I was tired in the normal way. The kind of tired that comes from meetings and traffic and pretending to care about office politics. I remember wanting nothing more than to take my shoes off, kiss my wife, and let the day fall off my shoulders.
Simone met me in the entryway like she always did.
She wrapped her arms around me, and for one perfect second, everything felt normal.
Then her body went stiff.
It happened so fast I almost didn’t register it. One moment her cheek was against my chest, and the next she pulled back slightly, her fingers still gripping my shoulders like she was trying to anchor herself.
“Ethan…” Her voice came out strange—flat, quiet, wrong. “What is this?”
I blinked. “What’s what?”
She didn’t answer. She just raised her hand and pointed at my collar.
Right there, on my white shirt, near my shoulder, was a smudge. Peachy-bronze. A warm-toned streak that didn’t belong.
Makeup.
Foundation, maybe.
And the worst part was how instantly my brain tried to reject it—like it was a hallucination, like if I stared hard enough it would disappear.
But it didn’t.
Simone’s face went pale in a way I’d never seen on her. Her jaw tightened, and I could literally see her forcing herself not to cry.
“I don’t know,” I said quickly, tugging at the fabric like that would fix it. “I swear, I don’t know how that got there.”
Her eyes flicked from the smudge to my face, searching for something. A lie, maybe. Or the truth. Or a version of me she could still recognize.
“I have no idea,” I repeated, and I hated how desperate I sounded even though I was telling the truth.
Simone lifted her hand.
“Don’t,” she said quietly. “Just… don’t.”
And then she walked past me, into our bedroom, and closed the door.
Not slammed. Not dramatic.
Closed.
That was somehow worse.
I stood alone in the hallway, still pinching my shirt collar between my fingers, staring at that impossible stain like it had just rewritten my entire marriage.
Thirteen years.
We’d been married thirteen years. Together sixteen. High school sweethearts in the most boring, stable, beautiful way. The kind of relationship people used to tease us about because we were so normal it felt unreal.
And I had never—never—given her a reason to doubt me.
Not once.
I hadn’t even looked at another woman seriously.
So why was there makeup on my shirt?
My brain sprinted through my day like a frantic detective.
Morning meeting. Lunch at my desk. Afternoon calls. Coffee break. Elevator. Parking garage.
No one touched me.
No one even stood close enough.
And yet the evidence was right there, screaming from my collar.
That night, Simone slept on the couch.
I heard her crying around 2 a.m. It wasn’t loud. Just the muffled sound of someone trying to hold themselves together and failing.
I got up and went out to talk to her.
She pretended to be asleep.
So I stood there in the dark, staring at my wife curled up on our couch like a stranger, and for the first time in my adult life, I felt truly helpless.
The next morning she was gone before I woke up.
No note. No text.
Just an empty house and that stupid stain haunting my laundry basket like a ghost.
I called her at lunch.
She didn’t pick up.
I texted: Please let me explain, even though I don’t understand it either.
Three hours later, she replied: There’s nothing to explain. I saw it.
That was Thursday.
Friday, I came home and found her at the kitchen table with her laptop open. Her eyes were puffy and red like she’d been crying for hours.
I sat across from her slowly, like I was approaching something fragile.
“Simone,” I whispered. “Please.”
“How long?” she asked, without looking up.
I felt my stomach drop. “How long… what? There’s no one. I promise you.”
She finally raised her eyes.
“Do you think I’m stupid?” she asked softly.
“No,” I said immediately. “God, no.”
“Then don’t insult me,” she said, voice cracking, “by pretending this is some mystery.”
She shut the laptop like she couldn’t stand seeing her own thoughts on the screen.
“I’ve been trying to make sense of this for two days,” she said. “Trying to find some explanation that doesn’t destroy everything we’ve built.”
Her voice wavered.
“But I can’t. Because makeup doesn’t just appear on someone’s shirt.”
I sat there with my hands shaking.
“You’re right,” I said, and my voice sounded far away. “It doesn’t just appear.”
Simone’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, so now you’re being framed.”
