“If you pretend you don’t know anything, you can still be my wife,” Christopher said in the dark, his voice carrying a sudden coolness that chilled me far more than any confession ever could.
I had just asked him why, after three long years spent running operations outside of San Jose, he had returned home with the strange habit of wrapping his arm around my waist while I slept. He had never used to hold me like that during all our years together.
“Who taught you to sleep like that?” I asked quietly, staring at the shadows on the ceiling.
His arm immediately withdrew from my body, leaving a cold space between us on the mattress.
He got up without another word, walked out onto the balcony, and lit a cigarette, the tiny red embers glowing in the night air.
“Lorelei, there are things I don’t tell you because you simply don’t need to know them,” he said, blowing smoke into the dark. “Gwen isn’t like the other women, and if you don’t make a scene, she will never have any reason to bother you.”
He spoke without a single shred of shame, treating the entire situation as if I were the intruder in my own marriage.
“Then choose right now,” I told him, sitting up in bed and looking directly at his silhouette. “It is either her or me.”
Christopher clenched his jaw tightly, his eyes narrowing as he turned his face away from me.
For three long years, I had waited patiently for his return while he oversaw a massive expansion of the Pinnacle Crest Group across various branches in South America. We had talked endlessly about having children when he came back, about finally planning the grand wedding we never had, and about making up for all our lost time.
Yet from our very first night back together, I understood deep down that something was horribly wrong.
Christopher would arrive home freshly showered every single evening without fail.
He could easily wash away another woman’s perfume with hot water, but he had not considered that I would immediately recognize the sweet, synthetic scent of a body wash he had never bought for our house.
That very morning, I had discovered something even worse while looking through his private records.
Gwen Vance was twenty-seven years old and worked as a senior assistant in his international office.
Christopher had personally financed her brother’s fledgling business, paid for the extensive remodeling of her parents’ house in San Antonio, and traveled across the country specifically to attend her mother’s sixtieth birthday party.
Meanwhile, during those same three years, he had never once flown back to celebrate my birthday with me.
When I confronted him with these facts, his eyes lowered toward the floor in rare silence.
For a brief second, I foolishly thought I saw a flicker of genuine guilt in his expression.
Then he reached out and wrapped his arms around me in a warm embrace.
“Just give me a little time,” he whispered softly into my hair. “I am going to break up with her very soon.”
Those words still carried the familiar, gentle tone of the man I had fallen in love with years ago, but I already knew that man no longer existed in the real world.
That night, Christopher slept alone in the guest room down the hall.
At two o’clock in the morning, I went downstairs to grab a glass of water and heard his quiet voice drifting from the kitchen.
He was sitting at the island, engaged in an intimate video call on his tablet.
“Why did you tell her about me?” Gwen asked in a sweet, childish voice that carried clearly through the quiet room. “Now she probably absolutely hates my guts.”
Christopher let out a light, affectionate laugh that I had not heard directed at me in many years.
“As long as I am standing right here, nobody is ever going to do a single thing to hurt you,” he promised her softly.
There was a brief pause on the line before her voice echoed through the speaker again.
“Come over early tomorrow morning,” she requested playfully. “I want to eat something you have personally made for breakfast.”
I remained entirely motionless in the dark corridor, holding my breath so he would not hear me.
The very next morning, I walked downstairs into the kitchen while still wearing my everyday pajamas.
Gwen was already standing inside our house, looking exceptionally comfortable in the space.
She was young, impeccably groomed, and smiling brightly as she openly embraced the man who was still legally my husband.
When she spotted me on the stairs, she gasped dramatically and hid behind his broad shoulders.
“Oh… I am so sorry,” she whimpered nervously. “I am just so afraid that she is going to get angry at me.”
Christopher looked at me immediately, his defensive posture making it seem as though I were a dangerous threat in my own home.
He stepped forward slightly and introduced us with a tense voice: “Lorelei, this is Gwen.”
I took another slow step down the wooden staircase, keeping my expression entirely neutral.
Gwen walked toward me holding a hot breakfast plate in her hands, her eyes wide with exaggerated innocence.
Before I could even reach out or touch her, she suddenly lost her balance and collapsed onto the hard floor.
Christopher instantly rushed past me to scoop her up into his arms with overwhelming concern.
“Lorelei! I explicitly told you not to hurt her!” he yelled, glaring up at me with real anger.
I stood completely still on the bottom step and stared down at him without blinking.
“I did not push her,” I said firmly, keeping my voice steady and calm.
“Gwen is extremely sensitive,” he snapped back, cradling her against his chest. “You cannot behave like a crazy person in this house.”
I looked him straight in the eyes and repeated my words clearly: “I did not push her. Look at me right now and tell me you actually believe me.”
Christopher hesitated for a few agonizing seconds, his eyes darting between my face and the woman in his arms.
Then Gwen buried her face into his shirt and began to sob quietly, pulling his full attention back to her.
He completely stopped looking at me, choosing instead to rub her back and whisper comforting phrases.
At that exact moment, I finally accepted that my marriage had not simply broken up over time.
It had been stone-cold dead for three whole years while I was waiting for him to return home.
What I decided to do next was something neither of us could have ever imagined in our wildest dreams.
PART 2
Two days after that humiliating incident in the kitchen, Christopher completely stopped hiding Gwen from the world.
First, he brought her along to important company strategy meetings as his personal companion.
