Theater: NovelMaster | Language: English
Synopsis
Three years into our marriage, Julian Sterling finally held my hand for the first time.
Not in our bedroom, but on the granite steps outside City Hall.
He clutched my wrist so tightly his fingers shook, his voice cracking. "Chloe, please. Just give me one more chance."
Right behind him, inside a black luxury SUV, a four-year-old girl pressed her face against the tinted glass, crying out, "Daddy!"
I stared at that little face—a carbon copy of his own—and a cold laugh escaped my lips.
Three whole years.
He used work as an excuse to sleep in separate bedrooms. He claimed he had a severe germaphobia just so he wouldn't touch a single meal I cooked. During the holidays, he even made me take the cross-state train to visit family all by myself.
I genuinely believed he was just emotionally reserved.
Until yesterday, when his mother sent a text to the family group on SnapChat:
*Julian's little girl is so adorable. She looks just like he did at that age.*
The text stayed up for barely nine seconds before she unsent it.
Too late. I had already taken a screenshot.
Seeing me stay silent, Julian desperately started explaining, "Her mother walked out, Chloe. The child has no one left. I couldn't just leave her out on the street—"
"So what you're saying," I pulled my wrist from his grip, "is that the secret child you hid for three years suddenly lost her babysitter, and you finally remembered you have a free live-in nanny at home?"
His mouth fell open, speechlessly.
I shoved the crumpled divorce papers against his chest.
"Julian, I married you because I loved you, not because I had nowhere else to go."
"Chloe! If you walk through those doors, there's no turning back."
Julian stood frozen on the steps of City Hall, clutching the wrinkled divorce petition.
The wind whipped his designer tie sideways, but he didn't even bother fixing it.
I didn't turn back.
As the sliding glass doors shut behind me, the little girl inside the SUV called for her daddy again, her sweet, high-pitched voice grating against my ears.
I pulled a ticket, joined the queue, and sat on the cold plastic bench waiting for my number.
My phone vibrated in my purse.
A message from Julian: *Calm down. Let's go home and talk.*
Home.
What a pathetic joke. What in that penthouse actually belonged to me? Not a single piece of furniture had been chosen by me. In the fridge, not one dish was ever tasted by him. For three years, I had slept alone in that king-sized bed.
"Next. Are you here for a divorce filing?" the clerk asked from behind the counter.
"Yes. A contested, unilateral petition."
"Both parties need to be present for the initial registry intake."
I paused.
My phone buzzed again. This time it wasn't Julian—it was his mother, Evelyn.
When I answered, her voice was much more composed than her son's. "Chloe, darling, Julian just told me everything. Stop throwing this little tantrum. Come home. I'll have the chef make dinner, and we can all talk this out like adults."
"Evelyn, are you calling to talk about that message you panicked and deleted yesterday?"
Dead silence on the other end for two full seconds.
"What message?"
"'Julian's little girl is so adorable. She looks just like he did at that age,'" I recited every single word slowly. "Since your memory is failing you, I thought I'd jog it."
Evelyn's breathing turned harsh, but she masked it almost immediately, forcing a tight chuckle. "Oh, that! I accidentally posted to the wrong group chat, darling. That's just a friend's grandchild. Don't let your imagination run wild—"
"Does a friend's child call you Grandma?"
Julian's voice answered for her.
I hadn't realized he had walked in. He was standing right beside my chair, a stray autumn leaf stuck to his polished leather shoe.
"Chloe, can we not do this in a place like this?"
"What kind of place? City Hall?" I tilted my head, looking straight into his eyes. "Three years ago, we signed our marriage license right here. Ending it here feels poetically neat."
His Adam's apple bobbed.
Nearby, people were whispering. A young couple waiting for their wedding license nudged each other, the girl whispering softly to her fiancé, "Damn, that guy is gorgeous."
She wasn't wrong. Julian was drop-dead gorgeous. Six-foot-one, sharp jawline, intense dark eyes. In his tailored suits, he looked like he stepped right off the cover of GQ.
Three years ago, that very face blinded me.
"Chloe, Maya is still in the car, and it's nearly a hundred degrees outside," he whispered, his tone tense. "No matter how much you hate me, she's only four."
I nearly barked out a laugh.
"Are you really using a four-year-old to guilt-trip me?"
"I'm not—"
"Then why the hell did you drag her to City Hall? Did you think seeing a toddler calling you Daddy would make my heart melt?"
He clamped his mouth shut.
His silence was an admission.
I stood up and slung my bag over my shoulder.
