My husband asked me to let my sister be his “wife” for one night. He said it like he was asking me to pass the salt.

Jackson’s mouth twitched. “For whom?”

That afternoon, Damen texted twelve times.

Where are you.
Did you talk to Jackson.
Don’t drag him into this.
You’re acting unstable.
We need to handle this privately.
You always have to make everything humiliating.
Call me.
Carissa.

She did not respond to any of them.

Instead she went to work, billed six hours, called her family attorney from a private conference room, and started asking questions women too often postpone until after the damage is expensive.

Whose name is on the deed?
Mine only.
What about the cars?
One leased in my name. One paid off in mine.
Joint accounts?
Yes, but he contributes very little.
Retirement?
Separate.
Any children?
No.
Infidelity relevant?
Not much for division. Very relevant for your clarity.

The attorney, a sharp-eyed woman named Denise Kessler whom Carissa knew by reputation and now liked on sight, asked her one question that stuck.

“Do you want to save the marriage,” Denise said, “or do you want to stop losing yourself inside it?”

Carissa had no answer right away.

That was answer enough.

The first dinner with Jackson happened that Friday at a steakhouse in River North that Damen always dismissed as “too corporate” whenever Carissa wanted to celebrate something. Jackson picked her up at seven in a charcoal overcoat and dark suit, not overdone, not underdone, exactly appropriate in the way affluent men often were when they had learned long ago that competence is its own kind of style.

Carissa wore a black dress she had bought two years earlier and never found the right room for because Damen had once said it made her look “intense.”

That night, she was in the mood to be intense.

When she came downstairs, Damen was in the foyer with one hand on the banister. He looked at her, then at the lights outside, then back at her face.

“No.”

Carissa paused. “No what?”

“You are not going out with him.”

She almost admired the reflex.

“With whom?”

“My brother.”

She stepped past him toward the front door. “Watch me.”

Damen caught her arm.

Not hard enough to leave a mark. Hard enough to remind both of them that marks were not the threshold for wrong.

Carissa stopped moving and looked down at his hand.

Then she screamed.

Not in fear.

In volume.