Chapter 1

1.

After I discovered the marriage certificate was a forgery, I stopped answering Eamon’s endless calls.

I also stopped managing the trivial affairs of the Sterling estate. I spent my days and nights away from home, losing myself in the underground bars of lower Manhattan with my best friend.

Eamon didn't seem to care. He thought I was just throwing a tantrum like some immature high school girl.

That is, until he returned from a ski trip in Aspen with his female executive.

At the family's Thanksgiving dinner, his cousin suddenly approached him with a glass of red wine. "Hey, Eamon, where's Elara? How come she's not here yet?"

Eamon Sterling, the CEO of the Sterling Defense Conglomerate, looked confused. "What? My mother's condition is poor and she needs round-the-clock supervision. Elara's at home watching her."

The moment he finished speaking, a dead silence fell over the private dining room. Relatives dressed in designer clothes exchanged awkward glances.

"Eamon, wasn't your mother admitted to the ICU at Mount Sinai a week ago?"

The man's gaze froze, his glass of whiskey stopping mid-air. "What did you say?"

"A week ago, your mother attempted to end her life and was rushed to the hospital. Elara hasn't been back to the estate since that day. Did you really not know?"

His body went rigid, his face instantly turning pale. It was only then that he remembered...

Before Valentine's Day, I had been looking for a military-grade tactical watch as a gift for the defense tycoon.

But in the review section of an Amazon flagship store, I stumbled upon a comment with over ten thousand likes:

【Highly recommend! The survival mode on this watch is incredible. I wore it for eight months without charging it once. It was super reliable when I accompanied my boss on a security mission to the Middle East!】

Three days later, the buyer added a follow-up review:

【Sorry for misleading everyone! It turns out my "workaholic" husband was secretly charging the watch for me this whole time. I'm so careless. I pestered him about it today and finally found out all the little things he's been doing for me.】

【My Tesla never needed to be plugged in; I just thought the battery life was amazing. My Netflix subscription never lapsed; I thought it was a perk from the platform. And the scraped ankle I got at a wilderness training camp a while back? He was the one secretly applying expensive healing ointment on it late at night.】

【He's the head of the Sterling Conglomerate. I used to complain that he wasn't romantic, but now I understand. The person who truly loves you hides their tenderness in the details.】

The comment section was flooded with envy, with everyone discussing how sweet this "office romance" between a CEO and his capable subordinate was.

After repeated requests from other users, the buyer posted a side-profile photo of a man in a tactical suit. His features were sharp, and his cufflinks gleamed in the sunlight.

I smiled with envy and clicked on the picture, but my smile froze instantly.

The man in the photo was clearly the man I lived with, Eamon.

I thought about Eamon's mother, who had been bedridden for five years, and how Eamon frequently used "overseas inspections" as an excuse to be away from home. A powerful sense of dread seized me.

As I suspected, when I took our marriage certificate to New York's City Hall to verify it, the clerk pointed to the system records and said:

"Ma'am, there is no record of this document in our system. Eamon Sterling's current legal spouse is another woman named Clarice."

I looked down at the exquisitely crafted document in my hand―it was still pristine, the counterfeit golden seal still glowing with a fraudulent sheen under the light.

It slipped from my fingers, fluttering down to the cold marble floor.

It made almost no sound, yet it felt deafening.

Tears of bitter laughter streamed down my face.

All of Wall Street knew that Clarice was the Director of Operations, personally promoted by Eamon. She was his most trusted "business partner."

And I? I was probably just the unpaid "lady of the manor" he hired to appease the family elders and secure his inheritance.