The Fake Wife's Billion-Dollar Revenge

1: 1

Seven months pregnant, I took the cup of milk tea Philip Weiss handed me and drank a big mouthful without a second thought.

The scalding pepper water burned straight through my throat.

I doubled over coughing, and warmth I couldn't stop ran down between my legs.

The pale maternity dress soaked through fast, and drops fell onto the mall's tiled floor.

His little assistant, Althea Pruitt, came rushing out and draped herself all over Philip.

"See, I told you — pregnant women are loose down there. A few coughs and she can't hold it."

"Philip, you lost. You have to take me to a movie tonight."

"Anyway, Amber Donaldson's wet herself like this, so you won't feel like touching her, right?"

Philip steadied her by the waist and nodded with a smile. "A bet's a bet."

Althea leaned against his shoulder, beaming as she made another offer.

"Let's bet again. Guess whether Amber's going to cry."

Philip turned and looked back at me.

He didn't cover the hem of my dress. He didn't stop the people filming all around us.

He just smiled and said,

"I bet she does."

"She cares too much about her pride. She won't last three minutes."

The two of them walked into the elevator, laughing, and left me standing there in everyone's curious, sneering stares.

I didn't cry. I just dialed a number.

Late that night, a few hundred bodyguards surrounded Althea's home.

I pressed the dagger to her cheek and gave a soft smile.

"Want to make a bet?"

"Guess where my next cut lands."

"Across your face."

"Or into your heart?"

1

Althea stared at the blade against her cheek, flinching back again and again.

"Amber, don't do anything stupid!"

"There are cameras everywhere. You lay one finger on me and Philip won't let it go!"

Even now, she still dared to use Philip against me.

I pressed my wrist down.

Althea screamed and squeezed her eyes shut.

The blade grazed past her ear and sheared off a lock of hair.

"Relax."

"I've always kept score fairly. It just so happens I made a bet with someone too."

"I bet on how many bottles of pepper water it takes before Miss Pruitt coughs herself wet!"

I signaled a bodyguard to open the box on the table.

Inside sat dozens of prepared cups of pepper water.

"However you toyed with me this afternoon, we're going to do it again, exactly the same."

"Drink."

Althea clamped her lips tight.

The bodyguard had just held out a cup when Philip's furious shout came from outside the door.

"Stop!"

He shoved aside the men blocking the doorway and strode in fast.

Seeing Althea pinned in the chair, he didn't think twice before pulling her into his arms.

"Amber, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

The moment she saw him, the tears came at once.

"Philip, I was only joking around with Amber."

"And she brings all these people to corner me, and holds a knife to scare me."

She pointed at the hair on the floor.

"Any later and she'd have carved up my face."

Philip looked down at her for a long while.

Only after making sure she wasn't hurt did he turn to me.

"This afternoon Althea did take it too far, I'll admit that."

"But there was no need to blow it up this far, was there?"

"You're healthy. A few coughs won't do anything to you."

"Althea has a stomach condition. Drinking that would actually land her in the hospital."

So he knew Althea had a stomach condition.

Yet he couldn't remember that I was seven months pregnant, that the doctor had warned me over and over not to touch anything irritating.

I didn't argue with him. I only asked one thing. "The bladder leaking during my pregnancy — you told her about that?"

Philip was silent for a few seconds.

"I only mentioned it once, in passing."

"How was I supposed to know she'd turn it into a bet."

Three months into the pregnancy, I leaked for the first time from a sneeze.

I hid in the bathroom then and wouldn't even open the door.

Philip coaxed me for a long time outside.

Afterward he carried me back to bed and changed the sheets for me.

He said there was nothing shameful between husband and wife.

He even promised me, "Only the two of us will ever know about this."

And now even his little assistant could hold my private life up and laugh at me.

Althea hid behind him and explained in a small voice,

"Amber, don't take it the wrong way."

"Philip only talked to me about it because he was worried your recovery after the birth wouldn't go well."

"I even looked into pelvic floor therapy for you specially."

I looked at her coldly.

"And secretly filming it was to help me recover too?"

Her expression froze for a beat, then her lips curled again.

"I just sent it to a few friends."

"They're the ones who spread it around. That's not my fault."

She held the phone up in front of me.

That clip had already been shared tens of thousands of times.

The comments were nothing but mockery of my body and the wet hem of my dress.

Someone had even cut out my face at the moment I leaked and turned it into a GIF.

Philip gave it only a glance.

"The internet has no memory."

"Give it a few days for the hype to die down, and no one will remember."

He said it so lightly.

He wasn't the one filmed at his most humiliating.

He wasn't the one tens of thousands of people were gathered around to laugh at.

I had a bodyguard pour a fresh cup of pepper water.

"I won't make it hard on her."

"Drink it, delete the video, then apologize publicly."

"And this whole thing is over."

But Althea didn't take it.

She touched her belly. A moment ago she'd been crying so pitifully, and now her eyes were full of smugness.

"This cup, I really can't drink."

"The doctor said pregnant women can't touch anything too irritating."

I thought I'd misheard.

"What did you say?"

Althea took a prenatal test result out of her bag and unfolded it for me to see.

"I'm pregnant. The baby is Philip's."