Chapter 1

After seven years of a secret marriage, it was finally our wedding day.

But my husband, Charles Rivers, was nowhere to be found.

I tried calling him over and over, but his phone was always off.

The guests started to leave, and still, he never showed up.

That was when I overheard their childhood friends talking.

"Charlie skipped his own wedding just to go to Grace Turner's dad's funeral?" one friend asked.

"Come on, the dead always take priority over the living, especially when it's his father-in-law," the other replied.

It felt like a bolt of lightning hit me. I turned to see my dad, Alex Shaw, who was busy apologizing to the guests.

Alex's perfectly fine. Who the hell is he mourning?

I rushed to the funeral home in my wedding dress, only to find Charles dressed in funeral clothes, standing with the family.

He was supporting Grace, who looked like she might collapse, and promised, "Honey, you'll always have me. I'll be there for your mom, Emma Turner, till the very end."

I was about to storm in and confront Charles when a security guard stopped me at the door. "Who shows up at a funeral in a wedding dress? Are you here to make things even worse?"

I let out a cold laugh. "Who said I'm here for the funeral? I'm here to get married."

The guard's eyes went wide in shock. "There's a dead person in there. Who are you trying to marry?"

I glared at Charles, who was holding Grace, my teeth clenched in fury. "I'm here to marry someone who's already dead to me."

Just as I was about to step inside, the guard stopped me again. "Miss, don't make a scene. This is a funeral. I don't care if you're marrying a corpse or a ghost, but you're not getting in dressed like that."

I glared daggers at Charles, ripped off my veil, and in a few quick strides stormed into the restroom.

Five minutes later, I walked back into the funeral hall, now dressed in a janitor's uniform.

Charles was nowhere to be seen.

Grace was standing in the family area, her eyes red and swollen, bowing to the guests.

When she saw me, she froze for a second.

"The funeral hall doesn't need cleaning right now," she said.

I glanced down at my janitor's uniform and realized she'd mistaken me for a cleaner.

I was about to say I wasn't a cleaner, but in this outfit, there was really no way to explain myself.

She just waved it off, totally unfazed. "Hey, you showed up, that's what counts. Thanks for coming to say goodbye to Mikael."

I scanned the funeral hall, spotting the memorial banner beside the portrait. Signed at the bottom: Devoted Son-in-law, Charles.

Devoted son-in-law.

My legal husband ditched me on our wedding day.

While Alex was alive and well, he was here pretending to be someone else's dutiful son-in-law.

It was beyond ridiculous.

My anger was boiling over, but I clenched my jaw and forced myself to hold it in.

I pretended to be casual and said, "Wow, you booked the top-tier VIP hall for the funeral. That's some serious filial piety right there."

Grace glanced around the room following my gaze, and her eyes welled up with tears again. "My husband took care of everything. Mikael always cared about appearances, so my husband insisted on giving him a grand send-off."

I forced a smile.

Grand send-off.

Yeah, real damn grand,' I sneered to myself.

This funeral setup put our wedding reception to shame, it was on a whole other level of luxury.

"Your husband is really devoted to his elders," I said.

Grace was sobbing. "When Mikael was in the hospital, my husband pulled every string he could to get the best specialists in the country to consult on his case.

"Each imported injection cost over ten thousand dollars, and he didn't even blink before signing off on them.

"He handled everything, even the dirty work, cleaning him up, feeding him. I suggested hiring a nurse, but he said no outsider would ever care as much as family."

My knuckles turned white, my whole body trembling with rage.

When I was in the hospital for appendicitis, I asked him to take a few days off to be with me.

He said it was just a minor surgery, and my parents had nothing better to do anyway. Why should he have had to take time off to look after me?

Besides, the company was swamped, so he couldn't take time off.

He couldn't even spare a minute to be with me during my surgery, but somehow he had all the time in the world to wait on his fake father-in-law, working nonstop.

My mind was spinning.

Charles is really a master of time management.

Last month, Charles told me he was going to be away on a business trip for a whole month.

He basically left all the wedding planning for me to handle by myself.

Every time I tried to call him, he'd just say he was busy. Even after work, he'd either not pick up or just ghost me.

Come on, nobody's so busy they can't spare a couple minutes to answer the phone.

I'd had my suspicions, and I even confronted him directly.

He got annoyed, saying he was so busy he barely had time to breathe, and I was the one doubting him.

I quickly apologized, thinking maybe I was just being paranoid for not trusting him.

Turns out, all that "busyness" was him playing family for the other woman's dad.

We'd been secretly married for seven years, and the wedding date kept getting postponed again and again.

At the last class reunion, someone teased him and asked when he was finally going to hold the wedding.

He couldn't handle the embarrassment, so he just went along with it.

Then he booked a hotel so rundown and shabby, even the wedding planners didn't want to touch it.