All the Lies - Charlotte Byrd Page 0,2

has written in his life.

The other thing that's particularly interesting about him is that he's independently published.

He doesn’t have a publisher so he has been self-publishing all of his work. He has a strong social media presence, but nothing personal is ever posted.

Of course, there are no pictures.

There is also no personal information of any kind. Many authors will state the city and state or country where they live. They might mention a spouse, children, or pets. None of these details exist about D. B. Carter.

I know this because I have looked.

Unfortunately, it was my idea to write about D. B. Carter in the first place. A friend of mine mentioned that he was her favorite author. When I looked him up, I saw how well he was selling on Amazon and other platforms.

I tried to find out more about him, but I couldn't. When I downloaded his book onto my Kindle, I realized what all the fuss was about.

I couldn't stop turning the pages.

I was addicted.

I stayed up half the night reading and the funny thing is that I don't even really like fantasy. There was something about the characters, the setting, and his use of language that lured me in and kept me there until I was done.

I'm a journalist and we like to think that we are objective. Of course, there is no such thing. We all come with our innate and implicit biases that guide the stories that we choose to tell and how we tell those stories.

When I was at that pitch meeting, sitting behind that Formica table with my colleagues listening to Corrin rant about taking the magazine to the next level, I didn’t have any other ideas. But I had just stayed up the whole night reading his book and couldn't wait to start the next one. What made him particularly interesting was that he was a bigger mystery than I had even envisioned.

The box of Thai food feels warm against my stomach and it calms my nerves somewhat. I can't wait to talk to Alex about this impossible assignment.

I have no idea where to start.

In this day and age, every search begins online, but outside of his books, he barely exists.

It reminds me of that old saying, if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it fall, did it actually happen?

If a person doesn't exist on the Internet, does he actually exist at all?

Alex's office is at the far end of the hallway from the elevators. He is an associate at his father's boutique investment bank.

It's not a particularly big enterprise in that it doesn't have that many employees, but it's very profitable. Mr. Wetterling is very careful about keeping costs down and staying below the number of employees that he needs to remain a small business even though the firm made almost five hundred million in profit last year.

There are only a couple of office assistants; one who works for his father and another who answers the calls that come in for all of the associates.

I wave to the younger one and ask about her daughter who has recently been diagnosed with a kidney infection. Afterward I walk down the brightly lit modern hallway and nod to every associate with their door open.

When I finally get to Alex's office, I knock and wait.

No one answers, so I knock a little louder.

When I try the handle, the door swings open and I see Alex with his pants down, his shirt untucked, and a woman bent over his desk.

“Emma!” Alex yells, looking back at me, and trips pulling up his pants.

I straighten my back as the blood coursing through my body turns to ice.

When he moves out of my field of vision, I see her.

She just sits up on the desk, crosses her legs, and buttons up her tailored, dry clean-only, silk blouse.

“What's happening here?” I ask. With my palms drenched in sweat, the Thai food slips out of my hands and drops to the floor.

3

Emma

When I look back up at them, everything moves in slow motion. Alex walks up to me and says something, but I don't hear him.

My ears buzz.

The woman my fiancé was just having sex with is his boss, Jennifer Lester.

I look past her and then stare at the giant floor-to-ceiling window behind her.

The view of the city is magnificent. Breathtaking.

Is it just this scene that is taking my breath away and tightening my chest?

I try to inhale but my throat closes up.

I