My Husband's Secret Public Wife
For eight years, I was the perfect, understanding wife. My husband, Gavin, insisted his company retreats were strictly for employees. No spouses allowed. I never questioned it, believing I was supporting his demanding career.
Then I saw a photo from his last ski trip to Aspen. All his colleagues were there, smiling beside their wives. And in the center stood Gavin, his arm wrapped possessively around another woman. She was wearing my blue silk dress-the one he swore I must have lost at the dry cleaners.
My world didn't just crack; it shattered. I discovered that for our entire marriage, he had been living a double life. This woman, Chanelle, wasn't just his mistress. She was his public wife.
She was the one who went on lavish trips to Hawaii and Europe. She was the one introduced to his colleagues and clients. She was even listed as his emergency contact-his spouse-in the official company directory.
I wasn't just the wife he cheated on. I was the wife he completely erased.
But my heartbreak quickly hardened into cold resolve. He was expecting tears and a quiet breakdown. He wasn't expecting me to show up at his company's annual awards gala, marriage certificate in hand, ready to introduce myself to the world he' d hidden from me.
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Chapter 5
Eliza POV:
I stayed at Jamie' s place for a few days. My phone buzzed constantly with Gavin' s calls and texts, but I ignored them all. He tried sending flowers, food, even a handwritten letter. I sent them all back.
I needed to see her. I needed to face the woman who had lived my life.
I drove to Chanelle Bryant's office. It was a sleek, modern building, glass and steel reflecting the morning sun. I parked across the street, watching the entrance. My heart hammered in my chest.
I waited for what felt like an eternity. People came and went, busy and important. Then I saw her.
Chanelle Bryant. Stepping out of a luxury car, her dark hair perfectly coiffed, her tailored suit exuding power. She looked exactly like she did in the photos. Confident. Impeccable.
She was everything I wasn't. Everything Gavin wanted.
I took a deep breath, the anger and pain coiling in my gut. I pushed open my car door and walked towards her.
"Chanelle Bryant?" I called out, my voice clear and steady.
She stopped. Her head snapped up, her eyes narrowing as she looked at me. A flicker of recognition, then confusion.
I walked closer, stopping a few feet in front of her. "Hello, Chanelle," I said, my voice unwavering. "My name is Eliza Mathews. I'm Gavin Petty's wife."
Her perfectly composed face faltered. Her eyes widened, a momentary shock passing through them, before she quickly regained her composure. Her features hardened, a cool mask descending.
"Eliza," she said, her voice smooth, almost condescending. "Yes, Gavin has mentioned you. Many times."
"Oh?" I raised an eyebrow, a bitter smile playing on my lips. "And what exactly has he mentioned?"
"That you're a lovely graphic designer," she said, her tone dismissive. "A wonderful mother. Very dedicated to your home and family."
I felt a cold rage spread through me. That was my role to him. The quiet, domestic wife. The one he could safely leave at home while he paraded his real wife around.
"Did he also mention that we're married?" I asked, cutting through her patronizing tone. "That we've been married for eight years?"
She smiled, a cold, practiced smile. "Of course. He's always been very open about his domestic arrangements. Congratulations on your marriage, Eliza."
The audacity. The sheer arrogance. "And did he also mention that for the past eight years, you've been publicly posing as his wife?" I asked, my voice rising slightly. "That you've been attending every corporate event, every dinner, every trip, as Mrs. Gavin Petty?"
She shrugged, a subtle, dismissive gesture. "Gavin introduced me that way. It was his decision. I'm merely a business partner, Eliza. You know how these things are in the corporate world. Appearances. Professional optics."
"So you're saying you're completely innocent in all of this?" I challenged, my voice shaking with barely suppressed fury. "You just went along with it? You didn't know you were destroying a family?"
She scoffed, a hint of disdain in her eyes. "I didn't force Gavin to do anything. He's a grown man. And frankly, my relationship with him is purely professional. We've never crossed any lines."
"Purely professional?" I repeated, my laugh harsh and humorless. "Is that what you call it when you send him intimate messages? When you take lavish trips together, staying in hotel suites as a married couple? When you're listed as his emergency contact, as his spouse?"
I pulled out my phone, flashing the screenshots of their messages, the hotel bookings, the HR document. Her face went pale, her eyes widening in genuine surprise this time. The mask cracked.
But only for a second. She quickly recovered, a tight, saccharine smile returning. "Those can all be explained, Eliza. You're just being emotional. You're clearly distraught."
She stepped closer, her voice dripping with false pity. "Honestly, Eliza, you should just let this go. Men like Gavin... they need a certain kind of partner for their public life. A woman who understands their world. A woman who can keep up. You should just be thankful he still comes home to you. Just close your eyes to it. It' s what most wives do."
I looked at her. Really looked at her. And then, a strange, bitter laugh escaped my lips. I laughed until tears streamed down my face.
