Chapter 1

1.

We've been married for six years, and my husband hasn't touched me in three months.

He says he's exhausted from work.

I've loved him for over a decade, so I believed him without a second thought.

But on my birthday, I overheard his friend asking him something in German.

"Are you done with that girl you're keeping on the side? You were seeing her every day. I don't know how your body handles it."

"Doesn't your wife have a problem with this?"

Silas Finn exhaled a cloud of smoke, his expression indifferent.

"I haven't touched Willa in months. Quinn has better moves, and I'm not bored of her yet. It's just a shame she got pregnant."

"My wife doesn't want kids, so I gave Quinn a check. I'll send her to Europe in a few weeks to deal with the birth there."

I clenched my fists.

Tears fell silently down my face.

Silas noticed and asked me what was wrong, looking concerned.

I just shook my head.

"The cake you made is delicious. I'm just touched."

The cake was sweet, but as someone who understood German, my heart was overflowing with bitterness.

……

Six years of marriage.

Silas Finn was cheating on me.

He hadn't initiated intimacy for three months.

People say if a man stops bringing home the harvest, it's because he's planting seeds elsewhere.

I didn't want to believe it until a phone call changed everything.

That night, Silas was in the shower.

His phone buzzed on the nightstand.

It was a local number with no contact name saved.

My gut told me this wasn't just a random telemarketer.

I picked it up.

"Hello? Who is this?"

The person on the other end stayed silent.

After a few seconds, the line went dead.

They obviously recognized my voice.

In that moment, a hollow feeling settled in my chest.

It felt like something precious was slipping through my fingers.

To stop my mind from spiraling, I bypassed his passcode and started digging.

His wallpaper was a photo of us.

His profile picture was our backs as we held hands.

Even his social media feed was filled with posts about me.

I was almost ready to give up and tell myself it was a wrong number.

But then, I searched the phone number.

It belonged to his assistant, Quinn Shell.

I opened their chat history.

The messages looked professional.

It was all business―schedules, meetings, and reports.

But my intuition screamed that it was too clean. I checked his bank statements instead.

That's where I found the rot.

He had sent multiple wire transfers to Quinn.

$5,200, $13,140―numbers that translated to 'I love you' in a coded language I knew all too well.

My heart physically constricted.

The truth was undeniable. Silas was unfaithful.

I gripped the phone, staring at our happy faces on the screen.

It felt like a cruel joke.

The man who once loved me more than life itself was now a stranger.

I met Silas when I was seventeen.

My parents had passed away from illness, and I was moved from the South to the cold streets of Chicago to live with distant relatives.

In a city where I had nothing, I wrapped myself in silence and introversion.

Because of my personality, I was an easy target at school.

Bullies sensed my weakness and made my life miserable.

Silas Finn was the one who stepped into the light for me.

He chased those people away and wrapped me in his jacket, which smelled like sunshine.

"Are you stupid?" he asked softly. "Why do you let them treat you like that?"

I was stunned.

From that day on, we were inseparable.

He became my best friend, my confidant, and eventually, my first love.

His parents didn't like me at first because of my family background.

Silas didn't care.

He dragged me into their living room and stood his ground.

"Mom, Dad, this is the woman I'm going to marry. It's her or no one."

His stubbornness eventually won them over.

He was the hope that gave my lonely life meaning.

Even when he went to Berlin for graduate school, our bond didn't break.

He video-called me every single day to share his life.

Two years later, he came back and we started our life together.

He treated me like royalty.

No matter how busy he was at the office, he'd come home and make sure the house was perfect.

Silas had given me his entire heart since we were kids.

I had no reason not to trust him.

But now, he had thrown it all away.