If he wasn’t going to love me, he wasn’t going to love anyone.

That thought came later, after the calm. After the click of the front door and the slow creak of the floorboard by the coat rack that had always needed fixing. After the wine glass tipped over accident or symbol, she wasn’t sure. and the white carpet bloomed red like a fresh crime scene.

Detective Claire Monroe had always believed in patterns.

Criminals made patterns. Mistakes, habits. Footprints in the snow of their own undoing.

She wasn’t supposed to be one of them.

It started with a message. A text, late. Not to her. to her husband, Matt.

A name she didn’t recognize.

Three hearts.

A hotel address.

At first, it was just disbelief. Then the old instincts kicked in. She ran the name. Cross-referenced security footage. Dug through digital files she shouldn’t have had access to without a warrant. But she knew all the ways around red tape. that’s what ten years on the force had taught her.

When she saw them together on the hotel cameras. him brushing the woman’s cheek, laughing in a way he hadn’t with her in months; something in her gut hollowed. It wasn’t just the betrayal. It was the ease of it. Like he hadn’t even tried to pretend.

She didn’t confront him.

Not then.

She watched. For days. Recorded patterns. His route. His lies. His silences.

The night of the murder. though she’d never call it that, not in her own mind, she made dinner. Candlelight. His favorite wine. The kind of meal they hadn’t shared in a year.

He looked suspicious, almost. As if he sensed something unnatural in the air.

“Everything okay?” he asked, fork paused mid-cut.

She smiled. “Of course.”

Later, when he excused himself to the bathroom, she slipped the gloves from her pocket. Not latex. Not nitrile. Real gloves, thin, breathable, no trace left behind.

No fingerprints.

No scratches.

No scene.

When the coroner ruled it heart failure, it was easy to believe. Matt had always had that murmur. She’d known it before he did.

But there were other things. Small things.

The blood thinned just enough. The wine glass set perfectly in his left hand, even though Matt had always been right-handed. The faintest scent of bitter almonds, masked by seared duck and rosemary.

But no one noticed. Why would they? She was the grieving widow. And a respected detective.

At the funeral, the woman. her; showed up late, sat in the back, and didn’t cry.