“I’m not—” I tried to breathe. “I’m not coming up with anything. I’m just telling you the truth: I didn’t do anything. I wasn’t with anyone. I don’t know how it got there, but I would never—”
“My mom was right,” Simone whispered, like she was talking to herself more than to me.
My chest tightened. “What?”
“She said I was too trusting,” Simone said. “That everyone has secrets. That I live in a fantasy where people don’t lie.”
“I don’t have secrets from you,” I said, desperate.
“Then explain it,” she shot back. “Explain the makeup, Ethan. Explain it in a way that makes sense.”
And I couldn’t.
Because I didn’t know.
And my silence did what no accusation could do.
It convinced her.
Saturday, she asked me to sleep at a hotel.
She didn’t yell. She didn’t throw things. She just sat there with her hands folded and said, “I need space.”
I checked into a Holiday Inn Express off the highway and sat on the edge of that synthetic bedspread staring at my phone like it might save me.
Sunday, I tried to go home.
The locks were changed.
Monday morning I drove to our house at dawn like some pathetic ghost of myself and sat in my car in the driveway. Her car was gone.
And I cried.
I hadn’t cried like that since my father died.
Not because I was a tough guy, but because life hadn’t ever broken me like this before. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t understand how something so small—a smudge of foundation—could pull apart sixteen years of love.
My phone buzzed.
A text from Simone: I need space. Please respect that.
I texted back: I will. But I need you to know I love you. Only you. Always.
No response.
By Tuesday, I was barely functioning.
And that’s when my boss, Dennis Carile, called me into his office and saved my marriage without even realizing it.
He didn’t bother with small talk.
“You look like hell,” he said bluntly. “What’s going on?”
I told him just enough. Marriage trouble. A misunderstanding. Evidence I couldn’t explain.
Dennis leaned back, arms crossed.
“This evidence… did you check where you were when it supposedly got on your shirt?”
“I’ve been over it a thousand times,” I said. “Nothing makes sense.”
He paused.
“Have you checked your building security cameras?”
I blinked.
I hadn’t even thought of that.
Dennis nodded toward the door. “We’ve got cameras in every lobby and garage. If someone got close enough to smear makeup on you, there might be footage.”
I felt something flicker in my chest.
Hope, maybe.
Or just desperation wearing hope’s face.
“Can you help me access those?” I asked.
Dennis grabbed his phone. “I’ll call Lawrence Wade in security. He’s been here seventeen years. If there’s footage, he’ll find it.”
Lawrence Wade looked exactly like someone who’d spent nearly two decades watching security monitors.
Tired eyes. Coffee stain on his polo. Sharp attention that made you feel like he’d already noticed everything about you.
I sat in his cramped office surrounded by flickering screens and told him the time window.
“Wednesday evening,” I said. “Between 5:15 and 5:30. Parking garage level two.”
Lawrence’s fingers moved across the keyboard.
“Let’s see what we’ve got.”
The footage came up grainy and black-and-white. I watched myself walk to my car with my briefcase and phone, completely normal. Completely unaware.
Then someone entered the frame behind me.
A woman. Mid-thirties. Dark hair pulled back. Business casual.
She moved with purpose.
And in three quick steps, she closed the distance.
I watched myself reach for the car handle.
And then—like it was choreographed—she stumbled.
Her hand shot out.
Landed on my shoulder.
Her face pressed briefly against my collar.
Four seconds.
Maybe less.
Then she straightened, smiled apologetically at my back, and walked away before I even turned around.
My throat went dry.
“Wait,” I whispered. “Go back.”
Lawrence rewound.
We watched it again.
The stumble looked real… but something about it didn’t feel like an accident. The hand placement was too precise. The contact too perfect.
Lawrence turned to me.
“Do you know her?”
I stared at her frozen face on the screen.
“No,” I said, voice hollow. “I’ve never seen her in my life.”
Lawrence didn’t say I told you so.
He didn’t even make a face.
He just leaned closer to the screen, squinted at the woman’s badge clip, and started typing again like this was suddenly personal.
“You want me to run her?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said too fast. “Please.”
He nodded once and pulled up another angle—another camera, a different timestamp. He tracked her path through the garage like he’d done it a thousand times for stolen catalytic converters and fender benders.
