His Secret Empire, Her Shattered Heart

My mind went blank.

Life had been so exhausting that Dirk and I rarely had time for intimacy. Two months ago, he'd come home and this box of condoms had fallen out of his jacket pocket. I'd assumed he'd bought the lemon-flavored ones on purpose, and I'd felt a little shy about it.

They were for Freda all along?

The humiliation crashed over me like a bucket of ice water dumped on my head.

Freda was still rambling, oblivious:

"I get the feeling your boyfriend doesn't really love you that much. Otherwise, why would he let you live in a place like this?"

"My boyfriend always says, where the money goes, that's where the love is. So he makes sure I get nothing but the best."

Her tone was so innocent, so breezy. To me, it was the cruelest thing I'd ever heard.

I smiled bitterly. Dirk understood the importance of money perfectly well. He just didn't see the point of spending it on me.

I had never once experienced the kind of devotion he showed her. Every word out of Freda's mouth was a knife, slicing me apart piece by piece.

I practically fled to the bathroom.

When I came back to the living room, Freda was holding my phone, staring at the screen with a blank expression.

My pupils contracted.

I'd left in such a rush that I'd forgotten to lock the screen.

Freda's voice was barely above a whisper:

"What a coincidence. Your boyfriend's name is Dirk Butler too?"

My hands and feet went ice cold. Before I could get a single word out, the front door rattled.

"Celeste, I picked up that cake you like..."

Dirk pushed the door open. His eyes met Freda's where she sat on the couch.

"You're a piece of garbage!"

Freda slapped him across the face and ran out crying.

Dirk's composure shattered in an instant.

He turned to me, glaring with a fury I had never seen before:

"I told you, I never planned on leaving you! Why would you hurt Freda like this!"

"You think this is going to scare her off? Not a chance! The more jealous you act, the more I'm going to protect her!"

He rushed after Freda, shoving away the hand I'd raised to explain. The motion was so forceful it knocked the piggy bank off the shelf.

Porcelain shattered across the floor, and a cascade of coins spilled out with it.

I didn't even register the shard that sliced my ankle. I just stood there, staring at the coins scattered on the ground.

Those first few years after I'd started working, the hours were brutal and the pay was almost nothing. Dirk had gone out and bought that piggy bank, told me to toss in whatever loose change I had. He'd joked that we'd save up enough for a big apartment someday.

He forgot about it eventually. I never did.

Sometimes I'd go to the farmers' market and ask the vendors to break bills into coins, just so I'd have something to drop in.

As if filling that jar would somehow mean Dirk and I would finally have a home of our own.

I crouched down and started counting the coins, one by one.

Most of them were dimes and nickels. There were barely any quarters.

It wasn't much.

But it was enough for a plane ticket out of here.

I didn't know what Dirk said to Freda after he caught up with her.

That night, a post went viral.

Freda had put her name on it, publicly accusing me of being a homewrecker. She claimed I'd used cooking as a cover story to hunt for a sugar daddy and seduce her boyfriend.

She sobbed through the whole video, tears streaming down her face:

"We just had a little fight, that's all. I never imagined someone like her existed! If my boyfriend didn't love only me, she might've actually stolen him away!"

She let my phone number, personal details, and address slip into the post, as if by accident.

Within minutes, my phone was overwhelmed. The insults poured in, hundreds of them, each one more vile than the last.

A deafening crash outside my door. Someone had hurled a bucket of red paint across it. On the wall beside it, someone had scrawled the words HOMEWRECKER and SHAMELESS.

I was shaking with rage. I wanted to find Dirk and demand answers.