I laughed once. The sound came out sharp and broken.
“She knew.”
“You’re grieving,” he said quietly. “Don’t turn this into a w:ar.”
“It became war the moment your mother put shrimp in my food.”
His jaw tightened. “You can’t prove that.”
That sentence told me everything.
Not You’re wrong.
Not I believe you.
You can’t prove that.
After that, I stopped discussing it with him.
Grief taught me silence. The law taught me patience.
When the hospital discharged me, I didn’t return to the home Daniel and I shared. I went instead to my late father’s brownstone—the same one Margaret always sneered was “too old-money for a woman who married up.” She had no idea the brownstone was only a fraction of what my father left me.
Daniel texted constantly.
Mom is devastated.
She says the chef made a mistake.
Please don’t punish my family.
I never replied.
Instead, I moved through my days like a ghost carrying a case file.
My investigator, Lena, was better than any private detective Margaret could buy. Within forty-eight hours, she had obtained the catering contract, staff list, delivery receipts, and photos taken by guests during dinner.
The official menu contained no seafood.