Three minutes later, he exhaled through his nose.
“Raina Vestri,” he said. “Works for Hallstead Consulting. Fourth floor. Been in the building eight months.”
The name meant nothing to me.
But the sound of it made my skin tighten anyway, because now the impossible stain on my shirt had a face attached to it.
“I don’t know her,” I repeated, like saying it again would make the universe stop being insane.
Lawrence looked at me for a long second. “You sure?”
“I’m sure,” I said. “I’ve never spoken to her. Never met her.”
He leaned back in his chair, and something in his expression sharpened.
“You want me to pull more footage?” he asked.
I swallowed. “Yes.”
Lawrence’s fingers started flying.
“Give me an hour,” he said.
I stumbled out of his office and back to my desk like I’d been hit in the chest. I tried to answer emails. Tried to pretend my brain wasn’t screaming. Every few minutes I checked my phone, hoping—stupidly—hoping Simone would text me something soft, something like I’m sorry, I miss you, come home.
Nothing.
At 3:00 p.m., my desk phone rang.
Lawrence.
His voice was different now.
“Hayes,” he said, “you need to come see this.”
I didn’t walk. I practically ran.
When I got there, his screens were split into multiple windows, clips lined up like a timeline. He didn’t ease me into it.
“I went back four weeks,” he said. “Watch.”
The first clip was the lobby during morning rush. People flowing in, coffee cups, badges swinging. And there I was, walking in like a normal man living a normal life.
Then Lawrence paused it.
“There,” he said.
Twenty feet behind me, half hidden behind a column—Raina.
Phone raised.
Filming.
My stomach dropped so hard my vision blurred.
“It gets worse,” Lawrence said quietly, and clicked to the next clip.
Parking garage. Different day. Different angle. Me getting into my car.
And in the background, behind a concrete pillar—Raina again.
Watching.
Another clip.
Elevator lobby. Me stepping out.
Raina trailing, keeping distance.
Another.
Outside the building.
Her across the street, pretending to text.
“How many times?” I whispered, gripping the edge of his desk so hard my fingers hurt.
Lawrence didn’t look smug. He looked grim.
“Fourteen,” he said. “Fourteen separate incidents in the last month where she’s been within fifty feet of you. Always watching. Always just out of your direct line.”
My mouth went dry.
“Why?” I managed.
Lawrence’s eyes flicked to mine. “That’s a police question.”
He pulled a small USB drive from a drawer and slid it across the desk.
“I compiled everything,” he said. “Times, dates, camera angles. This is enough for a restraining order, minimum. Possibly stalking charges.”
I picked it up with numb fingers, like it was both proof and poison.
“I need to show this to my wife,” I said, already reaching for my phone.
Lawrence caught my wrist gently.
“Show it to a lawyer first,” he said. “Document everything. If this woman is targeting you, you want protection before she escalates.”
I stared at him. “My wife thinks I cheated.”
Lawrence’s expression softened, just a hair.
“Then show her the truth,” he said. “But do it smart.”
I nodded, barely breathing, and walked out to the parking lot like my legs didn’t belong to me.
I called Simone from my car.
She picked up on the fifth ring, her voice flat and exhausted.
“What.”
“I have proof,” I said, words tumbling out too fast. “Security footage. There’s a woman who’s been following me. She’s the one who put that makeup on my shirt. She staged the whole thing.”
Silence.
“Simone, please,” I whispered. “I’m sending you the videos. Just… just watch them. Five minutes.”
Her voice came out small. “Ethan, I can’t do this.”
“You don’t have to do anything,” I said. “Just watch. That’s all I’m asking.”
Another pause.
Then, like she was forcing herself to step off a cliff:
“Send it.”
I forwarded everything Lawrence had compiled and sat there gripping my steering wheel so tightly my hands cramped.
Ten minutes.
Fifteen.
Twenty.
My phone rang.
“I’m watching it,” Simone said quietly. Her voice sounded… shaken.
“The lobby footage,” she continued. “Do you see her?”
“Yes,” I said. My throat burned. “Do you see her filming?”
“I see her,” Simone whispered. “Oh my God.”
My chest flooded with relief so intense it almost hurt.
