My Husband Faked Cancer to Steal My Father’s Company

The boardroom at Woods Corp—my father's Porter Holdings, though no one seemed to remember that anymore—smelled like expensive cologne and stale ambition. I'd left early, citing a headache that wasn't entirely fabricated. The veteran board members had spent two hours mansplaining quarterly projections to me, the heiress who'd grown up reading financial statements at the breakfast table.

My heels clicked against the marble foyer of our Tribeca penthouse, the sound swallowed by thirty-foot ceilings and the kind of silence that costs millions to architect. I was reaching for my phone when I heard it—Adrian's voice, low and warm in a way it hadn't been with me in months.

Laughter. Feminine, bright, achingly familiar.

I froze halfway to the living room, my Hermès bag sliding down my shoulder.

"She actually cried when I told her the oncologist said six months." Adrian's voice drifted from the study, muffled but unmistakable. "I thought she was going to faint right there in the hospital parking lot."

Katie's giggle made my stomach turn. "You're terrible. She's been so devoted, bringing you those disgusting green smoothies every morning."

"The smoothies are the worst part of this whole charade," Adrian said, and I could hear the grin in his voice. "But it's almost over. Three more weeks and we'll be in Tuscany, sipping actual wine instead of wheatgrass."

My hand found the wall. The imported Italian plaster felt cold beneath my palm, solid when everything else was dissolving.

I moved closer to the study door, left carelessly ajar. Through the gap, I could see them—Adrian lounging in my father's leather chair, the one I'd never had the heart to remove from the house. Katie perched on the edge of the mahogany desk, her skirt riding high on her thighs, her hand resting possessively on his shoulder.

My husband. His supposed cousin.

"How much did the last equipment kickback bring in?" Katie asked, twirling a strand of honey-blonde hair around her finger.

Adrian pulled up something on his laptop, angling the screen toward her. "Two point three million. The beauty of fake cancer treatment is that no one questions the costs. Experimental therapies, cutting-edge equipment—Skyler signed off on everything without even reading the invoices."

"And your mother's cut?"

"Daniela gets her twenty percent, same as always. She's the one who suggested the cancer angle in the first place." Adrian leaned back, lacing his fingers behind his head. "My dear mother has a gift for manipulation. Must be where I get it from."

The offshore accounts. The forged medical records. Daniela, who'd held my hand at every fake doctor's appointment, who'd wept so convincingly when Adrian's hair started to thin—from stress, I'd thought, from the brutal weight of his diagnosis.

From hair-thinning shampoo, more likely.

"Three more weeks," Katie breathed, leaning down to kiss him. "New names, new life, new everything."

"And Skyler gets to play the grieving widow," Adrian murmured against her mouth. "She'll look beautiful in black. It's really her color."

I stepped back from the door, my breath coming in silent, controlled measures. My father's watch pressed against my wrist beneath my silk blouse—the vintage Patek Philippe he'd worn every day of his life, the one he'd left me with instructions to "never let anyone take what's yours."

I'd failed him. I'd let Adrian rebrand Porter Holdings, let him install his people on the board, let him play the devoted husband while he systematically dismantled everything my father had built.

But I hadn't lost yet.

I moved through the penthouse like a ghost, retrieving the spare key to Adrian's home office from behind the Rothko in the hallway. He thought I didn't know about his safe, about the locked filing cabinet where he kept his real records. He'd underestimated me the same way the board did, the same way everyone in Manhattan's elite circles did—poor Skyler Porter, so trusting, so naive, so desperate to believe in love.

Two hours later, after they'd left for their "family dinner" with Daniela, I stood in Adrian's office with my phone's camera, methodically photographing every document in his safe. Offshore account numbers in the Caymans. Forged medical files with Dr. Harrison Chen's stolen signature. Three passports—Adrian Westbrook, Katherine Mason, and the third for Daniela under the name Diana Westwood.

The medical equipment invoices were works of fiction, payments to shell companies that funneled money into accounts beyond the reach of U.S. authorities. Or so Adrian believed.

I replaced everything exactly as I'd found it, locked the safe, returned the key.

That night, I stood in our bathroom, gripping my father's watch so tightly the metal bit into my palm. In the mirror, I looked exactly like what I was—a woman whose world had shattered. My reflection blurred behind tears I finally allowed to fall, hot and bitter and clarifying.

The bedroom door opened. Adrian shuffled in, his gait carefully weakened, his face pale beneath strategically applied makeup.

"Skyler?" His voice carried practiced fragility. "Are you okay?"

I turned to him, letting my face crumple, letting the devastation show. "I'm so scared," I whispered, crossing to him, taking his hands in mine. His fingers were warm, healthy, strong beneath the theatrical tremor. "I can't lose you, Adrian. I can't."

He pulled me close, and I felt his heartbeat against my cheek—steady, strong, the rhythm of a perfectly healthy man.

"You won't," he murmured, stroking my hair with the tenderness of a practiced liar. "I'm going to fight this. For us."

"I'll do anything," I said into his chest, meaning every word in ways he couldn't begin to comprehend. "Whatever it takes. I promise."

In the darkness, pressed against the man who'd betrayed everything we'd built, I smiled.

Let the games begin.