The Wife They Said Could Never Leave

The echo of my own voice faded into the quiet of the master suite.

Heavy footsteps thumped against the hardwood of the hallway.

Adrian.

I froze, my hand hovering over the hidden drawer beneath my vanity. The rhythmic sound of his leather shoes grew louder, each step a heavy strike against the floorboards. I knew his walk perfectly. The slight drag of his left heel. The hurried, impatient pace.

He paused right outside my door.

The brass handle remained still. No knock came. I watched the slight shadow beneath the doorframe, waiting to see if he would finally enter the room we were supposed to share.

For a single, pathetic second, I thought he might turn the knob. I thought he might walk in, look me in the eye, and offer some kind of explanation for the ten women who had paraded through our home.

But the shadow shifted. His strides resumed, fading toward the grand staircase.

He never checked on me. He never looked back.

I exhaled a sharp breath and pulled my hand away from the secret compartment. Instead, I reached for the heavy, navy-blue velvet box sitting at the far corner of the dressing table.

Dust coated the elegant lid. I wiped the gray film away with my thumb and flipped the metal hinge open.

A blinding arrangement of flawless white diamonds and a massive center sapphire caught the morning light.

One hundred million dollars.

Three months ago, Vivienne had sent the first woman into Adrian's study under my name, sparking a vicious screaming match that ended with Adrian throwing the girl out and accusing me of acting like his personal pimp. The very next morning, he had his security team drop this hundred-million-dollar financial band-aid onto my vanity to coax me into silence, a pathetic substitute for an actual apology.