“You believe me?” I asked, the words breaking.
“I’m watching her in the garage,” she said, voice trembling. “I’m watching her touch you. Ethan… she planned this.”
I closed my eyes.
For the first time in ten days, I felt like I could breathe.
“Who is she?” Simone whispered. “Why is she doing this?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and realizing that was true made the relief turn cold. “But I have her name. Raina Vestri. She works in our building.”
Simone sucked in a breath. “If she went this far just to make me think you were cheating… what else is she planning?”
I hadn’t let myself think that far yet.
Now the question sat in my stomach like ice.
“I’m coming home,” Simone said suddenly. “Right now. Don’t go anywhere alone.”
That night was the first time we sat at our kitchen table together without anger between us in days.
It should have felt comforting.
Instead, it felt like we were two people studying the wreckage of our own life.
Simone had printed still frames from the footage. Raina’s face stared back at us from different angles—lobby, garage, hallway, street—like she’d been haunting our lives while we had no idea.
“I want to go to the police,” Simone said.
“I called an attorney,” I admitted. “Fiona Cross. She handles this kind of thing.”
Simone’s eyes flicked up. “You called a lawyer before calling me?”
I winced. “I called you first. But Lawrence told me to be smart. I… I didn’t want to do anything that made this worse.”
Simone exhaled, long and shaky. Then she reached across the table and took my hand.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry for not believing you.”
“You saw evidence,” I said softly. “You reacted like anyone would.”
“No,” she said, squeezing my fingers. “I should’ve trusted you more than a stain.”
Thirteen years of trust almost died because of a smudge of foundation.
That thought made me feel sick.
Fiona Cross’s office smelled like old books and sharp decisions.
She reviewed the footage like someone who’d seen worse and wasn’t impressed easily.
“This is substantial,” she said, tapping the USB drive. “Clear stalking pattern. Clear intent to deceive. We file for a restraining order immediately, and we report this to police.”
Then she leaned forward, eyes sharp.
“And you need to check your electronics.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“If she’s this systematic about planting physical evidence,” Fiona said, “there’s a good chance she’s created digital evidence too. Texts. Photos. Receipts. Women like this don’t do one trick and stop.”
Simone’s fingers tightened around mine under the table.
Fiona slid a business card toward me.
“Dr. Raymond Pierce,” she said. “Digital forensics. If there’s spyware, he’ll find it.”
Dr. Pierce’s office looked like a tech startup and a crime scene lab had a baby.
He took my phone, plugged it into his laptop, and started typing with the kind of intensity that made my heart race.
“How often do you update security?” he asked without looking up.
“I… don’t remember,” I admitted.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “That tracks.”
Thirty minutes later, he turned his screen toward us.
“Someone’s been in here,” he said.
My blood turned to ice.
He showed us logs—remote access, monitoring software disguised as something legitimate, recording calls, messages, locations. Uploading everything to a remote server.
“For six weeks,” he said.
Simone made a small broken sound.
“Can you tell who installed it?” she asked.
“Not directly,” he said. “But I can tell you when. March 22nd, between 9 and 9:15 p.m.”
Simone’s face drained.
“That was the company mixer,” she whispered.
I remembered it instantly. Simone had been tired and left early. I stayed, mingling, phone set down on a counter near the drinks.
Someone had fifteen minutes alone with my phone.
Someone came prepared.
That realization made me feel violated in a way I didn’t have words for.
Dr. Pierce kept going.
Laptop.
Work computer.
Even our smart thermostat.
“She’s been watching both of you,” he said, voice tight. “Mostly focusing on Ethan. But she tracked Simone too.”
Simone’s eyes went glassy. “She knew where I was… all the time.”
“Yes,” he said gently. “Document everything. This is illegal on multiple levels.”
Detective Patricia Hoskins didn’t look surprised.
She looked tired in that way people look when they’ve seen the worst of human behavior for too long and it still manages to shock them anyway.
She flipped through the reports, the footage, the forensic logs, and her expression shifted from professional to genuinely disturbed.
“This is one of the most comprehensive stalking cases I’ve seen,” she said. “The planning. The technical capability. This isn’t impulsive. This is calculated.”
