My Husband Risked My Life to Protect His Mistress

The Black Corporation gala glittered like a knife edge—all crystal chandeliers and champagne flutes catching light from a thousand angles. I stood in the corner with my sketchpad, invisible in a simple black dress I'd owned since art school. The fabric hung looser now. I'd stopped noticing when I ate.

"Iris, darling." Gwen's voice cut through the chamber music. She swept past in emerald silk, the Black family emeralds at her throat—the ones Greyson's grandmother had worn, the ones that should have been mine. "Make sure you capture my necklace. The light hits it beautifully, don't you think?"

I kept my pencil moving across paper. A society matron's profile. Safe. Distant.

Greyson stood across the ballroom in his tuxedo, accepting congratulations on the company's latest acquisition. His hand rested on Gwen's waist like a brand of ownership. When his eyes found mine, they were empty as the champagne flutes littering abandoned tables.

"The hired artist," someone murmured nearby. "I heard she's quite talented. Greyson always did have an eye for quality."

Not his wife. Not anymore. Just the help.

Christina Black materialized beside me in ice-blue Chanel, her smile sharp as the diamonds at her ears. She held a glass of Cabernet, the liquid dark as old blood.

"Iris." She examined my sketch with theatrical interest. "Still playing at art, I see."

"Mrs. Black." I kept my voice neutral, my pencil steady.

"You know, I've been meaning to discuss something with you." She gestured with her wine glass, the movement too broad, too careless. The glass tipped. Red wine cascaded down my dress, soaking through the thin fabric, cold and wet against my skin.

I gasped. The sketchpad fell from my hands.

"Oh dear." Christina's voice carried across the suddenly quiet ballroom. "How clumsy of you, darling. I suppose breeding does tell in the end, doesn't it?" She turned to the gathered crowd, her expression perfectly concerned. "The poor girl never learned proper deportment. New money, you understand. Or rather—" she lowered her voice just enough that everyone strained to hear "—no money at all anymore."

Laughter rippled through the crowd like poison spreading through water.

I stood there, wine dripping onto the marble floor, my hands clenched at my sides. The locket at my throat felt like an anchor dragging me under. Across the room, Greyson watched. His jaw tightened. For one heartbeat, I thought—

He turned away.

Gwen's laugh was wind chimes in a graveyard.

---

The wholesale art supply market smelled like turpentine and desperation. I moved through the narrow aisles, calculating costs in my head. Greyson had cut my allowance to nothing. The cheap brushes would shed bristles. The paint would crack. But ninety-four portraits still waited.

"Iris?"

I froze. That voice—warm honey over gravel, unchanged by time.

Owen Hunter stood three feet away, holding a box of charcoal pencils. He'd grown into his frame, filled out the lanky boy I remembered into someone solid, real. His eyes—still that impossible blue—widened as they took me in.

"Owen." My hand went to my hair, greasy from days without washing. "I didn't know you were back in New York."

"Just moved back. Venture capital firm downtown." He stepped closer, and I saw the exact moment he registered the bruise-dark circles under my eyes, the tremor in my paint-stained hands. "Jesus, Iris. What happened to you?"

"Nothing. I'm fine." The lie tasted like ash.

He looked at the cheap supplies in my basket, then at my gaunt wrists. "Coffee. Now. Don't argue."

The café was small, anonymous. I wrapped my hands around the cup for warmth I couldn't seem to find anymore. Owen sat across from me, his silence more damning than questions.

"You're not fine," he said finally.

"I'm managing."

"You're shaking."

I looked down. He was right. The tremors had become constant—paint fumes, exhaustion, something breaking inside me one cell at a time.

"I'm staying," Owen said. His voice was quiet, absolute. "In New York. And I'm not leaving you like this."

"Owen—"

"I should have stayed before." His hand covered mine on the table, warm and steady. "I won't make that mistake again."

---

The servant's room had one window, painted shut. Greyson stood in the doorway, his expression carved from ice.

"Five portraits. Forty-eight hours." He checked his watch. "Gwen wants them for her portfolio."

"That's impossible—"

"Then you'll fail. And the contract stipulates penalties for failure." He stepped back. The lock clicked.

I stared at the door. At the five blank canvases propped against the wall. At the inadequate ventilation grate that would never clear the fumes fast enough.

My hands found the locket. Dad's face smiled in my memory, proud and dying and so terribly wrong about everything.

I picked up my brush.

Forty-eight hours later, I woke on the floor. My lungs burned. The room spun in sickening circles. Five canvases stood completed—Gwen's face multiplied, mocking me from every angle.

The lock clicked. Greyson entered, stepped over my prone body without breaking stride. He examined each portrait with the clinical detachment of a man appraising livestock.

"Acceptable," he said. "Though the shading on the third one is weak."

I tried to speak. My throat was sandpaper, my vision tunneling.

He walked out. The door stayed open this time.

Small mercies, I thought, before the darkness took me under.