The unfamiliar woman on the phone sounded nervous.
“Yes.”
A short silence followed.
“My name is Sophie Weber.”
Everything around me seemed to fade.
The hiss of the espresso machine.
The clatter of cups.
The conversations filling the coffee shop.
All I could hear was my own heartbeat.
I tightened my grip on the phone.
“I think we need to talk,” Sophie said.
I stared down at the notes spread across the table in front of me—dates of Julian’s business trips, late meetings, unexplained weekends.
“How did you get my number?”
“From Julian’s phone.”
My stomach tightened.
“He left it in my apartment Saturday morning. Your number was listed as his emergency contact. I copied it before he came back.”
Saturday morning.
Julian had told me he was meeting a client.
Another lie.
“Why are you calling me?”
Sophie hesitated.
Then she said something I wasn’t prepared for.
“Because I heard what his family is planning.”
My fingers went cold.
“You understand German?”
“I’m German.”
Of course she was.
“Tell me.”
“Not over the phone.”
She gave me the name of a bakery about twenty minutes away.
“Come alone.”
“I will.”
“And Claire?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t tell Julian I called.”
Then the line went dead.
For half a minute, I didn’t move.
Until that moment, I had been hurt.
Now I was alert.
Because Sophie hadn’t sounded like a woman proud of stealing someone else’s husband.
She had sounded frightened.
I arrived at the bakery before her and chose a table facing the entrance.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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