“What happens now?” I asked, voice hoarse.
“I’m issuing a warrant,” she said. “We bring her in. Search her property. Seize her devices.”
Then she looked directly at us.
“But I need to warn you—people like this escalate when they’re caught.”
Simone’s hand tightened around my arm.
“You need to be careful,” Hoskins continued. “Vary routes. Stay in public. If you see her, call 911 immediately.”
She paused.
“And I need to notify your employer. She works in your building. That’s a serious risk.”
That night, I called my boss, Dennis.
He listened in silence, then said quietly, “Raina Vestri… I know of her.”
My stomach dropped.
“You do?”
“She interviewed for a position on your team nine months ago,” he said. “Didn’t get it.”
Something cold clicked into place.
“That’s when this started,” I whispered.
Dennis exhaled. “Stay home. You’re on administrative leave immediately. You do not come near this building until she’s in custody and we’ve swept everything.”
Ten days after the makeup stain, Detective Hoskins called at 6 a.m.
“We arrested Raina Vestri an hour ago,” she said.
Relief hit me so hard I had to sit down.
Then her voice shifted.
“But there’s something you need to know. When we searched her apartment, we found… a lot.”
“What kind of material?” I asked, dread creeping up my spine.
“Over two thousand printed photographs,” she said. “Timeline boards tracking your routines. Voice recordings. Transcripts.”
Simone grabbed the phone from my hand, trembling.
“What was she planning?” Simone asked.
Hoskins’s voice was grim. “The makeup was just the beginning. She had plans to plant more evidence. Fake hotel receipts. Fabricated texts. A staged ‘mistress’—someone she planned to pay to pose for photos.”
Simone’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.
It wasn’t just stalking.
It was demolition.
She wanted to erase our marriage like it never mattered.
Friday afternoon, Hoskins asked us to come to the station.
“There’s a video you need to see,” she said.
She hit play.
Raina appeared on screen in her apartment, eyes bright with something that looked like excitement.
“Day 47,” she said to the camera. “Today’s the day. I perfected the delivery method. Foundation mixed with adhesive powder so it won’t brush off. I timed my approach to coincide with his routine.”
Then another clip—parking garage.
“Target acquired,” she whispered. “Phase one initiating.”
I felt sick.
“There are thirty-seven videos like this,” Hoskins said. “Documenting different phases of her plan.”
Simone let out a sound that broke my heart—like grief and rage collided in her throat.
Then Hoskins showed us something else.
A framed photo found on Raina’s nightstand.
Me, younger, laughing at some old family gathering.
Simone stared.
“Is that… your mother?” she whispered, seeing the woman beside me.
I turned cold.
“How did she get that?” I asked.
Hoskins leaned forward.
“Ethan,” she said, “Raina Vestri isn’t her real name. She changed it legally six years ago.”
She slid a paper toward me.
“Her birth name was Raina Hollis.”
That name hit something faint in my memory like a door rattling.
Hoskins watched my face carefully.
“Does that name mean anything to your mother?” she asked.
My hands shook as I dialed.
Mom answered on the second ring.
“Ethan? What’s wrong?”
“Mom,” I whispered. “Do you know anyone named Raina Hollis?”
The silence on the line was immediate and absolute.
“Where did you hear that name?” my mother asked, and her voice had changed completely—sharp, frightened.
“A woman’s been stalking me,” I said. “She changed her name from Raina Hollis to Raina Vestri. Mom… do you know her?”
“Put me on video call,” she said. “Right now.”
I switched to video.
My mother’s face appeared on screen, pale and drawn.
“Show me a picture of her,” she demanded.
Hoskins held up the arrest photo.
My mother saw it and started screaming.
Not a startled scream.
Not a dramatic scream.
A pure, visceral, terrified scream like her body remembered something my mind didn’t yet.
“That’s her!” she sobbed. “Oh God—Ethan, that’s her!”
My stomach dropped through the floor.
“Mom,” I whispered, “who is she?”
My mother’s hands shook against her cheeks.
“When you were in college,” she said, voice breaking, “there was a girl… she became obsessed with you. Followed you. Broke into your dorm. Stole your things. We got a restraining order. Her parents moved her away. Therapy. We thought— I hoped—she’d moved on.”
