Chapter 1

I canceled the supplementary card my husband had given his little girl on the side. Again.

She couldn't pay for her luxury shopping.

The call went straight to Vincent Sanchez.

I expected him to do what he always did.

Call me, smooth it over, tell me not to stoop to a girl's level.

Instead, he slid an agreement across the table to me himself.

"You've had enough years of playing the one in control. Starting today, we keep our finances separate."

"After all, I'm not the broke nobody I used to be. I don't need you anymore."

"As for that card, cancel it all you want. I've already gotten her a new one."

I looked at the agreement meant to draw a clean line between us, and I laughed, cold.

"And if I refuse?"

Vincent stayed just as cool and remote, and pulled out a second document. A divorce agreement.

"Then we divorce."

I reached out and tore the agreement to shreds. "You should understand one thing."

"Whoever pays is the one who calls the shots."

Everything he had, he owed to me. And now that he'd made it, made his name.

He wanted to kick me aside.

Where did he get the nerve to think it would be that easy?

Vincent watched me warily. "What are you trying to do?"

I didn't answer. I turned and had them tie up his little girl.

1

"Vincent, save me!"

The girl was like a startled bird, hands and feet bound.

The skirt of her dress fluttered up in the wind.

I watched Debbie Pruitt call out, all soft and helpless.

I clicked my tongue.

"No wonder she's got Vincent wrapped around her finger. Truly the kind you can't help but pity."

"Pity is, I've seen plenty of women like you, and they usually don't end well."

My father was always a philanderer.

In my earliest memories, he brought home more women than I could count.

And my mother had a way of dealing with them, an iron hand that left every one of them meek and obedient.

Not a single one dared show up and challenge her.

Now, following my mother's example, I meant to make this girl suffer a little.

But Debbie was young, full of energy, and her screaming gave me a real headache.

"You old woman, let me go!"

"You couldn't win Vincent's heart, so you tie me up and torture me? What kind of power is that?"

I smiled and stood.

"You think I came here as the wife, to teach you a lesson as the mistress?"

"You're wrong."

"I came as your creditor, to collect a debt."

Let me do the math for her.

"All these years, how much of my money have you spent? Should I get a lawyer to add it up for you?"

"If you don't pay it back, I can charge you with robbery."

The girl's face went white in an instant.

She'd taken that card five times alone.

Every time I canceled it, Vincent turned around and got her a new one.

Before I came, I'd done a rough tally.

The money charged through Debbie ran fifty million, maybe eighty.

"How could I be spending your money? It was Vincent's. He gave it to me."

Debbie kept her neck stiff, stubborn as ever.

I scoffed.

"But his money is money I gave him. You didn't know that?"

She knew perfectly well that from the very start, Vincent had married into my family with nothing.

Dirt poor, not a thing to his name.

I was the one who gave him his first pot of money to start his company.

I was the one who reached out when he hit a cash crisis.

Even the lucky cat in his office wore my face on it.

Everyone knew the company he built with his own hands, Mason Group, carried my name in its very name.

But now Debbie bit down hard on her lip, refusing to admit it.

"You're lying!"

"That was between the two of you, before. But now he's the CEO of the group. He said the money he gave me is all clean, money he earned himself."

What a joke. Even the supplementary card he gave her was one I'd set up.

I could cancel it whenever I liked.

Clean, my foot.

But the next second, the girl lifted her chin.

"If you don't believe me, look at the bank card in my bag. It's got his name on it. My bag's right there."

I turned toward the bag on the wooden chair.

I pulled the card out.

The moment I saw the face of that bank card, my heart dropped.

I recognized it. I'd been there when Vincent opened this account.

He'd said he was going to save into it, that it would be the childcare fund for our future child.

By the start of the year it had already reached fifty million.

He'd said our child would be born into an easy life.

That even if the kid turned out slow at school, it wouldn't matter.

That the child would never even have to work a day, would want for nothing, would just live happily.

And now he'd handed that card to Debbie.

The blood rushed to my head. I grabbed the fruit knife beside me and walked toward Debbie.

"I'd love to hear you tell me."

"What exactly is your talent, to make him hand over even this?"

Debbie's little face went white with fear. Before she could get a word out.

A sharp voice cut in from behind me.

"Stop!"