After Dark: A Thriller by Minka Kent

Author:Minka Kent [Kent, Minka]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2023-11-13T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 26

SYDNEY

“Hey.” Afton knocks on the half-open door to my med spa suite. With two paper coffee cups in hand, she places them on a little side table before hanging up her purse, shrugging out of her jacket, and getting comfortable in one of my guest chairs.

“Hi,” I say, shutting the door behind her. “Thanks for coming.”

“I brought you a hazelnut latte.” She points to the coffee cups, one is labeled HAZELNUT LATTE, the other DECAF. Her eyes are weary, bloodshot. She looks on the outside the way I feel on the inside.

“Thanks for coming. I don’t want to keep you long. I know you have to get to bed soon.”

Afton waves her hand like it’s no big deal.

“So what’s up?” Cupping the decaf coffee in her hands, she gives me a sleepy grin that soon fades when she sees I’m not smiling.

“I want to know why you’ve been texting my husband in the middle of the night.” I cross my arms, though I don’t mean to come off as defensive or aggressive.

Afton swallows her mouthful of coffee and places the cup aside. Glancing down at her hands, she picks at a hangnail before smoothing her palms along the tops of her thighs.

“I didn’t want to say anything . . .” she begins. “At least not until I had more proof.”

My heart sinks down to my stomach, which is practically on the cold tile floor at this point.

Proof?

“What?” I lean forward, impatient. “What do you know?”

“I don’t know how to say this . . .”

I unclasp my arms and let them fall. “Just say it. Whatever it is, just say it.”

For the love of God.

“The other week, I saw Drew.” She pauses, her eyes searching mine. “At my hotel.”

We don’t have the kind of money to waste on a hotel . . .

But I’m listening.

“He walked past me, kept his head down, got on the elevator,” she speaks, motioning with her hands as if she’s reconstructing the scene from her vivid imagination. “Got off on the fourth floor. I checked the security cameras and saw which room he went into.”

The knots in my middle grow tighter, tenser with each word.

“The room was registered to a girl—a woman, I mean. A young woman,” Afton continues. Her face shifts into a painful grimace.

“Do you know her name?”

Afton draws in a long, slow breath. “Vanessa DeOliveira.”

It doesn’t ring a bell.

I’ve never heard of this person in my life.

One of my patients is a DeOliveira, but she’s my mother’s age and never had any kids.

“You don’t know her?” Afton asks.

I shake my head.

“She never . . . babysat for you or anything?” Afton lifts a brow as she studies me. “She’s young. Graduated from high school a few years ago . . . I thought maybe that’s how she knew Drew?”

The thought of my husband, my soulmate, my high school sweetheart stepping out on me with a high school babysitter is both humiliating and infuriating. Warmth floods my cheeks at the mere thought of this cliched nontruth getting out.

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