"Julian, go back outside and turn on the air conditioner before your daughter gets heatstroke. As for our divorce—"
I took a step closer, stopping inches away from his chest. I was close enough to catch the faint scent of fabric softener on his collar—a sweet, powdery scent that we never used in our house.
It wasn't the brand I bought.
"The thirty-day mandatory waiting period starts today. I won't stay a single second longer."
As I stepped toward the exit, I heard him murmur behind me, his voice barely audible.
"You're going to regret this."
It wasn't a threat.
It was spoken with that arrogant, entitled certainty he always had. As if he had bestowed the entire world upon me, and I was just an ungrateful fool throwing it away.
As I passed the black SUV, the passenger window rolled down. The little girl named Maya blinked her huge, glassy eyes at me.
"Miss? Are you one of Daddy's friends?"
I crouched down slightly to look at her.
Her eyes were undoubtedly Julian's, but her pointed, delicate chin belonged to another woman entirely.
"No," I replied softly. "I'm nobody.""Chloe, you lived with him for three years. Did you seriously never suspect a thing?"
My best friend Harper slammed her iced latte onto the café table, her eyes filled with disbelief and heartache.
I didn't answer right away.
There had been so many red flags. Looking back now, I felt like the world's biggest idiot.
"He refused to sleep with you, turned his nose up at your cooking, and ditched you during the holidays. Did you actually buy those pathetic excuses?"
"He told me he was a light sleeper."
"And when he traveled for business? Did he book separate beds in five-star suites, too?"
"We never traveled together."
Harper stared at me for five long seconds before unlocking her phone and sliding it across the table. "Take a look at this."
On the screen was an Ins profile.
The account belonged to a woman named Sienna Cole. Her profile picture showed her side profile, her features somewhat soft-focused, but around her collarbone hung a diamond pendant necklace.
I knew that necklace. It was the one I found in the top drawer of Julian's home office desk two years ago. Back then, I thought it was an upcoming birthday gift for his mother.
A post from three years ago showed a newborn baby's tiny hand gripping an adult's index finger.
The caption read: *Thank you for giving me the greatest gift of my life.*
The timestamp—exactly five months after Julian and I walked down the aisle.
"A pregnancy takes roughly nine months. If you count backward—"
"I don't need to count," I said, sliding the phone back to her.
She was already pregnant before our wedding.
Which meant while Julian was exchanging vows with me in front of hundreds of high-society guests, another woman was carrying his child.
"How did you find this?"
"Right after you sent me that screenshot of his mom's text, I hired an investigator. Julian's secondary black card has an automatic monthly wire of three thousand dollars going directly to an account under the name Sienna Cole. Three full years, without missing a single month." Harper paused, her voice dropping. "Chloe, that's over a hundred thousand dollars in cash allowances alone."
Over a hundred thousand dollars.
For three years, I budgeted our household groceries, scrubbed the kitchen counters, and tried to cook him gourmet dinners every night, while he wouldn't even touch a bowl of soup I made.
Meanwhile, he was faithfully wiring thousands every month to his mistress.
"There's more," Harper said, swiping to another screenshot. "Sienna was hired at Julian's corporate headquarters three years ago as the 'Executive Assistant to the CEO.' She only resigned last month."
My fingers curled tightly into my palms.
"He told me she left town."
"Left town? Quitting a job counts as leaving town? She's living right here in the city! He pays her rent, he supports the kid—how is that gone?"
"Because he needed that narrative," I leaned back against the leather booth, exhaling slowly. "If she's 'gone,' the poor child is left abandoned. And if the child is abandoned, he needs me to step up and play mommy. The math only works if she's out of the picture."
Harper grabbed my hand tightly. "What are you going to do?"
"Get a divorce."
"I mean, besides the divorce."
I glanced out the window. Across the street, a local real estate agency had a digital board displaying downtown loft listings.
"Before we got married, I bought a studio apartment in the West End with my own savings. I kept it rented out, but the lease ended last month. I'm moving in tomorrow."
Harper blinked in surprise. "You... you had an exit plan all along?"
It wasn't an exit plan.
It was just that ever since I moved into his cold penthouse, an empty pit had gnawed at my stomach. I could never put my finger on it, but holding onto that deed gave me peace of mind.
Maybe deep down in my subconscious, I had known this day would come.
When I went back to pack, Julian wasn't home.
My clothes took up barely a quarter of the walk-in closet. The rest was an endless sea of his tailored charcoal suits and crisp white shirts. For three years, that ratio had never changed.
I packed everything into two suitcases.
