Victoria’s Diary
December 28, 2017
Today while Adam was upstairs working, Peter showed up with the proof copies of the new book.
I was so excited about it. I loved Adam’s other two books, both of which have gone to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. According to Peter, this book is even better than the other two. He keeps saying it’s going to be the biggest book of the year. I have been dying to read it.
“Do you have the book?” was the first thing I asked Peter when I opened the door for him.
He laughed. “Eager, are you?”
I laughed too, but it was true. When Adam told me the proof copy would be ready this week, I became obsessed with it. I wasn’t even irritated by the fact that Irina was prancing around our kitchen in a skimpy tank top and shorts, humming to herself. Tell me—who dresses like that in the middle of winter?
I called upstairs for Adam to come down. He had given me a heads up Peter was coming today and hinted very strongly that I better be dressed nicely. He even gave me an advance on my weekly allowance. So yesterday, I bought some new clothing. I bought everything a size larger than what I needed. Optimistically, I was hoping to lose some weight, but realistically, I didn’t see how it was going to happen until the spring.
I could practically hear the drum roll playing as Peter pulled the thick hardcover novel out of his suitcase. The white capital letters on the cover immediately jumped out at me:
THE VIXEN
The Vixen? What was that about?
Even though I knew Adam was going to be angry that I looked at the book before he came down, I grabbed it out of Peter’s hands. Below the big block letters, there was a photograph of a woman on the cover. A woman
with blond hair. The same exact shade and style as mine. The resemblance was unmistakable. And then the tag line:
She betrayed his trust. Now she’ll pay.
My hands were shaking. I nearly ripped open the cover to read the inside flap with the book description. The Vixen. A wife who betrays her husband repeatedly. And now? Now he gets revenge.
What. The. Heck.
Adam came down the stairs, also dressed up in a nice pair of tan slacks and a button-down shirt. He looked devastatingly handsome when he was dressed up. He’s every bit as attractive as he was that first day I met him. Whereas I look like an entirely different person. I’m afraid to even look in the mirror lately because I barely recognize myself.
“The book!” He cocked his head to the side as he saw me holding it. “Vicky. I thought you promised you were going to wait for me.”
I was too shaken to even get defensive. I was still trying to wrap my head around the whole thing. My husband has written a book about a man who is betrayed by his wife. And then he seeks revenge on her.
This doesn’t make me feel good.
“You wrote about me,” I said in a shaky voice. “This book is about me, isn’t it?”
He looked down at the cover of the book. He snatched it out of my hands. “What are you talking about?”
“This book is clearly about me!” I nearly screamed the words. “Just look at the cover! It’s me!”
“Adam didn’t design the cover,” Peter said. Of course, he would defend Adam.
“That’s right,” Adam said. “I’m just seeing it for the first time now.” “Oh… fiddlesticks!” Not for the first time, I regretted the fact that my
parents had instilled in me such a deep distaste for swearing. Because I really wanted to swear at him right now.
Adam’s lips settled into a straight line. “Victoria, let’s not have this discussion right now.”
Peter flashed an uncomfortable smile. “Actually, I think I might head out now. Adam, give me a call when you’ve had a chance to go through it.”
As much as I didn’t want to fight in front of Peter, I got an uneasy feeling after he left. Adam wrote a book about me. About how I was a
cheating wife who had betrayed him repeatedly. That’s how he sees me.
He wrote that book about his family. Now they’re dead. Does that mean he’s going to kill me?
With Peter gone, Adam locked the door behind him. He turned to face me. “Victoria, you need to calm down.”
I pointed to the book. “Is this really what you think of me?”
“No, of course not!” He shook his head. “It’s fiction. My imagination.
If you read it, you would see it’s not about you at all.” “Well, let me read it then.”
He hesitated a moment, then nodded. “Fine. You can read it.” I started to reach for the book, but then he held it away from me. “But first let me show Irina. She’ll be really excited.”
I sucked in a breath. “Seriously? You need to show our cook before you let your wife have a look?”
