23

Victoria bounded up the sidewalk, the train of her dress soaked and heavy. Her footsteps crunching in the snow, she raced inside pinching her toes together as the icy chill thawed. Roughly two inches had fallen since the start of the Gala and it was cold, an abrupt contrast to the sunny and seventy-five degrees it had been the previous week.

Maybe she’d put the house on the market once Warren was taken care of, she thought. Move some place she wouldn’t need a plow. No bugs either. She’d never been good with nature. Warren had taken her camping the summer they’d started dating. It had been a hundred degrees, the bathrooms had been infested with spiders, and a sudden storm had flooded their tent. After slipping in the mud and landing flat on her ass, Victoria had tapped. The backyard was as outdoorsy as she got—hence why her plan didn’t involve a remote cabin and a deep-woods burial.

The suburbs were a perfect spot for a murder if you knew what you were doing.

She unzipped her dress on the stairs, running through a mental checklist of what was left to do. Plastic crinkled beneath her as she padded to the master bathroom, all brushed chrome and granite surfaces the color of sand. This had been Warren’s favorite room to design, which had been surprising to Victoria. More than once he’d gushed over the self-closing toilet seat to party guests. The pride he took in the showerheads rivaled his most lauded accomplishments at Livingston.

And then there was the upgraded soaker tub. His crown jewel. Where he soaked his achy muscles after a long run and simmered off the stress of the day with bath salts and essential oils.

One more thing Warren would never sacrifice for a child, she thought.

This was where, if everything went as it should, Warren would die. It was poetic really, and the plan was simple.

Victoria would make him his favorite drink: whiskey sour—with a dash of sleeping pills. Not enough to be suspicious on a tox screen—which, according to her true crime podcasts, they would undoubtedly run—but enough to guarantee that he wouldn’t wake up while she worked.

She would coax him into the tub before he passed out, persuading him with extra bubbles and his favorite lavender oil; because for all his cocksure Big Man behaviors, Warren enjoyed a good soak. Proper lotioning. The occasional manicure. Plus, he was a sucker for romantic gestures—the showmanship of them, anyway: flowers delivered to the office, a very public engagement at a crowded restaurant downtown. Beautiful, empty. No surprise there. He preferred an audience, and while Victoria would be the only one to witness his final breath, she hoped his ghost would take solace in the exposure that was sure to follow.

So: nightcap, sleeping pills, cozy soak. The final step was the hardest—the part she was most nervous about. Once he was knocked out, Victoria would use her father’s old hunting knife to make two neat incisions, submerging his wrists in the water.

A razor was perhaps the expected choice, but in Victoria’s mind it had to be the knife. Her father hadn’t taken her on a single hunting trip, but that hadn’t stopped his reverence from bleeding into his lessons. Livingstons were not prey.

They would find the knife in Warren’s hand. There would be a note, short and melancholy. She’d read it as if it were the first time, conscious of the police watching her as she took in the words, the paper probably shielded from her fingerprints by a plastic bag.

She’d say she’d had no idea that her husband was in the throes of depression, unable to cope with the insurmountable pressures of his job. The guilt he’d felt on a daily basis. His lifelong feelings of inadequacy and overcompensation.

Hanging her dress to take to the dry cleaners, Victoria slipped into a pair of black jeans and a black long-sleeve shirt. She’d received dozens of compliments on her appearance that evening, but none of the kind words compared to the excited chill she got seeing herself in the plain cotton fabric: capable, determined, dangerous.

Crouching to the bottom shelf of her dresser, Victoria pulled out a mahogany box and placed it on the bed. She lifted the brass latch and opened the lid. Surrounded by burgundy velvet lining was the hunting knife, the handle scratched and worn against the pristine blade. Her father had denied her the company but at least he’d left her the knife he used to stab her in the back.

One final dig. Even in death Jeremy Livingston was a callous bastard. Now she would use it to destroy them both. The justice of it all filled her chest with warmth. Everyone loved symbolism.

People would be shocked but not that surprised, not when they really considered it.

His pliable personality. His drinking. It made sense. That was the beauty of it. Her fingers ghosted the edge of the blade as she ran through what she’d say to Warren when he came home.

You look tired. Let’s get you in the bath.

How about you take a nice, relaxing bath and I’ll get you another drink?

Half an hour of rehearsing passed. Forty minutes.

Victoria wasn’t worried. Warren would be home soon. All she had to do was wait.