Fragments flickered in my head—someone always “randomly” showing up, a feeling of being watched, a name I’d pushed out because it felt harmless at the time.
“That was fifteen years ago,” I whispered.
My mother cried harder.
“She never stopped,” she said. “She never stopped believing you belonged to her.”
The strangest part about hearing my mother scream like that was how it pulled something out of me I hadn’t realized was still buried.
Not a memory exactly—more like the feeling of one.
That old, sour sensation of being watched when you’re young and you tell yourself you’re imagining it. That fuzzy unease you dismiss because it’s easier to believe you’re paranoid than to believe someone is actually fixated on you.
I’d convinced myself that phase in college was nothing. A weird crush. A little too persistent. Then it faded.
But my mother’s terror told me the truth: it didn’t fade.
It paused.
Detective Hoskins took the phone from my hand gently, like she could see my fingers weren’t working right anymore.
“Mrs. Hayes,” she said firmly, “this is Detective Patricia Hoskins. I need you to come down to the station and give a formal statement. Your son’s case just became significantly more serious.”
My mother nodded on the screen, tears streaking down her face. “I’ll be there,” she said hoarsely. “I’ll be there today.”
When the call ended, I just sat there staring at the blank screen.
Simone’s hand found mine under the table. Her fingers were cold.
“We almost lost each other,” she whispered.
Not in the metaphorical sense.
In the real sense—ten days of believing our marriage was dying, ten days of sleeping apart, ten days of her staring at me like I was a stranger, ten days of me walking around feeling like I’d been falsely convicted in my own home.
All because someone from fifteen years ago decided to come back and finish a story she’d been writing in her head for a decade and a half.
That night, Simone and I didn’t talk much.
We sat in our bedroom—the actual bedroom, the one we hadn’t shared in over a week—and just breathed like people who’d survived an accident they didn’t see coming.
Simone kept replaying the garage footage. She kept freezing the frame where Raina’s hand touched my shoulder and staring at it like she could rewrite it through sheer will.
I watched her, and the guilt hit me in a way that didn’t make logical sense.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
Simone looked at me sharply. “For what?”
“For… existing,” I said weakly, and immediately hated myself for it. “For being the target.”
Simone crossed the room and gripped my face with both hands, forcing me to look at her.
“No,” she said, voice shaking. “No. Don’t you dare do that. This isn’t your fault.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“You didn’t invite her,” Simone said. “You didn’t ask for this. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
I swallowed hard. “But you suffered.”
“So did you,” she snapped, then softened immediately. “We both did.”
And that was the first time I felt us truly align again—not as two people arguing about evidence, but as two people facing the same monster.
Together.
The next week moved like a blur of paperwork, statements, and a kind of exhaustion that made my bones ache.
The restraining order from fifteen years ago was unsealed.
Seeing it on paper felt unreal—my name typed in an old court document, the language clinical, describing behaviors I’d tried to forget: stalking, trespass, theft, repeated unwanted contact.
My mother gave her statement with trembling hands. She explained how Raina had broken into my dorm, how she’d stolen a hoodie, a notebook, a photo. How she’d left notes under my door that started sweet and ended unsettling.
My mother admitted something that made my stomach twist:
“We moved him,” she said quietly, voice cracking. “We switched dorms. We changed his number. We thought if we made it harder for her to access him, she’d let go.”
Hoskins’s expression didn’t change, but her eyes sharpened.
“You thought the obsession would end if access ended,” she said.
“Yes,” my mother whispered. “We were naive.”
I wanted to be angry at my parents for not telling me. For deciding I didn’t need to know. For letting me grow up believing the whole thing had been harmless.
But when I looked at my mother—her hands shaking, her face wrecked with guilt—I couldn’t.
She had been trying to protect me.
She just hadn’t understood how deep some people’s fixations go.
Simone watched my mother testify and later, in the car, she said something quietly that stopped me.
“Your mom looked like she’s been afraid of this for fifteen years.”
I nodded, throat tight. “Yeah.”
“And she never told you,” Simone said, not accusing, just naming the truth.
