Chapter 1

I came back from a business trip without telling him, hoping to surprise him.

The door was unlocked. I pushed it open and froze in place.

On the living room couch, a woman had her foot stretched out while my husband knelt on the floor, polishing her shoes, one careful stroke at a time.

I gripped my phone, took a deep breath, and was just about to say something.

Then I heard him speak, and his voice was soft. "Sweetheart, these are the ones that look best on you."

The woman laughed. "You're such a charmer."

He kept his head down and dropped his voice even lower. "I already finalized the paperwork behind her back. You're my wife now."

I didn't move, didn't cry, and didn't make a scene.

I turned around, walked out, opened my phone, and listed the house for 100 million dollars. It sold that same day.

The next day, he found my closet empty.

On the seventh day, he stormed into the realtor's office and found out that the house he thought was their marital home already had a new owner.

He stood at the door, pale as a ghost, and called me, his voice trembling.

I answered and said just one thing.

*****

I had just finished a two-week business trip overseas and was boarding the flight back home.

When I turned on my phone, there wasn't a single message from my husband, Michael Grant.

My heart sank, but I still pulled myself together, determined to surprise him.

I didn't call the driver. I took a cab by myself and went straight to our house at Summit Heights in the middle of the city.

The place was worth 100 million dollars. My parents gave it to me before the wedding, and the deed carried my name and nobody else's.

Michael always said he wanted to make it on his own and hated the idea of being called a freeloader, so we told everyone the house was joint property.

I used to be genuinely moved by all that talk about integrity.

Now I stood at my own front door and unlocked it with my fingerprint.

The door was slightly ajar.

My heart skipped a beat as I gently pushed it open.

In the entryway, a pair of unfamiliar red high heels was carelessly tossed on the floor.

They stood out like a stain on the floor.

Laughter came from the living room, a man and a woman together, and the sound was familiar and completely foreign at the same time.

I eased the door shut behind me and moved down the hall as quietly as I could.

As I came around the corner into the living room, the scene in front of me turned my blood to ice.

On the couch, a young woman in a thin slip dress lay back against the cushions in a deliberate pose.

She had one foot stretched out in a black stocking.

Michael knelt on the cold floor with a shoe brush in his hand, his head down, polishing the black leather shoe on her foot.

He looked like a believer at an altar.

The whole thing was so absurd that it felt like a nightmare.

I gripped my phone tightly, my nails digging into my palm.

A surge of anger shot up from my chest, almost burning through my sanity.

I opened my mouth, and the word divorce sat right on the tip of my tongue.

Then Michael's voice came, gentle, with a tenderness I had never once heard him use on me.

"Sweetheart, these are the ones that look best on you. They make your legs go on forever."

Sophia Lane let out a flirtatious laugh.

"You're such a charmer. I bet you've said that to your wife plenty of times too."

Michael didn't look up, and his hands never stopped, but his voice dropped lower, and it carried a little pride and a little reassurance.

"Don't worry about her. I've already taken care of all the divorce paperwork behind her back.

"As far as the law is concerned, you're Mrs. Grant now."

Something detonated in my head.

The last thread holding me together snapped.

So it wasn't just an affair. It was a "divorce."

I had already been divorced without knowing it, and I was the wife who gets pushed out of her own house so somebody else can move in.

How ridiculous.

My chest heaved, but I didn't make a sound.

I didn't cry, didn't make a scene, didn't even storm in and slap them both.

I just calmly raised my phone.

I pointed it at the best piece of theater I had seen all year.

Then I hit record.

Then I turned around without a word and walked out of the place I used to call home.

I closed the door softly behind me and never disturbed the happy, legally married couple inside.

I stood outside in the night wind and couldn't feel the cold at all.

My heart was already frozen solid.

I opened my phone's contacts, and called the realtor, Ashley Taylor.

"Ashley, this is Emily Carter. I'm listing the house at Summit Heights, effective right now.

"Yes, right now. No delay.

"The price is 100 million dollars, market value. There's one requirement. Full cash, and it closes today."

After I hung up, I leaned against the cold outside wall, looked up at the stars, and laughed.

Michael had called me his ex-wife.

So he was going to watch his ex-wife's property walk out the door without a single dollar of it landing in his hands.