The CEO's Sweet Revenge on Her Cheating Husband

While I was massaging my paralyzed husband, feeling came back to his left foot.

I was overjoyed, and right away I went and found a doctor to recheck him.

But the answer I got was: “It's still no good. The odds of your husband ever standing again are next to zero.”

“It's fine. I'll take care of him my whole life.”

Afterward I went to work with red eyes, and halfway there I realized I'd forgotten my car keys, so I turned back.

Through the crack in the door, I saw Morgan Sawyer, who was supposed to be lying helpless in his sickbed. At that moment he was standing bolt upright, pinning a girl into the corner, kissing her like a man possessed.

“How much longer do we have to keep lying to her? Every time we're together I'm on edge the whole time. I'm sick of it.”

“Hang on a little longer. In a few days I'll figure out a way to fake my death, and then we'll take the money and settle down overseas.”

In an instant my head cleared. So it turned out that his suicide leap five years ago had been faked.

It was only to escape the company's debt crisis, and so he could be glued to Meg Simmons all day long.

I stayed silent for a long while, then walked into his attending physician's office.

“I've made up my mind. Stop the treatment. Just do a high amputation and fit him with a prosthetic.”

——

When I pushed the door open and went in, Morgan was hunched in the corner of the bed as always, sickly and frail, the light long gone from his eyes.

“The nurse said you went pestering Dr. Dickerson again. Heh. I'm just a useless cripple. There's really no point wasting medical resources on me.”

He'd always said this kind of defeated thing before.

On the surface I'd put on a brave face and coax him to think more positively, while in truth I'd hidden alone in the bathroom and cried more times than I could count.

I gripped the protective charm in my hand and let my eyes drift toward the trash can.

A sticky, oily smell hit me all at once. Inside, plain as day, sat a few just-used condoms, the sight of them turning my stomach.

So Morgan had been putting on an act in front of me this whole time.

Five years ago he'd run the company into the ground, racked up an enormous debt, and been driven by his creditors to jump.

He hadn't budged an inch, no matter how I'd knelt before him and begged.

In the end he'd dropped straight down from the fifteenth floor, landed in a heap of mud, and ended up paralyzed for life.

And I, from the shock of it, had lost the baby I'd carried for seven months.

That stretch of time was the darkest, most helpless period of my whole life.

By day I'd swallowed my disgust on the trading floor to land deals, drinking with all manner of handsy old men.

After work I'd gone straight to the hospital to talk Morgan down from the suicidal urges that never seemed to leave him.

Everyone urged me to give up.

“He blew all that money himself. It's got nothing to do with you. Find someone else to marry while you're still young.”

“A man who tries to kill himself every other day is no use to keep around. Just let him go.”

Even Morgan's parents pleaded with me, earnest as could be, to let go.

“He's lost the will to live. Staying alive is just suffering for him. Stop forcing him.”

But I wouldn't. I gritted my teeth and held on all the way to now.

The company that had been on the brink of bankruptcy came back from the dead under my hands.

Whenever I had time, I sat at Morgan's bedside, reaching out to renowned orthopedic specialists all over the world for him.

Just this morning, I'd even climbed all nine hundred and ninety-nine steps, bowing to the ground at every one, to a temple to ask for a protective charm just for him.

And yet, before I could even give it to him, it was thrown back in my face.

“Bringing me this useless garbage to fob me off again.”

These past few days his temper had grown more and more violent. He snatched the charm from my hand and hurled it out the window.

Afterward he bowed his head, buried his face in his hands, and tears spilled out by the fistful, like some beast whimpering.

“Lucinda Floyd, if you really love me, get me a bottle of sleeping pills. I'm tired. I want to sleep forever.”

I swallowed the contempt rising deep inside me.

His pretense of despair was a world apart from the man who'd been pinning Meg down, taking her like a thing possessed.