The third year of our marriage, Austin came back. For the first time ever, Victoria didn't eat dinner at home. She just grabbed her coat and left for the airport. She didn't come home that night. I found Austin through Victoria's Instagram follows. I refreshed the page. A new post had just gone up. [Finally back home. Surrounded by my love and my friends.] In the picture, Victoria was leaning into Austin, both of them smiling for the camera, flanked by people I recognized as her friends. I turned off my phone. I closed my eyes. And I closed my heart. 1 After work, I ate dinner out, then took a long walk along the riverfront before finally driving home. A light was on in the window. Victoria was back. I opened the door and stood in the foyer, changing my shoes. In a rare gesture, Victoria came over, took my coat and bag, and hung them on the rack. "Why are you so late tonight?" she asked. "I tried calling, but you didn't answer. I asked your assistant, and he said you left the office hours ago." She hesitated. "Have you eaten? I made…" Doing these things, saying these words—that was usually my role. Tonight, she had taken my part. I held up a hand, cutting her off. "I'm tired. I have an early meeting tomorrow. I'm sleeping in the guest room tonight." Walking past the living room, I saw the dining table was set with a full spread of dishes. There were even candles. What was this? A guilt-ridden attempt to make amends for spending last night with Austin? It was disgusting. I pushed open the guest room door without breaking stride. Victoria called out behind me. "Leo. What were you going to say last night?" I turned. The warm light cast soft, deceptively gentle shadows on her exquisite face. I had looked at that face for years and never grown tired of it. But the moment I saw it in that intimate photo with Austin, it had become unrecognizable. "I forgot." I lowered my eyes and went into the bedroom. Lying in bed, my hand drifted to my chest. Last night, at dinner, I had been about to tell Victoria about my promotion and raise. But she took a call, dropped her fork, and grabbed her keys and coat, rushing out the door. "Something came up at the office," was all she'd said. I sat at the table, waiting. I waited until the food grew cold and lost its color. Then a friend texted me. Austin's back. On a strange impulse, I went to Victoria's Instagram and opened her 'following' list. It was easy to find him. A minute ago, he had posted. [Finally back home. Surrounded by my love and my friends.] In the photo, he was pressed close to Victoria, both of them looking at the camera, surrounded by her closest friends. Friends who, in three years of marriage, Victoria had never once introduced to me. Whenever I'd tried to get to know her circle, she'd dismissed them as a "bad influence" and changed the subject. After a while, I stopped asking. I scrolled further back. I saw that for years, they had been in constant, intimate contact. The university he attended abroad? She had arranged it. The apartment he lived in? It was in her name. Even the steady stream of charges from high-end boutiques and five-star hotels on his European getaways—she had paid for it all. I never knew Victoria's famous thoughtfulness could be so easily transferred to someone else. That night, I scraped everything from the dinner table into a garbage bag and took it outside for the stray cats. Click. The guest room door opened. I rolled over, shutting my eyes tight. The mattress dipped beside me. A chill ran down my spine as Victoria slipped under the covers. My body went rigid, my hands clenched into fists against my chest. A moment later, an arm snaked around my waist, and a warm body pressed against my back. A wave of revulsion washed over me. I shot upright, flicking on the bedside lamp. The sudden glare made Victoria squint. She sat up, her expression turning sour. 2 We grew up together in the same upscale neighborhood, Evergreen Hills. Our relationship felt inevitable. The summer after high school graduation, she confessed her feelings for me. It was more of a formality; we both knew where it was headed, and we fell into a relationship with ease. But that was also the year my mother brought home a boy a year younger than me—her illegitimate son. My father had been dead for less than six months. The woman I had known as a gentle, loving wife and mother was suddenly a monster wearing a familiar mask. We had a terrible fight. I told her this house wasn't big enough for both of us. It was Austin or me. She just gave me a cold, hard look. "Do what you want." I took the money my father had left me, packed a few changes of clothes, and walked out. I arranged for a dorm room at the university and never spoke to my family again. A year later, thanks to a hefty donation from my mother, Austin enrolled at my university. He was all smiles to my face, but behind my back, he played petty games, poisoning my relationships with friends and classmates. He even used my mother's connections to squeeze me out of my position in the student government, then sauntered over to gloat about it. I never cared. Anything or anyone that could be so easily taken from me wasn't worth having in the first place. And there was one person he could never take, no matter how hard he tried. Victoria. Austin pursued her relentlessly, even making a public declaration of his love for her. He befriended everyone in her circle just to keep tabs on her schedule, engineering "coincidental" run-ins at the library, the dining hall, the gym. He kept a gushing "secret love diary" on his blog, detailing every glance and word from Victoria as a sign of her hidden affection. He was a moth, desperately flinging himself at a flame that wanted nothing to do with him. Victoria complained to me constantly about his creepy behavior. She