1 In the gilded cages of high society, everyone knows you don't mess with a married man. Except, apparently, for my husband. Not only is he devastatingly handsome, with legs for days and the lean, hard body of a god, but his wife? A total pushover. You could fool around with him right in front of her, and she wouldn't do a thing. "I heard Mrs. Leech used to be a real tigress. Felix couldn't even hire a female assistant without her raising hell with the entire Leech family council." "That was just Felix spoiling her. He's tired of that game now. Look at her, meek as a mouse." My best friend, visiting me for the afternoon, overheard the whispers. She was furious, ready to drag me to a lawyer's office to divorce Felix Leech on the spot. I quickly stopped her. "First," I said, my voice low, "he has no idea I had him sterilized. He can't produce an heir to challenge our son's inheritance." "Second, the more he plays around, the more power over the Leech empire falls into my hands." "And third, he's drinking and screwing his way to an early grave. Why would I divorce a man who's doing all my work for me? I should be thanking him." ... My friend left, satisfied. But when I walked into my own home, the scene on the living room sofa froze me in place. Felix’s back was to me. The woman straddling his lap was… She seemed to startle, shrinking back into his arms as if she'd just noticed me. Felix’s broad chest enveloped her, and he patted her back reassuringly. "It's fine," he murmured. "She won't dare do anything." The girl's eyes were misty, whether from passion or fear, I couldn't tell. "I... I'm sorry... I didn't know you had a wife." "Is that right?" For the first time ever, I interrupted one of Felix’s affairs. Not because my heart was breaking. But because I was genuinely shocked. I could understand strangers not knowing, but this girl? How could she not know? I remembered her in the orphanage, her eyes sparkling as she told me she wanted to be a woman who could stand tall on her own two feet. I took her in. I called in favors, sent her to the best business schools abroad. She grew exactly according to the plan I'd laid out for her. She used to fume with righteous anger whenever she heard rumors of Felix's cheating. She once spat on a photograph of him. I wouldn't have cared who was on his lap. But Lily? That was something I couldn't quite accept. Didn't she promise me she was going to be a woman who could stand tall? "But I heard... I heard your wife is a notorious tigress. I'm scared..." Lily trembled in his arms. Felix draped his jacket over her bare shoulders, then stood, positioning himself between us. "I'm the one who pursued her," he said, his voice hard. "If you have a problem, you take it up with me." My gaze lingered on the girl behind him for a moment longer. I sighed. I turned and walked into the bedroom. As the door clicked shut, I heard his voice, soft and coaxing. "Don't worry, sweetheart. The whole 'tigress' thing is ancient history. She won't touch you now." I leaned against the window, exhaling a slow plume of smoke. He wasn't wrong. When we first got married, I was a different woman. If Felix so much as looked at another woman for too long, I’d make him regret it for a week. Hiring a new female assistant? That was grounds for me to call a full meeting with the Leech family elders. His friends all laughed, saying he’d married a shrew. He would just smile and say a happy wife meant a happy life, and that they were all just jealous. He loved spoiling me, indulging my every whim, and he forbade anyone from calling me a tigress. Under my "strict supervision," his business flourished. Then, one day, out of nowhere, he changed. "Are you ever going to let up?" he’d snarled, his patience finally snapping. It hit me then. Felix wasn't that small-time business owner anymore. He was Felix Leech, CEO. A man with his own pride, his own power. He stopped hiding the lipstick stains on his collar. He fired the brilliant executive assistant I’d handpicked for him and replaced her with a string of pretty faces he preferred. The women came and went, a revolving door of faces. And those same friends who once called me a tigress now clapped him on the back. "Now that's more like it! This is how a man should live!" From the living room, the woman's moans grew deliberately louder. I hadn't realized Lily was the type to gloat. I slipped in my earbuds and said nothing. After it was all over, Lily, wrapped in nothing but a towel, knocked on my door. "Aurora," she began, "I… I want to explain." 2 "Oh, don't bother." I tried to step past her, but she blocked my way. "I used to hate him, I really did! But…" She paused. I stared at her, waiting. She took a deep breath as if steeling herself for a confession. "But one day, I realized that what I could kill myself trying to achieve, I could get just by spending one night in his bed." "And that," she added, a new hardness in her eyes, "is something you could never give me." "I told you I wanted to stand tall, to make it on my own. Well, my body is a resource, too. Why shouldn't I be allowed to use it?" She finished, watching my face, clearly expecting a reaction. I gave her none. I just held her gaze for a long moment. Then, I nodded. And walked around her. "Aurora!" she called out from behind me. "Are you looking down on me? Is that why you won't even talk to me?" "You're overthinking it," I said, my voice perfectly level, as placid as the day I first saw Felix bring another woman home. That day, I had calmly walked away. I took the expensive gifts he’d bought to appease me over the years and donated them all to charity. Then, while he was under anesthesia for a routine endoscopy, I gave my associate at the hospital a quiet order. A small, secondary procedure. To ensure his infidelity would never threaten my son's future. If I couldn't stop people from changing, then I would, at the very least, protect the things that shouldn't. Like power. Like wealth. Like my son's inheritance. But this time, Felix went too far. He found me in my office, his expression grave. "I've been thinking. I want you to transfer your authority as acting CEO to Lily." My hand, poised over a document, froze. "Her?