Chapter 2

I stumbled back to our rental apartment like a walking corpse.

I opened the door. Looking at the tiny living room that didn't even have a decent TV, a bitter smile tugged at my lips.

What a joke.

When I had suggested buying a fifty-dollar used TV off Craigslist, Sienna had smiled and told me no.

She said we could just stream shows on our phones, that we shouldn't waste money.

Back then, I thought she was so sensible.

After working full-time and hustling side gigs every day, I never had time to watch TV anyway.

I had felt proud of myself for not wasting that money.

Now... I realized just how stupid I was.

Sienna and I had met playing an online game.

I was terrible at it. The whole team was flaming me, but Sienna was the only one who cheered me on.

After the match, I added her on SnapChat.

We talked for barely a week before meeting in person.

From the first moment I saw her, I fell head over heels for her warm, sunny smile.

She told me she grew up dirt-poor in a forgotten rural town, and that the whole town had pooled their pennies together just to buy her a bus ticket to college.

My heart ached for her, so I insisted on paying for our meal.

Later, she told me that after graduating, she started a small business and was betrayed by a partner, leaving her with hundreds of thousands in debt.

With tears in my eyes, I promised I would help her pay it all off.

We became an official couple.

Less than three months later, despite my parents' fierce objections, I married her at City Hall. No wedding. No guests. Just a cheap twenty-dollar dinner to celebrate.

Thinking back, tears welled in my eyes, and my heart felt sliced by a thousand blades.

I was such an idiot.

I moved out of my family's house and squeezed into this tiny, cramped apartment with her.

My paycheck, her supposed day job wages, and her DoorDash tips all went toward paying off her "debt."

I lived off whatever pocket change my part-time gigs brought in to keep food on the table.

I went from a guy who never looked at price tags to a penny-pinching househusband who compared grocery ads just to save fifty cents on cabbage.

For two whole years, I hadn't bought a single new shirt.

The only pair of ten-dollar sneakers I owned was a wedding gift from Sienna.

And the sole had ripped open.

I let out a self-deprecating laugh.

The woman who had shared my bed for over seven hundred nights was a total lie. Everything about her, except her name, was fake.

I pulled out my phone and typed "Sienna Vance Vance Capital" into the search bar.

Sole heir to a century-old dynasty. Financial prodigy. Multi-billionaire CEO...

Reading the headlines, my knuckles turned white around the phone.

So this was who my wife really was.

A hollow laugh escaped my throat, quickly turning into choking sobs.

Why? Why did she lie to me like this?

Was this some twisted billionaire fetish? Some kind of cruel sociological test?

I thought back to the past two years. She had played the perfect wife.

She always saved the best bite of food for me, rushed to do the dishes, and gave me shoulder rubs when I was tired...

None of that felt fake. But her spending twenty million on another man today wasn't fake either.

Agony tore through me.

The grief was suffocating.

I sank to the floor, buried my face in my hands, and wept until my voice was hoarse.

Still, the storm inside me wouldn't settle.

I used the dining chair to pull myself up.

My gaze fell on the kitchen counter. There were two bagels I had toasted for her this morning.

She had said she was running late for work and hadn't taken a single bite.

The bagels were cold and rock-hard now.

Just like my heart.

Ding!

My phone lit up. It was a text from Sienna.

"Babe, I'm going to pick up a few extra DoorDash shifts tonight. I'll be home late."

I let out a dry, bitter laugh.

Sienna had probably forgotten that to drop off hot dinners for her while she worked, I had set up location sharing on her phone.

I could check her real-time location whenever I wanted.