Then he started taking her to high-end business dinners all over the city.
Finally, he escorted her to exclusive evening parties where all our lifelong friends knew perfectly well that I was still his lawful wife.
Gwen quickly transitioned from being a simple corporate assistant to becoming the prominent woman who walked proudly arm in arm with him everywhere.
The strange part was that Christopher continued to insist to everyone that he had no intention of divorcing me.
At a lavish birthday celebration, one of his oldest close friends finally confronted him near the bar.
“Christopher, this has gone far enough,” his friend said sternly. “Lorelei is your wife, and you cannot just show up with another woman and expect everyone to pretend this is normal.”
I had arrived at the venue entirely by myself, wearing an elegant dress and keeping my head held high.
Christopher spotted me from the far side of the crowded room and, perhaps feeling embarrassed by the judgey stares of his peers, quickly let go of Gwen’s arm.
He walked straight up to me, wrapped his hand firmly around my waist, and pulled me close to his side.
“You know that no single person in this world could ever truly take your place,” he murmured softly into my ear.
Then, right in front of Gwen, he leaned down and kissed me tenderly on the cheek.
Gwen forced a tight, polite smile for the crowd, but her eyes were burning with pure rage and jealousy.
Seeing her reaction made something clear inside me, so I decided to stop competing for a man who did not deserve me.
I stepped back and quietly began to execute a carefully calculated plan.
Later that same night, I overheard Christopher talking to his inner circle in a private lounge room upstairs.
“Of course I care about Gwen,” he explained to the men sitting around him. “But Lorelei is a completely different story, and I am mostly angry because she has started talking to her wealthy family again after all these years, especially since the Sterling family humiliated me for so long.”
My family had never approved of my decision to marry him in the first place.
My father had openly stated that Christopher did not love me for who I was, but rather loved everything he could gain through my family’s social standing.
Back then, I fiercely defended Christopher against my parents and deliberately distanced myself from them.
I agreed to get married in a simple civil ceremony without a grand party because he insisted he needed to consolidate his corporate position first.
Now, he was actively punishing me simply because I had chosen to reconcile and speak with my mother again.
“Gwen is just a temporary situation,” Christopher continued speaking inside the lounge. “I have already promised Lorelei that I will break off the affair eventually.”
As I stood near the hallway, I caught sight of Gwen standing behind the adjacent door frame, overhearing every word he said.
When she turned around in shock, she found me standing directly in front of her with a calm expression.
“Now you finally know your true place in his life,” I told her quietly before walking past her down the hall.
Her face turned pale, her confident demeanor completely shattering in an instant.
The very next morning, my hired private investigator received a set of very simple instructions from me: observe their every move, document everything thoroughly, and do not intervene under any circumstances.
I did not have to wait very long for results to materialize.
Gwen called Christopher thirty-nine times in a single evening while he was sitting next to me.
He finally picked up the phone when our private car was carrying us back toward our residential neighborhood.
“I lost my house keys!” she sobbed hysterically into the receiver. “There is a terrifying stranger standing in my hallway… I am so scared!”
A second later, she let out a loud scream over the line and abruptly hung up the phone call.
Christopher immediately ordered our driver to turn the car around and head straight to her luxury apartment complex.
I quietly got out of the vehicle at the next intersection without saying a single word to him.
Half an hour later, my investigator sent clear, high-resolution photographs of Christopher kissing Gwen on the staircase of her building.
I had the images printed out on high-quality paper immediately.
However, I did not post them online or send them to the press.
Instead, I had the physical photos delivered anonymously straight to Gwen’s private residence, along with old documentation proving their affair had been going on for three full years.
I knew with absolute certainty how her fragile ego would react to such information.
Gwen was a prominent lifestyle influencer on social media platforms.
Hundreds of thousands of young followers closely tracked her continuous travel updates, high-end restaurant visits, expensive clothing hauls, and supposed luxury lifestyle.
She published those exact photos on her official public profile that very same night.
“After three long years of hiding in the shadows, we can finally share our beautiful love story with the world,” her caption read.
The public scandal exploded across social media within minutes, creating a massive wave of intense corporate backlash.
Christopher arrived at our house in a state of absolute fury, slamming the front door behind him.
He smashed decorative flowerpots against the wall, threw expensive decorative objects, and violently knocked my phone out of my hand onto the hard floor.
“You are the one who posted those private photos!” he screamed at me, his face red with anger. “You are trying to destroy my entire career just because you are consumed by jealousy!”
With my leg throbbing painfully from where the heavy phone had struck me, I calmly retrieved the device and opened Gwen’s video page.
There was a fresh video uploaded just minutes earlier, showing Christopher fast asleep on the pillow right beside her.
His face instantly lost all its color as he stared at the playing screen.
“Lorelei… I swear I had not seen that video yet,” he stammered, his voice suddenly trembling.
He looked around the room, suddenly becoming aware of the physical destruction he had just caused in a fit of rage.
“Please forgive me,” he whispered, taking a step toward me with pleading eyes.
I did not offer him a single word of response.
Because while he was busy apologizing for his outbursts, my team of attorneys had already spent hours finalizing legal divorce papers that Christopher was convinced I would never have the courage to sign.
I still had to inform him of the exact condition under which I would grant him an easy, quiet divorce.
PART 3
When I stepped into the corporate headquarters of the Pinnacle Crest Group alongside my chief attorney, not a single employee recognized me.