publicly told him to get lost, her face a mask of ice. She wanted nothing more than to be rid of him. But Austin was persistent, an unkillable cockroach. For three years of college, he was a constant, buzzing presence in our lives. I almost started to believe he was truly, deeply in love with her. Until he came to me one day and said, "It's only a matter of time. She'll fall for me, and she'll betray you." I scoffed at him. Anyone could see how much Victoria loved me. When I was living in the dorms, she rented an off-campus apartment for us. She wanted to have every meal with me. I loved the almond croissants from a little French patisserie downtown, but they always sold out before I could get there. So Victoria, a girl who had never known a day of hardship, would get up at the crack of dawn to stand in line for me. The pastry was still warm when she handed it to me. We both loved to travel, but I was lazy about planning. She handled everything—booking hotels, mapping out sights, buying tickets, packing our bags. All I had to do was follow her. … We had a lifetime of shared memories. I couldn't imagine her ever betraying me. After graduation, Austin went abroad to study. I thought his chapter in our lives was finally over. But his social media told a different story. In the third year of his relentless pursuit, Victoria's attitude toward him had changed. 3 I pulled back the curtains in the guest room. The night was dark and moonless, without a single star in the sky. Victoria sat on the bed in silence. Finally, her patience wore thin. A hint of irritation crept into her voice. "What is wrong with you?" That flicker of guilt she felt had bought me this much of her forbearance. It was a new record. As her company grew, so did her temper. It had been a long time since she had tried this hard to placate me. In the past, I would have given in by now, chalking it up to her being stressed from work. But now, I was done making allowances for anyone. I turned, leaning my back against the window. "Who were you with last night?" "I told you, I had a work emergency. Who else would I be with?" she snapped back. "When did you get so paranoid?" I just looked at her, my expression unreadable. I had always believed she was devoted to me, a woman of principle. I never questioned her travel schedule, always giving her the space she needed. But she had always volunteered the information, chattering excitedly as she had me pack her bags. Only now I knew that she had taken the suitcase I'd so carefully packed for her and boarded a flight to see Austin. A flash of guilt crossed her face, but she quickly masked it with a fresh wave of indignation. "Is this an interrogation? Do you need me to call my entire team in so you can check my story?" "No need. You can go now. I need to rest." She wouldn't admit it. After hiding it for so many years, she wasn't about to let it all unravel so easily. And I didn't have the energy for a confrontation. Her infidelity was a thorn in my heart, of course. All those years of love… the pain was real. But my rational mind told me it was better to know the truth now than to live in a lie. A clean break was the best path forward. Unable to stand my coldness, Victoria stormed out, slamming the door behind her. The confrontation left me wide awake. I opened my laptop to deal with some leftover work. When I graduated from college, my mother called, begging me to come home. She had been diagnosed with brain cancer and didn't have much time left. When I got to the hospital, she was struggling just to get out of bed for a glass of water. She was skeletal. The housekeeper told me the company had been in trouble, and my mother had worked herself into the ground, collapsing in her office. By the time they got her to the hospital, it was too late. In the face of death, all my old resentments seemed to melt away. I started to remember the happy times from my childhood. How she would lift me onto her shoulders and play horsey. How she'd come home from work with strange and wonderful snacks in her briefcase. How, when I was older and she had more time, she would spend hours in the kitchen, making a rich, savory fish soup just for me. … She had wronged my father, but she had, in her own way, loved me very much. I took over the failing company. My life became a relentless cycle between the office and the hospital. And Austin, after going abroad, was never heard from again. 4 The next morning, I dressed and left the bedroom early, hoping to avoid Victoria. But my luck had run out. As I stepped out, she was placing a bowl of oatmeal on the dining table. It was as if last night's fight had never happened. She smiled and waved me over for breakfast. Then, she walked toward me and pulled a small box from her pocket. Inside was a watch. Another custom piece from a master watchmaker. She'd given me one every year for the past three years. All to cover the long, pale scar that ran across my left wrist. It happened just before we got married. We were scouting a project in a remote mountain village. On the way back, the car's brakes failed on a steep descent. We went careening down the slope, crashing into a large tree that stopped us from flipping into a ravine. The driver's side took the full impact. Victoria was knocked unconscious instantly. My door was jammed shut. I had to use my tablet to smash the window and crawl out. Victoria was slumped over the steering wheel, her face covered in blood. Both our phones were smashed. I managed to drag her from the wreck, and in the process, a piece of torn metal from the car door sliced deep into my wrist, leaving the scar that was now a permanent part of me. The road was deserted. I had no choice but to carry her, to drag her, falling again and again, until we finally reached a main road where a passing driver