The call came from a cop. My husband, he told me, had been caught in a vice raid. I was numb. But it wasn't until I got to the precinct, until I saw the face of the woman sobbing in Ethan’s arms—a face contorted into a mask of perfect, pear-blossom sorrow—that the numbness curdled into something else. A profound, weary sense of pointlessness. I walked right up to him. Ethan instinctively shielded the woman, his mouth already forming an explanation. I slapped him. Hard. “Ethan,” I said, my voice dangerously quiet. “You’re disgusting.” 1 The crack of the slap echoed in the sterile air of the police station. It was so sharp, so final, that even the officer who had been briefing me fell silent. I watched Ethan, his hand cupped to his reddening cheek, still processing. I raised my hand to strike him again, but the woman in his arms suddenly lurched forward, taking the blow for him. The slap landed on her cheek, and her sobs intensified. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she wailed, her voice cracking. “How could you hit him?” She glared at me through her tears, a picture of defiant fragility. “You don’t ask what happened, you don’t care about the truth, you just storm in here hitting people. Who do you think you are?” I looked at her, at this masterfully crafted performance, and felt a laugh bubble up, cold and hollow. It was so ridiculous I didn’t want to waste a single word on her. I lifted my hand again. This time, Ethan caught my wrist. “That’s enough.” His voice was ice. “This isn’t one of your little dramas, Ava,” he said, his grip tightening. “Can you, for once, not make a scene wherever you go?” He shoved me away. I stumbled backward, the corner of a desk jamming into my lower back. A dull, throbbing pain shot through me, making me wince. A flicker of guilt crossed Ethan’s face. He started to reach for me, but the woman beat him to it, stepping forward with a fresh cascade of tears. “Ava, it’s not what you think,” she explained, her voice choked with emotion. “There’s nothing going on between me and Ethan. He just… he saw I was in trouble and wanted to help me. Someone set us up, they called the cops and lied, said we were… you know. You’ve been with Ethan for years. You know what kind of man he is.” Her crying grew louder, more desperate, as if she were the one truly wronged. “If I were you,” she sobbed, “I would never humiliate my husband in public like this. Can’t you take it home? Don’t you know the most important thing to a man is his pride?” Her tears worked their magic on Ethan. The guilt in his eyes hardened back into cold indifference. He put a protective arm around her, his face a mask of disappointment aimed at me. “There was nothing going on between me and Chloe.” “I’ve explained this to you a hundred times,” he said, his voice sharp as he shielded her. “Just because your own mind is dirty, doesn’t mean you have to see filth everywhere you look.” On the way here, I’d considered every possibility. I’d thought maybe he’d been set up, and I’d mentally run through the lawyers I would call. I’d thought maybe a business rival had framed him to destabilize our company. But I never, not for a second, thought it would be because of her. Chloe again. Always Chloe. The nightclub hostess Ethan had “discovered” six months ago. His tragic little thing, the "sad little stray" he couldn’t stop talking about. He’d cast himself as God in his own redemption story, determined to save her from her circumstances. It led to furious, explosive fights between us, again and again. And every single time, he would defend her. It was always my fault. I was the one being aggressive, being unreasonable. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. I brought up divorce. That shocked him into silence. “I promise,” he’d said, his voice breaking. “Chloe will never come between us again.” “It’s you or her. How could I not know who to choose?” He had cried then, begging me for another chance, telling me he loved me. And my heart, like a fool, had softened. I thought we’d weathered the storm. I thought Chloe had been permanently kicked out of our lives. But it hadn’t even been a month, and here she was again—his tragic little stray, making a spectacular return. I looked at Ethan, standing there as her self-appointed protector, and a fatigue so deep it felt like it was in my bones washed over me. It dragged me down, sucking the very air from my lungs. “Fine. Let’s just stop.” 2 My voice was a whisper, so quiet that Ethan froze. He asked me to repeat myself. “What did you say?” “Ava,” he pressed, “what did you just say?” “I said, let’s stop,” I repeated, fighting to keep my voice steady. I was done letting this drama dictate my emotions. “I’ll sign the papers to bail you out. You can keep playing God in your little redemption story. Be her hero.” I ignored the flicker of triumph on Chloe’s face and met Ethan’s stunned gaze. I even managed a small, brittle smile. “But we’re done.” “Ethan.” “Let’s get a divorce.” The silence in the car on the way from the station was heavy enough to suffocate. Ethan refused to accept the divorce, so he forced his way into my passenger seat. Which meant, by extension, his little stray squeezed into the back. Chloe stayed quiet, letting Ethan do the talking. “There’s