Before leaving, I pushed open his private study to grab my architecture reference books.
The mahogany desk drawer was unlocked.
Inside sat a thick manila envelope. I opened it—a certified DNA paternity test.
*Tested Parties: Julian Sterling, Maya Cole.*
*Result: 99.99% probability of biological paternity.*
*Date: Two years ago.*
He had run the DNA test two years ago.
Black ink on stark white paper, stamped with an official laboratory seal.
He had known for two full years that she was his flesh and blood. He had confirmed it, locked the truth away in his drawer, and walked back out into the living room every evening to tell me, "I already ate at the office."
I slipped the report back into the envelope, slid the drawer shut, and closed the door behind me.
As I rolled my suitcases to the foyer, our framed wedding portrait hung on the wall, staring directly back at me.
In the photo, my smile was radiant and naive. Julian wasn't smiling at all.
Three years ago, I thought he was just nervous in front of the camera."Mrs. Sterling, the matriarch asked me to deliver this to you."
On my third day in the studio apartment, the doorbell rang.
Standing outside was Frank, the Sterling family's long-time chauffeur. He held a thermal food container in one hand and an embossed designer gift bag in the other.
Inside the container was fresh bone broth. Inside the gift bag was a black debit card.
Taped to the card was a note handwritten in Evelyn's elegant cursive: *Five hundred thousand dollars. Consider it a token of our family's appreciation. Maya is an easy child. You'll get used to caring for her in a few days.*
Five hundred thousand dollars.
*You'll get used to it.*
I handed both the container and the gift bag straight back to him. "Frank, please give her a message for me. Take the soup and the card back to where they came from."
Frank looked uncomfortable, but he didn't argue. He nodded politely and left.
Twenty minutes later, Evelyn called.
"Chloe, are you unhappy with the amount? Name your price—"
"Evelyn, this isn't a negotiation."
"Then what on earth do you want? Julian knows he made a mistake! What more do you expect him to do? Get down on his knees and beg?"
I walked out onto the small balcony with my phone. Down on the street below, a little girl was skipping rope, her pigtails bouncing with every jump.
"He knows he made a mistake? What mistake, exactly? Was his mistake knocking up another woman before our wedding? Was his mistake using me as a public shield for three years? Or was his only mistake letting me see that message in your group chat?"
Silence hung heavy over the line for several seconds.
When Evelyn spoke again, all pretense of maternal warmth had evaporated.
"Chloe, since you want to be difficult, let's stop playing games. You lived in luxury for three years because of Julian's status. If you want a divorce, fine. But Maya carries Sterling blood. She needs a mother. If you won't raise her, someone else gladly will. When Julian replaces you with another woman in that penthouse—don't come crying to me."
"So your ultimatum is: I either become your unpaid nanny, or I step aside so his mistress can move in?"
"I didn't say that, but that is the reality of your situation—"
"Evelyn," I cut her off cold. "Before I married your son, I was the youngest lead architect at the prestigious Foster Design Firm. After I married him, I resigned, turned down multi-million-dollar urban projects, and spent three years cooking gourmet meals that your son never even touched."
Evelyn drew in a sharp breath. She clearly hadn't expected me to speak with such blunt defiance.
"For three years, while your son wired thousands every month to Sienna, I spent my days testing recipes trying to figure out what flavors he liked. I rotated four kinds of marinades, three gourmet glazes, two specialty olive oils. He never took a single bite. And like an idiot, I blamed myself for not being a good enough cook."
My voice didn't waver. There were no tears, no trembling.
I had already cried all my tears outside City Hall three days ago. And none of those tears were for Julian—they were for the three years of my life I had thrown into an incinerator.
"All I want now is my own life back. Is that too much to ask?"
Evelyn didn't answer.
Right before hanging up, she sneered one final line: "You will regret this."
Identical to what Julian had said.
This family must have rehearsed their intimidation tactics from the exact same script.
That evening, a text came in from Julian. Not on SnapChat, but a direct SMS.
*Chloe, Maya asked me today why that nice lady doesn't come home anymore.*
I stared at the screen for a long time.
Then I typed four words: *None of my business.*
Before locking the screen, I added: *Stop using your child as a messenger. She's four years old, not your bargaining chip.*
He didn't reply.
But at seven the next morning, my doorbell buzzed persistently.
This time, there was no driver, no thermal soup, and no debit card.
It was Julian.
He held Maya in his arms. The little girl's head was slumped against his shoulder, her cheeks flushed bright crimson with a raging fever.