called for an ambulance. I collapsed from exhaustion right there on the pavement. When I woke up, Victoria was by my hospital bed, her eyes bloodshot. Soon after we were discharged, she proposed. I had always been so confident in our love. It never occurred to me that her proposal wasn't born from love, but from guilt. I took off the old watch. She instinctively reached out to put the new one on. I pulled my hand away, gently tracing the raised, uneven line of flesh on my wrist. "Don't. I'm not wearing them anymore." Her hand, holding the new watch, froze. "Why?" "I don't like them." Victoria was speechless. I had never liked wearing watches; they felt like shackles. I only wore them because she had gone to such great lengths to have them made. Now, there was no reason to wear one at all. I pressed the old watch back into her hand and went to the foyer to put on my coat. "Leo." I turned back. Her expression was complicated, her words caught in her throat. "Maybe… I could pick you up from work today." I rolled my eyes, opened the door, and left. 5 At the office, my assistant, Liam, was acting strangely, hovering around me nervously. It wasn't until the elevator reached my floor that he finally stammered it out. "Mr. Hayes… Mr. Evans is waiting for you in your office." Mr. Evans was a major shareholder in the company and a man my mother had trusted implicitly. Liam's nervousness was out of place. Something else was going on. I nodded to show I understood and pushed open my office door. Mr. Evans was standing in front of my desk. And sitting in my chair—my chair—was Austin. A mocking smile played on his lips. "Brother. I'm back. Aren't you going to welcome me?" "You didn't even come back to see Mom before she died. What are you doing here now?" Austin picked up a framed photo of me from the desk, studied it for a moment, and then let it slip from his fingers. It shattered on the floor. He walked over to me, his eyes glinting with malice. "Oh, I wanted to come back. But Mom told me not to, unless Mr. Evans called for me." Mr. Evans smiled kindly and gestured for me to sit on the sofa. As if I were the visitor. "Leo," he began, "before she passed, your mother entrusted me with her will. She instructed me to wait until the company was back on stable ground before making it public." "Now that the company is thriving, the time has come. You and Austin are her only sons. In consideration of Austin not being with her for most of his life, your mother decided that he will inherit the company. You will inherit the family home and 5% of the company's shares." The heat was on in the office, but a chill crept up my spine. My body felt the pain and betrayal before my mind could even process it. I watched Mr. Evans's mouth move, but the words were a dull roar in my ears. I mechanically took the will. The handwriting was hers. From somewhere, Austin produced a small audio recorder, his eyes filled with venom as he pressed play. My mother's voice, weak but clear, filled the room. "The company is in bad shape. You stay abroad and focus on your studies. Don't come back. Your Uncle Evans will wire money to your account. When your brother has rebuilt the company, he will call you back at the right time to take over. If the company fails… then you definitely shouldn't come back. As long as you stay away, the debts won't find you. The money I've left you will be enough to last a lifetime." "Mom is gone now. You have to learn to take care of yourself. Find someone who will truly love you." Before she died, my mother had gripped my hand and told me the company was her and my father's life's work. She made me promise to bring it back from the brink of death. I promised her I would. For that promise, I had hustled for clients, begged for investments, worked myself to the bone. I had humbled myself at endless dinners, navigated a world of sharks and sycophants. I had worked until I ended up in the emergency room, answering emails with an IV drip in my arm. … After countless sleepless nights, I had dragged the company back from the abyss. And now, they were telling me that everything I had fought for was nothing but a joke. So much for the idea that people's final words are always true. I fled to the restroom and stood there for a long time, waiting for my hands to stop shaking. When I returned to the office, I was completely calm. "I want the 5% of shares liquidated at today's market value and transferred to my account. Along with all the salary, bonuses, and dividends I am owed for the past several years. I want it done immediately." Austin looked at me, a flicker of disbelief in his eyes. This was not the breakdown he had been hoping for. Mr. Evans hesitated. "That's not possible today. It has to go through the proper channels." "You have one hour," I said, my voice level. "I'm sure you wouldn't want any… reputation-damaging stories about the company to appear online, would you?" I had rebuilt this company with my own two hands. I knew its every strength and every weakness. If I wanted to, I could send it spiraling back to where it was years ago. I wouldn't do it—too many good people's livelihoods depended on it. But they didn't know that. They couldn't take that risk. Sure enough, a few minutes later, Mr. Evans called an employee into the office. An hour later, a string of transaction notifications lit up my phone. I picked up my bag and walked to the door. An annoying voice called out from behind me. "Leo. Victoria will be mine, too." I turned and looked at his triumphant face. In that moment, he just looked pathetic. Desperately trying to prove his worth, to feel like he existed. It was the mark of a profoundly insecure man. I smiled, my voice laced with indifference. "Whatever." The color drained from his face.
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