His eyes darkened. “What is it about you and Irina? You have to stop being so jealous. It’s insane. She’s a nice girl.”
I wanted to scream at him again, but there was no point. Adam wasn’t going to stop flirting with Irina. So I let him go into the kitchen to show her the book. I watched her throw her arms around him excitedly. You are so magnificent, Adam!
That’s what Adam loves. He wants everyone to tell him how great he is. He doesn’t get enough of that from me so he has to go to Irina.
I did finally get my hands on a copy of the book. And since I didn’t have anything better to do today, I’ve been reading it nonstop in the bedroom. I finished it five minutes ago.
It is the most horrifying thing I have ever read.
That is to say, it’s brilliant. The characters are so vivid, they just leap right off the page. The plot is so twisted and clever, every time I think I figured it out, there’s another twist. And the character of the wife—Nicki— well, she is the epitome of a gold-digging, cold-blooded bitch who gets exactly what is coming to her in the end. She suffers a horrible, agonizing death.
I don’t know what it means that Adam wrote this book. I have never been unfaithful to him, but Nicki is unfaithful to her husband repeatedly, especially with a man named Jack. As soon as they get married, Nicki quits
her job and stays home to spend all of the protagonist’s money. Nicki has committed every single offense that Adam has accused me of.
He’s written this book to send me a message:
Be careful. Or else you will end up like Nicki.
And believe me, I don’t want to end up like Nicki.
January 9, 2018
On nights when the snow is very bad, and even sometimes when it isn’t, Adam has allowed Irina to spend the night in our guest bedroom. His logic is that she has a long drive home and he doesn’t want her to get into an accident. And it’s not like we need the extra room. (Especially since I am failing spectacularly at getting pregnant.)
I want to be a generous employer who is fine with an employee spending the night for the sake of her safety. Except last night at three in the morning, when I woke up to use the bathroom, Adam wasn’t in our bed.
I pulled on my pink terrycloth robe and crept out into the hallway. I walked slowly to keep the floorboards from making noises, which they tend to do. I was hoping I’d look downstairs and find Adam making himself a late-night snack in the kitchen. But unfortunately, when I got to the guest bedroom, it was obvious the occupants inside were very much awake.
In fact, I could hear giggling.
I froze, not sure what to do. I wanted to bust in and catch him in the act. But then what? It was three in the morning and my car was buried under a foot of snow. I couldn’t just leave. And if I asked Adam to leave, he’d surely refuse. After all, he owns this house—I don’t.
On top of that, I couldn’t bear the sight of my husband with another woman. Even thinking about it made my entire body burn with humiliation. If I walked in on that, it would destroy me.
So I decided to confront him in the morning.
I don’t know how, but I eventually managed to drift off again. And when I woke up again, Adam was beside me in bed. It was like he’d never left. If I hadn’t had so much water to drink before bed, I would have been none the wiser.
“Hey, Vicky.” Adam kissed my neck and then let out a loud yawn as he cuddled closer to me. “You’re nice and warm.”
Before I knew it, he was kissing me more aggressively, tugging at my oversized nightshirt. I recoiled at his touch. “Please, Adam… not now.”
“You’re not interested.” He yawned again and pulled away. “What a shocker.”
“Why don’t you pay Irina another visit then?”
He rubbed his eyes. “What are you talking about?”
I sat up straight in bed, clutching the blankets to my chest. “You were in her room last night.”
“No, I wasn’t.” He sat up too, looking at me with his sincere green eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I heard you.”
He shook his head. “Maybe you dreamed it? Come on, Vicky. You know I would never do that.”
One minute ago, I had been a-hundred-percent certain about what I heard. But now I was doubting myself. He looked so earnest. Maybe I really did dream it all. It’s certainly possible. Because nobody is that good a liar, are they?
“Of course,” he added, “if I did do it, nobody would blame me. I mean, look at you. You’re like a house. It’s not exactly a turn on.”
I felt the heat rush into my face. “Well, sorry.”