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. "A fresh college graduate?" "I know she lacks experience. That's why you'll stay by her side, guide her. You can teach her what she doesn't know, and if she makes a mistake, you'll be there to fix it." I closed the folder in front of me. Now I understood what Lily meant by what she could get from him that I couldn't. It was true. This power I held, maybe one night with Felix really was the price. A price Lily could pay. But for me, his wife of so many years, that currency was worthless. The only card I had left to play was our history. So I tried to cry. But the tears wouldn't come. I had to force them, dredging up memories from a lifetime ago. Me at fifteen, kicked out by my stepfather, and Felix holding an umbrella over my head in the pouring rain. My mother’s funeral, the depression a black fog around me, and Felix patiently helping me dress, combing my hair. The nights my stepfather wouldn't feed me, and Felix showing up with a hot potato hidden in his coat, burning his own skin just so I could have something warm to eat. A single tear finally escaped, landing with a soft plink on the polished desk. He flinched. I quickly wiped my eyes. "Felix," I whispered, my voice thick with a broken strength, "how did we get here?" "Aurora?" He looked stunned, taking a step toward me. I dabbed at my eyes more furiously, my tone defiant. "I thought we at least had our past. I thought, as long as I didn't make waves, I could at least grow old with you. But it seems I overestimated my own worth." He stood frozen for a long moment. Then he reached out, his thumb gently brushing away a tear from my cheek. "Forget I said anything." My power was safe. But my relief didn't last long. Three days later, he burst into my office, his eyes wild and bloodshot. He grabbed my hands, his grip desperate. "Lily ran off! She's gone! Aurora, I'm begging you, for the love of God, just give her the position!" 3 So Lily had run away. No calls, no texts, location services turned off. A classic move for a girl trying to make a point, and one with a surprisingly high success rate. And it was working perfectly. Felix was a complete wreck. He revoked my position as acting CEO on the spot. This time, my tears were useless. Because wherever Lily was, she was clearly crying much harder. I leaned back in my chair, exhaling a cool stream of smoke. She still didn't understand. Felix's approval meant nothing without the family's. One phone call from Felix's father was all it took. That evening, thirty or forty members of the Leech family council convened. "If you dare put that woman in charge of Leech Industries," the old man thundered, "we'll dare to make sure she has a very permanent, very fatal accident!" Felix might be a fool, but the Leech elders were not. They remembered how, under my rod-and-stick discipline, he'd transformed from a good-for-nothing playboy into a capable CEO. They had also seen how, after he'd reverted to his old ways, I'd seamlessly taken the reins, managing the company with an iron fist. Under the patriarch’s unyielding gaze, Felix knelt on the floor, his hands clenched so tight they trembled. He looked over at me, kneeling beside him as tradition dictated. Through gritted teeth, he spat out a single word. "Bitch." Even after all these years, even with a heart I thought was long dead, that word sent a shiver through me. If the teenage girl I once was could see this, see the boy she called her protector say that to her, she never would have believed it. I stood up and walked out. It was snowing outside. I passed a street vendor selling roasted chestnuts. Someone called my name from behind. "Aurora!" I stopped. Felix caught up to me, his jaw tight. "I'm sorry…" I didn't turn around. I just kept walking. No matter how much Felix doted on her, Lily was no match for the entire Leech dynasty. So, I remained secure in my position. But Lily was not one to give up easily. I was working late one evening, and as I walked to my car, she ambushed me. A cloth, soaked in something sweet and cloying, was pressed over my nose and mouth. Rough hands dragged me into a vehicle. Through a dizzying haze, I could see Lily at the wheel, on the phone. "Yeah, we're ten minutes from the Elysium Club. Get the men ready." She hung up and her eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. "You think you can use the Leech family to bully me, don't you, Aurora? What do you think they'll do when they find out you're a promiscuous whore? Will they still protect you then? And what about your precious son, studying abroad? Maybe they'll start to wonder if he's..." She let out a sharp, cruel laugh. "Tsk! Maybe they'll wonder if he's even a real Leech." I was a dead weight in the back seat, with no strength to even reach for my phone. I could only watch as the GPS navigation ticked closer and closer to the Elysium Club. My last resort, my only hope, was the emergency call feature on my watch. Felix wasn't my emergency contact. He probably wouldn't have had time for me anyway. I pressed the button, and the world faded to black. Through the fog, I heard Lily's frantic shrieks. "Who are you! Who gave you the right to stop my car!" SMACK! "Ah! You hit me! You actually hit me!" When I opened my eyes again, I was back in the Leech mansion. My emergency contacts were Felix's mother and father. I felt weak as I stepped out of the bedroom. Downstairs, nearly the entire family council was assembled. Lily was thrown to the floor in front of Felix's father, a dashcam recording playing on a large screen beside her. "You dare to lay a hand on the Matriarch of this family? You must have a death wish!" "No, that's not... I..." Lily had never faced the full, terrifying might of the Leech dynasty. Cowering before their collective glare, she burst into tears. "No! Let go of me! Ahh!" As two bodyguards seized her, she looked up and saw me standing on the landing. "Aurora! Help me! Sister, please!" Just like countless times before, she instinctively cried out to me when she was in danger, completely forgetting that this time, she was the one who had put me there. I turned my head away. "Aurora!" Her sobs were more desperate than I'd ever heard. Just then, the front doors burst open. Felix stormed in, kicking away one of the guards. "Esteemed elders," he declared, his voice ringing with defiance, "if you want to touch her, you'll have to go through me first." "Felix." I looked down at him from the top of the stairs. "Do you have any idea what she just did to me?" He looked up, his eyes meeting mine. "I'm sorry, Aurora. But... she's pregnant." I froze. "It's mine." My jaw dropped.
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