"She's at a hundred and three," Julian rasped, his eyes frantic. "I... I don't know how to bring it down.""You don't have fever medication at home?"
"I do! I gave her some, but it's not working. I—" His voice cracked. "I've never taken care of a sick kid."
Maya whimpered weakly against his neck, mumbling, "Daddy..."
I looked at him standing there in pure disarray—his suit jacket slung over one arm, his tie crooked, deep purple bags under his eyes.
The ruthless CEO who appeared invincible on every financial magazine cover looked utterly helpless, fumbling with a digital thermometer held upside down.
"Bring her in."
It wasn't because my heart softened toward him.
A four-year-old child had a 103-degree fever. I couldn't bring myself to slam the door in her face.
I laid Maya gently on the sofa and pressed the back of my hand to her forehead. She was burning up.
Cooling patches, lukewarm sponge baths, monitoring her vitals—I moved swiftly and methodically.
Not because I was a mother, but because during these three years of marriage, I had learned how to take care of everyone except myself.
Maya groaned softly in her feverish haze, her small, sticky fingers latching onto my thumb, refusing to let go.
"Miss..."
"Shh. I'm here, sweetheart."
Julian leaned against the doorframe, watching in silence. There was a strange, unreadable emotion swirling in his dark eyes.
"You're so much better at this than I am," he murmured.
I didn't look up from wringing out the washcloth.
"That's because you've never taken care of anyone in your entire life."
His lips parted, but he couldn't form a comeback.
Half an hour later, the fever finally began to break, dropping to 100.8 degrees. I bundled Maya into a soft fleece blanket. Clutching my finger, the little girl mumbled drowsily into the pillow, "Mommy..."
My hand froze.
Julian spoke up instantly. "She gets confused when she's sick—"
"Save it."
I tucked the blanket around her shoulders and stood up, smoothing down my sweater.
"Her fever broke. Take her home. Keep her hydrated, and if it spikes again tomorrow, take her to the emergency room."
"Chloe—"
"Julian, you didn't bring her here today just because she was sick."
His face stiffened.
"You came to test the waters. You wanted to see if a sick child would make me back down. A 103-degree fever, and instead of rushing to the ER, hiring a private pediatric nurse, or calling your mother, you drove straight across town to my apartment. You gambled on my empathy."
He opened his mouth. "I—"
"You only won half that bet," I met his gaze dead-on. "I'll nurse a sick toddler, but I won't stay in your sham of a marriage."
As he scooped Maya up into his arms, the drowsy child rested her chin on his broad shoulder and whispered, "Daddy, I want that pretty lady to be my mommy."
Julian's feet paused.
As he walked past me toward the hallway, he said quietly, "She grew up without a mother, Chloe. Can't you just—"
"Before you finish that sentence," I blocked the doorway, looking him straight in the eyes, "have you ever stopped to ask yourself why I don't have a child of my own?"
His pupils contracted sharply.
Three years of celibacy.
For three entire years, he had never even given me a real reason for rejecting me in bed.
"I married you when I was twenty-seven. I'm thirty now. Every time my mom called asking when we were going to start a family, what was I supposed to tell her? That my husband wouldn't even hold my hand?"
His grip on Maya tightened, causing the sleeping girl to whimper slightly.
"For three years, I honestly thought something was wrong with me. I went to fertility clinics, had endless exams, and—" I swallowed the lump in my throat, "I even secretly wondered if there was some scent on my body that disgusted you."
Saying it aloud didn't feel humiliating anymore.
All the humiliation had already been bled dry over the past three years.
Julian stood frozen in the hallway for a long time.
Finally, three hollow words slipped past his lips: "I'm sorry."
Three words. Weightless and empty, just like every text he had ever sent me.
*Fine. Okay. Noted. Sorry.*
"Just go," I said, unlatching the door fully. "Next time Maya gets sick, dial 911."
Once the door clicked shut, I leaned back against the wall, my palms soaked in cold sweat.
My phone screen lit up. A notification popped up from a private chat.
It was a screenshot from Evelyn in the Sterling family group chat:
*Julian took Maya over to Chloe's apartment. Looks like things are turning around.*
The family group again.
Deleted within nine seconds again.
Only this time, she hadn't been fast enough.
Because the person who took the screenshot wasn't me—it was Julian's maternal cousin, Elena.
Elena had forwarded the screenshot directly to my private message, adding a caption:
*Chloe, don't you dare look back. This whole family is running a coordinated circus act on you.*
Chapters (4)
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Watch & Promotions
- Search this code in the NovelMaster app:
531355Open NovelMaster → Search code → Find the title