.
The red scarf leaving her neck.
“Why didn’t you tell the sheriff?”
“David said nobody would believe me.”
“He said the security system was offline because of the storm.”
“It wasn’t.”
She shook her head.
“No.”
“That’s why I came.”
“He called the security director from my clinic room.”
“He ordered him to erase footage from the western terrace.”
“Did the director agree?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s his name?”
“Colin Mercer.”
Maya wrote it down.
“The sheriff says someone loosened the railing,” I said.
Rebecca stared at me.
“What?”
“Bolts had been removed before the reception.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because I saw David working on the railing that morning.”
The room became completely still.
My heartbeat pounded against the monitor leads.
“What exactly did you see?”
Rebecca pressed both hands against her temples.
“I arrived early because he asked me to review press materials.”
“I went outside to smoke.”
“David was near the western dock with a toolbox.”
“He said maintenance workers had left equipment behind and he was moving it.”
“Was anyone else there?”
“A man in a maintenance uniform.”
“Did you recognize him?”
“No.”
“David gave him an envelope.”
“What kind of envelope?”
“White.”
“Thick.”
The shape of the conspiracy began emerging.
But one question refused to settle.
Why would David deliberately weaken a railing at an event attended by investors, officials, and his pregnant wife?
Even he could not predict who would lean against it.
Unless he did not intend for the entire dock to collapse.
Unless he needed a smaller accident.
A visible failure that could be blamed on my forged approval.
Carter Lakeside carried an executive liability policy worth thirty million dollars.
If a structural failure delayed Juniper Shores, the policy could cover certain losses.
A scandal involving me might also allow David to remove me from leadership and force the sale of my shares.
Had he intended to create a controlled incident?
Had he paid someone to loosen enough bolts to produce damage without expecting anyone to fall?
Negligence was horrifying.
Sabotage was something else.
“David wanted the Juniper financing delayed,” I said.
Maya looked at me.
“Why?”
“The current appraisal undervalues the northern parcels.”
“If approval were postponed until the county rezoned the shoreline, the project value could increase by nearly forty percent.”
“Who would benefit?”
“Anyone buying private shares before the new appraisal.”
Nathan entered carrying financial printouts.
He stopped when he saw Rebecca.
“What is she doing here?”
“Giving us a reason to inspect David’s recent investments,” Maya said.
Nathan placed the documents on the table.
“I already did.”
He turned to Rebecca.
“The consulting company paying for your apartment is owned by a holding group called Redwater Capital.”
Rebecca went pale.
“David said it belonged to the company.”
“It doesn’t.”
Nathan unfolded an ownership chart.
“Redwater has been quietly purchasing minority shares from Carter Lakeside employees.”
“At the current valuation, those shares are worth about eighteen million.”
“After rezoning, they could be worth more than twenty-five.”
“Who owns Redwater?” I asked.
“The records lead through three shell companies.”
“But the final authorization uses the initials D.A.C.”
David Alexander Carter.
My husband had been buying pieces of his own company through a hidden entity while engineering a delay that would increase their value.
Rebecca was not only his mistress.
She was an expense hidden inside the scheme.
And I was the intended scapegoat.
“Did you sign anything for Redwater?” Maya asked her.
Rebecca hesitated.
“A communications agreement.”
“Anything else?”
“A statement saying Simone directed me to suppress negative project coverage.”
I stared at her.
“You signed that?”
“David said it was internal protection.”
“Protection from whom?”
“The board.”
Nathan pushed away from the table.
“You helped him create evidence against Simone.”
“I didn’t know about the railing.”
“You knew he was targeting her.”
Rebecca stood.
“You think I’m proud of this?”
“I thought he was trapped in a cruel marriage.”
“He showed me emails in which Simone supposedly threatened to ruin him.”
“I believed him.”
“What emails?” I asked.
She removed several folded pages from her coat.
The messages carried my name and company address.
They accused David of incompetence, threatened to use my pregnancy to manipulate the board, and called Rebecca a disposable employee.
I had written none of them.
The phrasing sounded nothing like me.
But the formatting was convincing.
“He fabricated an entire version of me,” I whispered.
“He made me cruel enough to justify what he wanted to do.”
Rebecca’s eyes filled with tears.
“I’m sorry.”
The apology could not restore the months she had knowingly taken from my marriage.
It could not erase the image of David holding her on the shore.
But it was the first honest thing anyone connected to him had given me.
Maya gathered the documents.
“Will you make a formal statement?”
Rebecca’s fear returned.
“If I do, he’ll destroy my career.”
“If you don’t, he may frame you for sabotage.”
“He wouldn’t.”
I looked at her.
“Yesterday you believed he would leave his pregnant wife for you.”
“Today you know he forged evidence against me and lied about the dock.”
“How many more discoveries will it take before you stop trusting the promises of a man who swam toward you only because he expected me not to survive?”
Rebecca flinched.
The sentence hurt both of us.
She nodded slowly.
“I’ll speak to the sheriff.”
A nurse entered before Maya could respond.
Her face carried the careful expression I had learned to fear.
“Mrs. Carter, the neonatal doctor needs you in the NICU.”
My entire body went cold.
“What happened?”
“Isabella’s oxygen level has dropped.”
I tried to stand before remembering the incision.
Pain folded me forward.
Maya caught my arm.
A wheelchair arrived.
We moved through the corridor while alarms sounded behind the NICU doors.
Doctors surrounded Izzy’s incubator.
Her tiny chest struggled beneath the pink blanket.
Dr. Alvarez met me near the entrance.
“She may have developed a complication involving bleeding in the brain.”
The words struck like water closing above my head.
“Is she going to die?”
“We don’t know yet.”
As nurses prepared Izzy for imaging, Maya’s phone rang.
She stepped aside, listened, and returned with another blow.
“David has called an emergency board meeting.”
“For what?”
“He filed a motion to suspend you from Carter Lakeside.”
“On what grounds?”
Maya looked toward my daughter.
“He submitted the forged safety report.”
Through the glass, doctors lifted Izzy from her incubator.
Across the city, my husband was using my signature to make me responsible for the accident that had nearly killed us both.
I pressed my palm against the window.
David believed fear for my daughter would keep me too weak to fight.
He had forgotten that motherhood did not make a woman fragile.
May you like
Sometimes it gave her something powerful enough to burn an empire down.
Continue to Chapter 6 to learn whether Isabella survives the NICU crisis—and how Simone walks into David’s emergency board meeting with a witness he never expected to see again.