I stared out the window. “Maybe she thought if she didn’t give it power, it wouldn’t grow.”
Simone exhaled. “But it did.”
It grew in silence.
It grew in the shadows.
It grew until it tried to dismantle our entire life.
Dr. Pierce’s forensic report turned into a weapon in the best possible way.
He laid it out for the prosecutor: timestamps, IP addresses, remote servers, spyware disguised as “monitoring software,” the specific devices it infected.
He didn’t just say, “You were hacked.”
He said, “Here is the method. Here is the intent. Here is the pattern.”
And intent mattered.
Because the defense tried to argue mental illness.
They tried to paint her as confused. Broken. Not responsible.
But planning is hard to excuse.
The prosecutor, Victoria Lane, explained it to us bluntly in her office.
“If she’d done one impulsive thing,” Victoria said, tapping the file, “a jury might see her as unstable and harmless. But she didn’t. She built a campaign. She documented it. She installed spyware. She fabricated evidence. That’s not confusion. That’s strategy.”
Simone’s nails dug into my palm under the table.
“What’s she facing?” Simone asked.
“Stalking. Harassment. Computer fraud. Illegal wiretapping. Identity falsification,” Victoria said, flipping pages. “And based on the fabricated evidence package, we’re adding attempted fraud.”
I swallowed. “Attempted destruction of marriage… is that actually a charge?”
Victoria’s mouth twitched. “There’s a statute for almost everything if you dig deep enough.”
Then she leaned forward.
“But I need you both to prepare yourselves,” she said. “She’s going to look at you in court. She’s going to perform. She’s going to try to make you feel like you’re still in her story.”
I felt my skin crawl.
“She will not stop believing you belong to her just because she’s arrested,” Victoria said. “People like this don’t shift easily. They cling harder when reality pushes back.”
The first time I saw Raina in court, I understood what Victoria meant.
She walked into the courtroom in an orange jumpsuit, hair pulled back, wrists cuffed. She looked smaller than she had in the footage.
Almost ordinary.
If you didn’t know what she’d done, you might have felt sorry for her.
Then she lifted her eyes.
And she found mine across the room.
Her face lit up.
Not like someone seeing a stranger.
Like someone seeing a soulmate.
She smiled.
It was the same bright, unsettling intensity I’d seen in her videos. Like the world was finally delivering her the climax she’d been waiting for.
My stomach turned.
Simone squeezed my hand, hard.
“Don’t look at her,” she whispered.
But it wasn’t that simple. I needed to look at her long enough to understand something:
This wasn’t about a job interview.
This wasn’t about a missed opportunity.
This wasn’t even about me, really.
I was a symbol she’d built her entire delusion around.
The judge read the preliminary findings: “clear pattern of predatory behavior spanning fifteen years,” “technical sophistication,” “complete disregard for autonomy and psychological well-being.”
Raina didn’t flinch. She just kept smiling faintly, like she enjoyed hearing her obsession described in legal language.
The trial took three weeks.
Three weeks of hearing strangers describe my life in evidence terms.
The prosecutor called fourteen witnesses: Lawrence Wade. Dennis. Dr. Pierce. Detective Hoskins. My mother. Dr. Fletcher—the retired therapist from college who testified that Raina had learned how to hide her obsession instead of heal it.
“She became very good at appearing normal,” Dr. Fletcher said. “She learned what responses people wanted to hear. But the underlying pathology never resolved.”
The defense tried to paint her as mentally ill, not criminally responsible.
They brought in a psychiatrist who diagnosed her with erotomania—delusion that someone loves you.
Victoria’s rebuttal psychiatrist, Dr. Carol Weston, destroyed that narrative with one sentence that still echoes in my head:
“Erotomania is a belief that the target reciprocates affection. Ms. Vestri’s actions show entitlement—she believes she deserves the target, and is willing to destroy his life to obtain him.”
Entitlement.
That word landed like a nail.
Because that’s what it was.
She didn’t love me.
She wanted to own me.
And she was willing to ruin Simone to do it.
When it was time for my victim impact statement, Fiona handed me a printed page with carefully crafted sentences.
