Chapter 1 –
Clara had learned long ago that the most dangerous people are the ones you never notice.
She'd mastered invisibility — not the literal kind, but the social trick of being the one everyone trusted yet never really saw. She was the "safe" friend. The "nice" one. The one people unthinkingly left their children with, the one who remembered everyone's favorite coffee order.
To Emily, Clara was almost family. They'd been inseparable since college — sharing dorm rooms, bad wine, and worse heartbreaks. In those early years, they'd been equals. Two girls with the same dreams, the same tangled hair and thrift-store wardrobes, staying up until dawn talking about the lives they'd one day build.
But Emily's life had bloomed into something out of a glossy magazine spread: a beautiful white-brick home with climbing roses out front, two angelic children, and a husband who looked at her like she was the only light in the room.
Clara's own life… well, it was fine. Not tragic. Not dazzling. Just beige. A small apartment with peeling paint. A string of short-lived relationships. A job that paid the bills but never paid her dreams.
And the thing about beige, Clara had realized, is that no one wants to look at it for long.
She never said it out loud — not even to herself in the sharpest hours of the night — but every time she walked into Emily's kitchen and smelled the warm, expensive coffee brewing, every time she saw Daniel's hand casually resting at the small of Emily's back, she felt a pulse of something hot and ugly beneath her ribs.
It wasn't fair.
Clara had been there through Emily's worst heartbreaks. She'd picked her up off the floor when she was too drunk to walk. She'd helped her study for exams that Clara herself had failed. If anyone deserved the life Emily had, surely it was Clara.
"Clara, can you pass me the sugar?" Emily's voice was warm, casual, like always. She was leaning across the counter in that effortless way she had, her blond hair catching the late-morning light.
Clara smiled — her perfect, harmless smile — and passed the sugar bowl.
She knew exactly how this game worked. She'd keep being the dependable friend. The one Emily never saw as a threat. The one who was always there.
And one day, when the moment came, she'd be ready to take everything.