Chapter 2

My breath hitches.

Derek is cheating on me. My husband, the man I gave everything to, is sleeping with this trash.

Something inside my chest goes very still and very cold. Not the kind of anger that screams. The kind that calmly burns a city to the ground.

'When Sarah gets here, I'm putting an end on all this.'

"What, nothing to say now?" Mia mistakes my silence for fear. She smirks and grabs a honeycrisp apple from the premium display, doesn't wash it, takes a loud bite.

She chews twice. Makes a face. Spits it into the trash can.

Then she tosses the bitten apple back onto the pile for sale.

"Ugh. Disgusting," she says. "Poor people food always tastes like dirt. This is all you people deserve anyway. The good stuff? We don't even shelve it. It goes straight to the mansions."

Somebody in the crowd gasps. "She put it back. She actually put it back on the pile."

I don't say a word. I walk over to the produce section and start inspecting the goods.

"Hey! Where do you think you're going?" Mia calls after me.

I ignore her. I pick up a tomato. My thumb sinks straight into rotten flesh. I check the greens, the supplier label is a company I personally blacklisted three years ago for salmonella violations. I flip over a packaged salad. There's a fresh date sticker slapped crookedly over the old one.

They are all sub-standard. Defective, expiring, or completely rotten.

My chest tightens. He is scamming our customers to pocket the difference.

I turn around and face the store.

"Everyone, listen up!" My voice carries over the registers, over the aisles. "Everything in this store is free today! Grab whatever you want and walk out. All of it. I’m paying for everything. Consider it compensation from corporate for how you've been treated here!"

Dead silence.

A hundred shoppers stare at me like I've grown a second head.

"She's kidding, right?"

"Is that legal?"

"I'm serious," I say, looking straight at Mia. "Take everything."

For one heartbeat, nobody moves.

Then an old woman calmly pushes her full cart past the registers and out the door.

Nobody stops her.

At the door she pauses, looks back at Mia, and says, loud and clear: "I've shopped here eleven years. You've been the worst thing in this store for the last two years."

The store explodes.

People sprint for the aisles. Carts slam together.

"Security!" Mia screams into her walkie-talkie, her voice cracking. "SECURITY! Code red! Stop them! STOP THEM!"

Three guards show up and get swallowed by the crowd like pebbles in a river.

Within minutes, the store is stripped to the shelves. Torn cardboard and plastic wrap everywhere.

Mia stands in the wreckage, chest heaving, mascara starting to run.

"You crazy bitch!"

She lunges at me, nails first, swinging for my face.

I step back. Her slap cuts through empty air—

—and her fingers hook the chain around my neck.

Snap.

My necklace hits the floor. The pendant skips across the tile and slides under a shelf.

"That's it! I'm calling the cops!" Mia shrieks, jabbing at her phone. "You're going to prison for inciting a riot! You're finished!"

"Call them," I say, and cross my arms.

While we wait, she she calls the cops, then the insurance adjuster.

Then she makes one more call. Her voice transforms mid-dial, from shrieking harpy to girlish, breathy sweetness.

"Derek, honey? Some crazy woman destroyed my store... yes, mine, the downtown one... can you come? Please? I need you." She pouts at the phone. "Hurry, okay?"

She hangs up and turns to me with a slow, vicious smile.

"You're dead. You know that, right?" She points at her feet. "Kneel down and lick my shoes, and maybe I'll ask my husband to go easy on you. That's the best deal you're going to get today."

My stomach turns.

"Your husband," I repeat softly. "Funny. Last I checked, Derek Vance's wife isn't named Mia."

"Oh, the original wife?" Mia rolls her eyes so hard her whole head moves. "Some old, ugly hag who never shows her face in public. A dead weight. A leech. Derek can't stand her. I'm the one he loves. I'm his real wife."

Around us, the few remaining bystanders are frozen, phones half-raised, sensing blood in the water.

I take one slow step forward.

"Let me ask you something. What if everything Derek has—the title, the money, this store—was built by that original wife? What if she holds all the power, and he's just a name on a door?"

Mia snorts. "And how would a broke nobody like you know anything about Derek's life?"

"Because," I say, looking her dead in the eye, "I'm the CEO of this company. And I'm Derek's wife."