I stood at the podium, paper in my hands, and realized I couldn’t read it.
The words felt too small.
So I spoke from somewhere deeper.
“For ten days,” I said, voice shaking, “I thought my wife was leaving me.”
I swallowed hard and forced myself not to look at Simone because I knew I’d break if I did.
“For ten days,” I continued, “I believed my entire life was collapsing because of something I couldn’t explain. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t think. I felt like I was losing my mind.”
I looked at Raina then.
She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t ashamed.
She was watching me like she was proud that she’d gotten this much of my attention.
“I barely remembered her,” I said, voice tightening. “I barely remembered her name. And yet she decided I belonged to her. That my marriage didn’t matter. That my wife didn’t matter. That my autonomy didn’t matter.”
My hands shook, but my voice steadied as anger finally sharpened into something clean.
“She tried to erase my reality,” I said. “She tried to erase my marriage. She tried to erase the only life I’ve built that feels like home.”
I turned back to the judge.
“I don’t want revenge,” I said. “I want protection. For us. For anyone else she might target next.”
Judge Brennan listened without expression. Then she read the sentence.
“Twelve years in state prison,” she said. “Fifteen years supervised probation. No contact for life. Mandatory psychiatric treatment.”
Raina’s face cracked then. She started crying, shoulders shaking.
But even her tears didn’t feel like remorse.
They felt like rage at losing.
The gavel came down.
And it was over.
Walking out of that courthouse with Simone’s hand in mine felt like surfacing after being underwater too long.
The sun was bright. The air felt too clean. People walked by laughing, holding coffee, living normal lives.
Simone stopped on the steps and turned to face me, her eyes shining.
“I almost lost you,” she whispered.
I pulled her close. “You didn’t.”
“Not to an affair,” she said, voice breaking. “Not to something real. To someone’s delusion.”
I kissed her forehead and held her tighter.
“We figured it out,” I whispered. “We survived it.”
Simone laughed softly through tears. “All because of a makeup stain.”
I exhaled shakily. “All because you hugged me.”
And that hit me—how close it came. How if Simone hadn’t noticed that smudge, if she hadn’t frozen, if she hadn’t asked, the plan might have continued until it became undeniable, until it destroyed us.
The smallest detail became the crack in Raina’s entire scheme.
And in a weird way, that detail saved our marriage by forcing the truth into the light.
The months after were quieter, but not easy.
Simone and I went to therapy—not because we didn’t love each other, but because love doesn’t erase trauma. We had to rebuild trust that had been shaken by something neither of us caused.
We learned how to talk about fear without it becoming blame.
We changed every password. Replaced devices. Installed cameras at home. Took safety precautions that made me feel paranoid, even though paranoia had been proven reasonable.
Some nights, Simone would wake up from nightmares, convinced someone was outside. I’d hold her until her breathing slowed.
Some nights, I’d wake up sweating, hearing the echo of courtroom language in my head—“pattern of obsessive behavior spanning fifteen years”—and I’d sit in the dark reminding myself that she was locked away.
That we were safe.
Or safer than before.
One evening, months later, Simone stood in the doorway of our bedroom and said quietly, “Can we talk about something?”
I sat up. “Of course.”
She hesitated, then said, “When I saw that makeup… I hated myself.”
My chest tightened. “Simone—”
“No,” she said quickly. “Let me finish. I hated myself because I didn’t trust you instantly. I hated myself because for a moment… a moment… I wondered if I’d been living a lie.”
I reached for her hand.
“And then,” she whispered, “I hated the world for making me question the best thing in my life.”
Tears slid down her cheeks.
I pulled her into my arms.
“I don’t blame you,” I said into her hair. “You were manipulated. She wanted you to doubt me. That’s what predators do—they don’t just attack their target. They attack the people who protect them.”
Simone nodded, shaking.
“I know,” she whispered. “But it still hurts.”
I kissed her temple. “I know.”
And we stayed like that for a long time, holding each other in the quiet.
Not triumphant.
Not victorious.
Just… together.
Because that was the real ending.
Not the verdict. Not the sentence.
The fact that someone tried to break us with a smear of foundation and a decade of obsession…
…and we still chose each other.
the end
