After His Mistress Attacked Me, He Defended Her

I found the wine on Tuesday morning.

I was looking for a spare vase in the hall closet. I pushed aside a stack of heavy winter coats. My hand brushed against a familiar velvet gift bag tucked in the dark corner. I pulled it out and looked inside.

Two bottles of 1998 vintage Bordeaux stared back at me. I had bought them last week. I had spent four hundred dollars on them. I remembered handing this exact bag to Eddie before his disastrous dinner with my parents.

*Traffic was a nightmare,* he had said, shoving ten-dollar gas-station wine into my hands.

I carried the heavy velvet bag into the kitchen. Catalina was sitting at the island. She was sipping green tea and scrolling on her phone. She wore one of Eddie’s oversized t-shirts.

I set the bag on the marble counter. The glass bottles clinked loudly against the stone. She looked up.

“You swapped them,” I said. My voice was flat.

Catalina blinked. Her eyes went wide and innocent. “Swapped what, Regina?”

“The wine for my father. You took the Bordeaux from Eddie’s car and replaced it with cheap garbage.”

She put a hand over her chest. She looked deeply shocked. “Oh my god. Is that what was in there? I had no idea. I was cleaning out Eddie’s trunk and found those cheap bottles. I thought he bought them for a party. I just moved the bags around.”

Her voice trembled. But her eyes didn’t. A tiny, sharp smile played at the corner of her mouth. It was a look of pure mockery.

“You knew exactly what you were doing,” I said.

“Why are you attacking me?” Her lower lip quivered perfectly on cue. “I’m barely holding it together, Regina. Eddie told me you were kind.”

I didn’t yell. I looked at her perfectly manicured nails tapping the mug. Then I picked up the velvet bag and walked away. There was no point in arguing with a snake.

That evening, Eddie was in the shower. I was sitting on the sofa, drafting the seating chart for the wedding reception. My phone was dead, so I grabbed Eddie’s from the coffee table to check the time.

As soon as I tapped the screen, a text popped up.

*Baby: Can you bring me some water? My head hurts.*

I stared at the name. *Baby.*

The bathroom door opened. Eddie walked out, aggressively drying his hair with a towel. He saw me holding his phone. He froze in his tracks.

“What are you doing?” he asked sharply. He crossed the room and snatched the phone from my hand.

“Who is Baby?” I asked. My voice was quiet.

He looked at the screen. A dark flush crept up his neck. He ran a hand through his damp hair. “It’s Cat. She just texted me for water.”

“Why is she saved as Baby in your phone, Eddie?”

He rolled his eyes and let out a loud, dramatic sigh. “Regina, really? Are we doing this right now? It’s an old contact name. From years ago. I just never bothered to change it.”

“You’ve been broken up for three years. You’ve been engaged to me for one.”

“I don’t look at contact names!” he snapped. His voice was loud, defensive. He looked at me like I was the crazy one. “I just type her name and hit send. You’re completely overreacting. She’s severely depressed, and you’re picking a fight over a stupid phone setting.”

My chest felt tight, but my face remained perfectly still. I looked at his defensive posture. His shifting eyes. He was lying. And he was using her fake illness as a weapon against me.

“Right,” I said softly. “My mistake.”

I turned back to my seating chart. I heard him let out a breath of relief before he walked to the kitchen to fetch her water.

At two in the morning, the apartment was completely silent. I was still awake at the dining table. My laptop screen glowed in the dark. I was finalizing the floral arrangements.

My phone buzzed on the wood. It was an incoming text from an unknown number.

I opened it.

It was a photo.

My breath hitched in my throat. The air rushed out of my lungs.

The picture was taken in the dark, illuminated by a phone flash. Catalina was in the foreground. She was wearing the black lace lingerie I had found hanging on the bathroom door yesterday. She was looking directly at the camera, smirking.

Behind her, asleep on the pillows, was Eddie. His bare shoulder was visible above the sheets.

It wasn’t an old photo. The headboard behind them was the one in our guest room.

My hands turned to ice. A sharp, physical pain pierced my chest. For ten years, I had built my life around the boy who bought me a pink hair clip. I had defended him. I had hidden my family’s immense wealth and military power just to protect his fragile ego.

Eddie swore he only housed her out of pity. He swore absolutely nothing was happening.

I stared at Catalina’s victorious smirk. She wanted me to scream. She wanted me to burst into the guest room, wake them up, and look like a hysterical, jealous fiancé. She wanted Eddie to comfort her while I lost my mind.

I didn’t shed a single tear. The sadness was entirely gone. Only a cold, hard clarity remained.

I tapped the screen. I pressed *Save Image*.

I moved the photo to a hidden folder on my phone. Evidence.

I closed my laptop. I walked to my bedroom and looked at the cheap pink hair clip on my nightstand. The boy from my childhood was truly dead. And the man sleeping in the next room was going to pay for every single lie.