"You know what, Chanelle?" I said, wiping my eyes, my voice suddenly calm and steady. "You're absolutely right."
She frowned, confusion clouding her features. "I am?"
"Yes," I said, my smile genuine now, but laced with a chilling resolve. "I will close my eyes to it. And I'm going to make sure Gavin and everyone else involved closes their eyes to everything they thought they knew about you two as well."
I turned on my heel and walked away, not looking back.
"Eliza! Wait!" she called out behind me, her voice now laced with a hint of panic.
I didn't stop. I just kept walking.
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Adrian is intense, unpredictable, and impossible to ignore. The one who sees the parts of Lia she tries so hard to hide.
Caught between comfort and chaos, loyalty and desire, Lia finds herself trapped in a love triangle she never meant to create. Every moment with them pulls her heart in two different directions.
But love isn't the only thing at stake.
As emotions grow stronger, jealousy rises, and secrets begin to surface, the fragile bond between the three of them starts to crack. One wrong choice could shatter friendships, destroy trust, and leave hearts broken beyond repair.
Because sometimes, loving two people doesn't just hurt.
It changes everything.
8.5
Everyone knew Caroline loved Jacob, the frail man in a wheelchair, even giving up her chance at marrying into wealth for him.
She devoted everything to his recovery, enduring hardship and humiliation to help him stand again.
When he finally recovered, they were praised as perfect together-until danger came.
Faced with saving her or her sister, Jacob chose the latter without hesitation. Only in her final moments did Caroline realize his heart was never hers.
Reborn, she made a different choice, choosing power over love.
When Jacob later begged, she looked down coldly. "I have no interest in men who can't stand on their own."
9.4
Ever since she could remember, Maya Connors has always been the smart, shy girl that sat at the back of the classroom. She tackled every task with a boundless zest, except when it came to boys and relationships. Being eighteen and never once had a boyfriend, she was adamant that it would stay the same until she graduated.
But sometimes, you have to expect the unexpected - such as falling for Ethan Morrison, a boy who was way too handsome and way too out of her league.
Despite coming from very different social circles, a school trip to Europe was all it took as to her dismay, she found him incredibly charming.
But when Maya ventures out of her shell and falls too deep, she realizes that it's too late to go back. With her heart laying on the line, she's about to face a whirlwind of emotions, drama, and secrets.
9.6
For a decade, I was the perfect wife to tech mogul Carson Jarvis. I cleaned up every scandal and endured every affair, trapped by my father's "poison pill" inheritance clause that would leave me with nothing if I divorced him.
His latest mistress was pregnant, but that wasn't what finally broke me. It was when he shut down our mansion's power grid for their tryst-and turned off my grandmother's life support.
He murdered her.
At a charity auction days later, he paraded his new love while she announced her pregnancy. When I confronted her for stealing my money, Carson watched as his guards broke my arm, leaving me bleeding on the floor while he comforted her.
He thought I was his unbreakable wife, a possession with nowhere else to go. He expected me to clean up this mess, just like all the others.
He was wrong. As I watched him shield her during the chaos of an explosion I secretly arranged, I knew my old life was over.
Tonight, the world would learn of my death. And with it, Carson Jarvis would lose everything.
7.3
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"How can I forget it happened, Nicole?" He questioned, gripping her chin. "When the image of you whimpering for more replays in my head every fucking night?"
When one night of desperation turns into Nicole ending up in bed with a nameless stranger, she's almost shocked to death when she moves in with her mother's new husband to see that the nameless stranger is her new stepfather.
Tristan Michelson has always been in control of his emotions, but he can barely control himself when he realizes the masked stripper is his new stepdaughter.
8.6
Genevieve was heavily pregnant, holding the legal papers that would transfer her massive family trust fund to her loving husband, Clinton.
But as she approached his study, she heard a familiar giggle. Through the cracked door, she saw her cousin Carolynn sitting on his desk, her skirt hiked up, while Clinton smirked and poured bourbon.
"Once she signs those papers, we don't need her anymore," Clinton laughed coldly. "The kidnapping is staged for tomorrow. She and the brat disappear permanently."
Genevieve gasped, and he spotted her. When she frantically tried to run, her trusted housekeeper blocked the stairs. Clinton dragged her back, beat her mercilessly, and locked her in a freezing, underground cellar.
Denied any medical help, she endured agonizing hours of labor alone in the dark, only to deliver a stillborn child. Clinton then walked in, ruthlessly tossed her dead baby's tiny body into a pile of dirty rags, and brutally strangled her.
As her lungs burned and the world faded to black, her heart shattered into a million jagged pieces. She had given him everything. How could they be so monstrous as to murder her and her innocent child just for money?
Opening her eyes again, the freezing cellar was gone.
She was standing in an emerald silk gown at an elite charity gala—the exact night their original kidnapping plot began, a month before she even announced her pregnancy.
This time, the naive socialite was dead, and she was going to make them pay in blood.