Chapter 1

The day Ethan cheated on me, I slapped him twenty-two times right outside the hotel room door.

Wrapped in a single bath towel, he knelt before me. His voice was chillingly flat. "Are you done? If you are, I need to go back inside. Aria is scared."

Twelve years of marriage shattered into dust at that very second.

On the day we were supposed to meet at our lawyer’s office to sign the divorce papers, the unthinkable happened.

No one saw it coming. A horrific car crash happened on the freeway.

To protect Aria Sterling, who was in the passenger seat, Ethan took the brunt of the impact. He suffered severe brain trauma.

But when he finally woke up in the ICU, his eyes were clear, innocent, and terrified.

He grabbed my sleeve like a scared little boy. "Chloe, please don't ignore me."

Ethan was having an affair.

When my best friend, Rachel, first told me, I just shook my head and laughed.

"Not Ethan. We’ve been married for twelve years. You’ve seen how much he adores me. Rachel, today isn't April Fool's. That’s not funny."

Frustrated by my denial, Rachel slammed her phone in front of my face, playing a video she had shot at a VIP lounge.

In the dimly lit bar, a young girl with a flushed face took a sip of tequila, straddled Ethan’s lap, and fed it to him mouth-to-mouth. Then, they fell into a passionate, breathless kiss.

Around them, a crowd of wealthy heirs cheered and hollered. The noise was deafening.

If I didn't know the girl, I could have lied to myself. I could have said she was just some party girl, or that it was just a stupid game of Truth or Dare.

But I knew her.

Aria Sterling. She graduated from college last year. After joining Vance Global, she was promoted five times in a single year, eventually becoming Ethan’s executive assistant.

When those rumors first reached my ears, I only thought she was a hardworking, talented young girl with a bright future.

Ethan had mentioned her to me before. He said Aria came from a broken home—a gambling father, a paralyzed mother, a younger brother in school, and her, carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.

"You should help her out, Chloe. It’s not easy for a young girl to make it in the city all on her own."

Yes, it wasn't easy.

Perhaps I should have noticed it sooner—the pride in Ethan’s voice and the spark in his eyes whenever he spoke of her.