He snorted. “I know most women let themselves go when they get married, but you took it to another level. Honestly, you’re really lucky I don’t cheat.”
With those words, he got out of bed and went to the shower before I could muster a response.
Did I imagine it all? I closed my eyes. I could visualize myself outside of the guest room. I could hear laughter. Whispers. It wasn’t just Irina in there. She had a guest—a male guest. But it didn’t necessarily have to be my husband. Maybe she had a boyfriend over, and Adam had been upstairs working in the attic the whole time. Or maybe I dreamed it, like he said.
I shrugged my housecoat back on and left the bedroom to go make breakfast. Maybe I’d make pancakes with cut up slices of banana, like I used to sometimes when Adam and I were first dating. It was true he wasn’t being a great husband lately, but I haven’t been a great wife either. We
haven’t even been married a year yet, and it feels like all the romance has been sucked out of our marriage.
I wondered if maybe we needed to rekindle what we used to have.
Starting with a candlelit… breakfast. Well, breakfast, anyway.
Except before I even got to the stairs, I ran smack into Irina.
She was wearing a robe too, except hers was red and sheer and barely grazed the top of her thighs. The skin of her long legs was flawless. If I had to guess her age, I would have said twenty-two or thereabouts. She had high cheekbones and clear blue eyes. From any distance, she was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen.
“Miss Victoria,” she said. “Hello.” “Hello, Irina,” I muttered.
She hesitated, her light brown eyebrows scrunched together. “I heard your conversation with Adam. About how you heard him in my room.”
“Oh…” I averted my eyes. “Well, I didn’t mean to assume…”
“You heard correctly,” she said in her thick East European accent. “Your husband was in my room last night. For many hours.” And just so there’s absolutely no confusion, she added, “We made the love.”
“Oh.” I blinked at her. “I… I see.”
“You do not deserve him.” Her glassy blue eyes stared right at me. “He is wonderful, brilliant man. And you… I see what you do. You lie around house like the slug. You do not lift one finger. You just watch the television and get fat.”
My mouth fell open. When I imagined confronting Irina, this was not how it went in my head. “I…”
“He says you are disgusting,” she continued, even as I wanted to stick my fingers in my ears. “He says he feels nothing for you anymore. He is sorry he married you and he feels trapped.” Her eyes narrowed. “Soon he will leave you. And you will be kicked out on the street with nothing.”
My mouth was still hanging open. It took a few tries for me to kickstart my lips back into action. “You’re fired, Irina.”
Her eyes widened and two circles appeared on either cheek. “You cannot fire me! I will tell Adam.”
She pushed past me, jostling my shoulder roughly in the process. She marched right to the bathroom and opened the door without knocking. I heard her high-pitched accented voice yelling at Adam. A moment later, he
emerged from the bathroom, his hair damp, a towel wrapped around his waist.
“Vicky,” he said. “What happened? Why would you fire Irina?”
I was speechless. I couldn’t believe what was happening right in front of me. What had my life become? “I fired her because you’re sleeping together.”
Adam grunted. “And I told you, we’re not.” He frowned at me. “You have to get this jealousy under control, Victoria. You’re sick. You need to see a therapist. Get on medication.”
For a moment, I thought of that gun up in our closet. I imagined grabbing it out of the closet, pointing it at Irina’s pretty face and pulling the trigger. I might have missed the tree, but I wouldn’t miss at such close range. I imagined her beautiful, smug face exploding in a spray of blood.
Of course, I wouldn’t really do that.
Adam spent the next hour calming Irina down, then he returned to the bedroom to scream at me for my jealousy being so out of control. He also informed me that I didn’t have the right to fire anyone without his permission. Then he stormed out, slamming the door behind him.
I don’t know what to do anymore. I should leave Adam. I’m sure I should. But it’s not that easy. I don’t have anywhere to go. I don’t have any money aside from about forty dollars left of my allowance this week. My car won’t even make it out of the gates with this snow.
I’m trapped.