really nothing between me and Chloe,” he began, trying to keep his temper in check. “I was out with Mark and the guys tonight,” he explained. “We went for karaoke after dinner, and we just happened to run into her.” “You know her life is hard, Ava. She’s got her kid, her parents… she’s all they have. I saw this guy dragging her into his car, so I followed them to the hotel. If it wasn’t for me—” He was cut off by a sound from the back seat. Chloe was weeping softly. “Ava.” “I never wanted to take anything from you,” she said between gasps. “My life… it hasn’t been easy. My ex-husband was abusive. That’s why I left him, to protect my son.” “If I didn’t have him, my little boy…” “If my life were different,” she stopped crying for a moment, her gaze finding Ethan’s in the rearview mirror, full of adoration. “I would fight for him. I would fight and I would claw for a man like him!” “Because he’s Ethan!” “Because he’s a good man!” “Because he—” I slammed on the brakes. The Porsche screeched to a halt in the middle of the street. I turned and looked at Chloe’s stunned face, then at Ethan’s look of profound, moved pity. I laughed. “Well, in that case,” I said, hitting the button to unlock the doors and rolling down the windows. “We’re right in front of a hotel.” “Consider this my blessing.” “You’ve got money for a room, right?” The sneer in my voice was unmistakable as I met Ethan’s darkening gaze. “This time it’s all above board. You have the wife’s official permission.” “Go on.” “No one’s going to call the cops and drag you back to the station.” “And as for whether or not you create another little ‘burden’,” my eyes drifted down to Chloe’s stomach, “that’s your business.” The cheap perfume in the car was overwhelming, a cloying scent that felt like an invasive vine wrapping around my heart, making it hard to breathe. I was trying to control myself, but my words had clearly struck a nerve. Chloe scrambled out of the car, then turned to yell at me. “Ava!” “You’re a cruel, heartless bitch!” The second she was out, Ethan turned on me. “I can’t believe you’ve become this twisted,” he snarled, grabbing my wrist. “Chloe has no one in this city, no friends, no family. Where is she supposed to go this late at night?” 3 “How can you be so cruel to someone who’s done nothing to you?” “Ava! Get out of the car and apologize to her!” His grip was bruising. I looked at this man, the man whose world once revolved entirely around me, and I felt my heart turn to ice, inch by painful inch. I slapped him again, right across the face. “Apologize?” I stared at his shocked expression. “In your dreams.” I reached over, unbuckled his seatbelt, and pointed to the door. “Get out.” He stared at me as if I were a complete stranger, a monster he’d never seen before. “You’re going to regret this,” he bit out. Then, he slammed the door and was gone. Through the window, I watched him run to catch up with his tragic stray. He grabbed her arm. I saw her struggle for a moment, then collapse into his arms, her body shaking with sobs. A chasm cracked open inside my chest, and a bitter wind howled through it. The pain was so sharp that my hands were trembling on the steering wheel. As I finally drove past them, two figures huddled together in the cold night, I saw her. Over Ethan’s shoulder, Chloe’s eyes met mine. She gave me a look of pure, triumphant victory. The message was clear. In this war, she had won. We were in a deep freeze. A cold war. Ethan’s friends started calling, all of them acting as peacemakers, all of them pleading his case. “Ava, he just feels sorry for her. It’s pity, not love. You can’t overthink this,” one of our mutual friends, Mark, told me. “You two have been through so much to get here. The last time Ethan got drunk, he was crying your name. He said… he said Chloe reminds him of how you used to be, all alone and fighting for everything. He thinks by helping her, he’s making up for the times he couldn’t protect you back then.” Hearing Mark talk about our past… it was like a punch to the gut. I remembered us, white-knuckling our way up from nothing. I remembered us as kids, practically fighting stray dogs for scraps. I remembered the day our parents went on a trip together and never came back, killed in the same accident. We were orphans. Then, greedy relatives picked our inheritance clean, and we went from orphans to homeless kids on the street. I remembered Ethan holding me tight, his small body trembling as he promised me. “Ava.” “I’m going to give you a home. I swear it.” Back then, a “home” was an impossible dream. Among the city’s millions of lights, not a single one was for us. Every brick, every window, was impossibly expensive. But Ethan did it. He put me in a penthouse apartment in the highest glass tower downtown. He filled it with our memories. He was so afraid I’d hurt myself that he put soft, cushioned bumpers on every sharp corner of the furniture. He used to always say. “Ava, in my heart, you’ll always be a kid.” “I want my Ava.” “To be the happiest princess in the world.” “My little princess.” Now. Now, my friends were telling me: “Come on, every guy messes around a little. Ethan’s one of the good ones. He doesn’t gamble, he doesn’t have a mistress. His whole world is you, Ava. Stop making