I’m Back, Mr. CEO

: The Woman Who Replaced Her

I didn’t sleep.

How could I? Every time I shut my eyes, it was her I saw. That brilliant hair. That perfect smile. That little girl that put a hand on Adrian’s cheek as if she had done it a thousand times before.

Like she belonged there.

I tidied away the dining room at midnight, cleaning up on autopilot. I packed the lamb nobody would eat. I scrubbed at the wine stain that wouldn’t come out. I threw out the flowers. The staff would be back at six in the morning, and Margaret was right on one thing: I wouldn’t give them any more ammunition.

They already had enough.

Now, I sat in the living room on yesterday’s dress, watching dawn seep in through the windows. The penthouse was across town. Adrian was there right now. Maybe asleep. Maybe not alone.

My stomach gave a sick churn. I gently pressed my hand against it.

"It's okay," I whispered to the growing secret. "We're okay."

A lie. We weren't okay. Nothing was okay.

My cell phone lay on the coffee table, the screen black. Fifty-three missed calls. Forty-two of those were from Clara. Six were from unknown numbers: possibly some reporters who managed to get hold of my personal number. Three were from Adrian's office, and two were from Margaret.

There weren't any calls from Adrian, though.

I should call him. Demand answers. Ask him what the hell he was thinking parading another woman, another child, in front of the entire city while his wife waited at home like an idiot.

But I already knew what he'd say. He would be cold and dismissive, tell me I was overreacting, being dramatic, making something out of nothing. He'd gaslight me to the point where I'd doubt my own eyes and my own sanity.

He had done that before.

The door opened.

I sat up begging, hope and dread battling in my chest. Adrian. It had to be Adrian. He had come home; he would explain; he would--

But it wasn't Adrian.

It was she.

Vivian Cross walked into my home as if she owned it. Designer luggage behind her; heels clicking away on cold marble. Vivian stopped upon sighting me, with the cruelest smile I had ever seen.

Beautiful. Pitying. Triumphant.

"Oh. You're still here."

I was speechless, unable to move, staring at this woman, this stranger in the Umbrage, with her suitcases as if checking into a hotel.

"Didn't Margaret tell you?" fake concern withered from every word tilting Vivian's head. "I'm staying here temporarily, of course, just until Adrian and I figure out our... arrangement."

Our arrangement.

Thin as a thread, I managed to say, "This is my home."

"Is it?" She mused, eyes roaming the towering ceilings, the art picked by Adrian's decorator, the furniture that I had never been allowed to choose. "Funny. It feels not yours. It feels like his."

She wasn’t wrong. Nothing in this house was mine. Not really. Even the clothes I wore in the closet were picked by Margaret or Mrs. Adrian’s stylist. The books on those shelves were all for show. The art was for investment.

I was just another accessory. Easily replaceable.

"Where is your daughter?" The question came out before I could stop myself.

That smile got even wider on Vivian's face. "Emma? She is with the nanny. Naturally, Adrian employed the best. He is very particular about how his daughter is raised and nurtured."

His daughter. So casually said. So certain.

"Is she..." I couldn't bring myself to finish. I couldn't ask. But Vivian knew exactly what I meant.

"His?" Her laugh was light and ringing. "Oh Serena, you really are naive, aren't you? Of course she is. Did you think that was some kind of trick? That I would just show up with some random child and say she was Adrian's?"

She came closer, and I smelled her perfume: expensive. Floral. It was the same scent that had stuck to Adrian's collar from last week when he staggered home at two in the morning.

How long had she been back?

"Emma is four years old," Vivían said, barring an eye on her manicure. "Incidentally, then Adrian and I got together five years ago, while you two were engaged. Funny how the timing works."

The room spun. I grabbed onto the arm of the couch.

"I left when I found out I was pregnant. Thought I was doing the noble thing, you know? Letting him have his perfect little life with his perfect little wife. But it turns out..." She looked at me, really looked at me, and the contempt there was palpable. "He never wanted you. You were just the safe choice. The one his mother approved of, the one who'd keep quiet and look pretty at events."

"Stop."

"I was the one he loved. I was the one he called when things were hard. I was the one he flew to visit in London every time he said he had a business trip." She leaned in, dropping to a whisper. "I was the one he made love to while you were here playing house."

I wanted to smash her. I wanted to scream. I wanted to do anything but sit there and listen.

Because deep down, I knew she was telling the truth.

All those business trips. All those nights he had worked late. All those later evenings as I tried to touch him but he pulled himself away, saying he was tired, stressed, or just not in the mood.

He was saving himself for her.

"Now if you'll excuse me," Vivian said, standing. "I need to settle in. Margaret is having my things brought to the east wing. Right next to Adrian's room, actually. We thought it would make getting together… convenient."

She pulled the suitcase toward the stairs, then stopped and looked back over her shoulder.

"Oh, and Serena? Some advice, woman to-woman." Her smile was extremely sharp. "He never loved you. You were just keeping his bed warm until I came back. The sooner you accept that, the less this will hurt."

She disappeared up the stairs.

I sat there in my familiar wrinkled dress, inside a house that was barely lived in, listening to another woman unpack in the room adjacent to my husband's.

My hand found my stomach again.

Eight weeks pregnant. A little bean of a thing purported to solve every problem.

But how could I? To take in a child in a house where the father loved another? Where the grandmother eyed it with a trace of disappointment? Where another child had held the place meant for it by now?

The phone vibrated again. It was Clara.

**Clara:** *Please tell me you're okay. Please tell me you left. Please tell me you're not still in that house.*

I looked around. At the pristine furniture I had never picked out. At the wedding photo Margaret had now, I realized, superfluously replaced by empty frames. At the staircase Vivian Cross had just ascended wearing the carriage of a designer and the heart of my husband.

I typed back with a trembling hand.

**Me:** *Where else would I go? This is my home.*

Another lie.

This had never been my home.

And somewhere upstairs, through the hall from Adrian's, the woman who had always been his real choice was hanging up her clothes and planning a future.

A future that had no place for me.