Five Years of Lies, The Last Chapter

The moment Linda saw her grandson, her face lit up. She scooped the little boy into her arms.

"Noah's here! Come here and let Grandma give you kisses."

I sat there without moving a muscle.

I'd never really looked at Ryan's face before. Jessica had done a damn good job keeping him hidden.

They were all playing happy family. And the sickest part? Jessica was still carrying my child.

"Jessica, is this your idea of 'making things right'? The way you explained it to me before? Was it fun lying to me for five years?"

Everyone in the room went pale.

Ryan pulled the boy close, his face tight with tension. "I can take the hit, but my son can't. He's Jessica's biological child. He's also Linda's grandson. If you won't let him through that door, then as far as Noah's concerned, he doesn't have a mother anymore!"

He said it like he was the one being wronged. Like I was the bully.

Ryan stormed out with the boy without another word.

Jessica scrambled to her feet, ignoring the discomfort of her pregnant belly, and chased after him.

Linda shot me a vicious glare. Then she picked up the contract and slapped it right in my face.

"Michael, a million dollars ought to buy the rest of your life, don't you think? That boy is coming into this family. You stay out of it."

I watched the two of them walk away, feeling dazed. I bent down and picked up the torn pieces of the agreement.

All it asked for, on top of the money, was for me to play dumb. Keep my mouth shut. Stay out of whatever was going on between Jessica and Ryan.

My chest tightened. I shredded the papers.

I never imagined Jessica had been hiding this from me for five agonizing years.

It happened three months after we got married. I'd just come home from a business trip.

I walked in and the place was destroyed. Clothes torn to shreds. Underwear everywhere. Strange stains on the carpet.

And there, in our bed, lay Jessica and some naked guy I'd never seen before.

I couldn't process it. I couldn't accept it.

Jessica grabbed a blanket, stumbled to her knees, and wrapped her arms around my legs. Her voice shook as she begged.

"Michael, please believe me—I was drunk, I thought he was you. I didn't mean to. I really didn't."

She was rambling, her hands pressed together like she was praying. She kept explaining over and over.

"I'll never drink again. Just don't divorce me. I'll do anything. Anything you want."

It got back to her mother, too. That day, Linda slapped her own daughter across the face more than a dozen times. The old woman bent at the waist, head lowered, apologizing to me.

"Michael, she made one mistake. But she still loves you."

I didn't want to hear any of it. I just wanted out.

When Jessica saw that I wasn't changing my mind, she climbed up to the window ledge and threatened to jump.

"If you divorce me, I'll throw myself off this ledge right now. Because without you, I don't want to live."

That sentence broke me. That sentence made me cave.

I couldn't watch her do something like that. So I pulled her down from that ledge.

"Fine. No divorce. But there won't be a second time."

Even after that, I couldn't just shake what happened. The wound was still there. But she tried so hard to make it up to me. She put everything she had at my feet. The house. The cars. Company shares. Everything.

Even my friends were jealous.

"Michael, what did you do in a past life to land a wife like that?"

As the years went by, people around us got married and divorced one after another. They started betting on us. How many more years would Michael and Jessica last?

Then she told me she had to spend a year overseas for work. We video-called every day. She knew I had trust issues, so sometimes she'd fly back just to see me. She always said, "Don't put your career on hold because of me."

I really believed we were going to grow old together.

But I didn't know that all her busyness, all her "business trips," were just so she could have someone else's baby.

And I was the only fool who believed her for five years.

Tears blurred my vision. I wiped the corner of my eye.

I looked down at the divorce papers on the table—already signed by Jessica.

Silently, I picked them up.

Fine. If that's what she wanted, I'd give them what they asked for.