this a big deal.” I knew what this was. They were his messengers, sent to build a bridge for me to crawl back across. All I had to do was take the first step, and just like every other fight we’d ever had, we could pretend nothing happened. We could turn the page. But for the first time, I didn’t want to. I was stubborn. So stubborn that when I saw Chloe’s latest post on Instagram, something inside me finally snapped. It was a picture of her and her son on a Ferris wheel, both of them beaming. The caption read: My son says it doesn't matter if a dad isn't biological. As long as there's love, you're family. And there, in the corner of the photo, was a man’s hand. A hand with long, elegant fingers. I would know that hand anywhere. I’d held it for almost thirty years. On one of those fingers was a ring I designed myself, the one Ethan had custom-made for our wedding. 4 My heart ached until it was numb, until I thought I couldn’t feel anything anymore. Then my phone buzzed. It was a video from Chloe. In the video, her son, Leo, was holding onto Ethan’s arm, looking up at him with wide, innocent eyes. “Uncle Ethan, can you be my daddy?” “Can I call you Dad?” The boy swung his arm playfully. “You’re the best uncle in the whole world. You’re my superhero.” “I really, really like you, and I wish I had a dad just like you.” “Please, can you be my dad? Pleeease?” Chloe’s voice floated in from off-camera. “Leo, don’t be silly.” And then Ethan’s voice, gently chiding her. “How is that silly?” He knelt, bringing himself down to the boy’s level, his eyes impossibly soft. “You like me?” The boy nodded enthusiastically. “You want me to be your dad?” An even more vigorous nod. And then Ethan said, “Okay.” “Then you can call me Dad. How does that sound?” The boy’s shriek of joy echoed through the video. A moment later, a voice message from Chloe arrived. “Ava.” “Tell me. What do you have left to fight me with?” “You should just give up.” I listened to her voice, a triumphant echo in the silent room, as my best friend, Maya, watched me with worried eyes. “Ava, the baby… are you really not going to tell him?” Maya said, “If you just tell him you’re pregnant, that you’re having his child, I know he’ll come back to you.” “But I don’t want him to.” I placed a hand on my abdomen. A new life was growing there. Our baby. Ethan’s and mine. The child we had hoped for, for so many years. But now… now, I didn’t want to be a mother. Not if it meant bringing a child into a life shadowed by a broken home, just like mine had been. I looked at Maya. “The moment he chose Chloe, the moment he agreed to be another child’s father…” “He lost the right to be the father of mine.” The day of my scheduled abortion, I saw him. Ethan was at the hospital with Chloe and her son. The second he saw me, he instinctively dropped the boy’s hand. “Ava.” “What are you doing here?” He saw the clinic paperwork in my hand and started towards me. “Are you sick?” “What’s wrong? Why didn’t you tell me?” Before I could answer, Chloe shoved her son forward. The boy immediately burst into tears and grabbed Ethan’s arm. “Daddy!” “My tummy hurts,” he wailed, pulling Ethan away from me. “Ow, ow, it hurts so bad!” I watched the conflict in Ethan’s eyes. The hesitation. And then, the decision. He scooped the boy into his arms and looked back at me, his face a mixture of apology and impatience. “Honey, we have to prioritize. You understand, right?” He started to walk away. I felt a hysterical laugh build in my chest. Just then, Maya came back with the payment receipts, saw the whole scene, and exploded. “You son of a bitch!” “How dare you show your face here!” “Oh, this is rich,” she stalked towards Ethan. “No time for your wife, but plenty of time to play daddy to this little bastard, huh?” She grabbed Ethan’s arm. “You’re not going anywhere! Do you have any idea what Ava is—” “I’m not a bastard!” The boy launched himself out of Ethan’s arms and charged at Maya. She wasn’t ready for it. I reacted without thinking, shoving her out of the way. The boy’s hard little head slammed directly into my abdomen. A universe of pain exploded inside me. My back hit the wall, and I slid to the floor, my whole body trembling. But the boy wasn’t done. He kicked me, his small sneaker connecting with my stomach. “You bitch!” he screamed, his face red and tear-streaked. “You’re a nasty bitch!” “You’re trying to steal my daddy!” “You nasty, evil bitch!” A crowd was gathering. Murmurs turned into accusations, all aimed at me. I was the homewrecker. Shameless. Disgusting. And Ethan… Ethan just stood on the edge of the crowd, looking down at me. As if he was waiting for me to admit I was wrong. As if he was waiting for an apology. But I was too weak, the pain was too much. I could barely breathe, let alone speak. “E…than…” “Ethan… help…” My voice was a shredded whisper. I wanted him to call a doctor. But the boy chose that moment to throw himself on the floor, rolling and screaming that his stomach was killing him. I saw one last flicker of indecision in Ethan’s eyes before it vanished. He picked up the boy, and as he turned to leave, he looked down at me one last time. “Ava.” “You really need to take a long, hard look at yourself.”
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