Chapter 2

Melanie and I met at a corporate cocktail reception.

I'd just come back from finishing my MBA overseas, and my father wanted me to start from the ground up and learn the business firsthand. I was representing my department at an industry mixer that day, and Melanie was a project lead at another company.

She wasn't the kind of beautiful that stopped a room, but she carried herself with an unmistakable polish, and the way she spoke, never fawning, never cold, made her stand out.

Later, she started pursuing me. Her attentiveness was so quiet and constant that I fell completely under its spell. When I worked late into the night, she'd be waiting outside the office right on time, always with a cup of hot cocoa warmed to just the right temperature.

Once, I mentioned in passing that I wanted a soufflé from some trendy little bakery. She waited two hours in line for it, and it was still warm when she brought it to my office.

When my stomach acted up, she didn't just tell me to drink more water. She showed up outside my building with hot soup and stomach medicine in hand.

Everyone around me said, "Freddie, you've struck gold."

I believed it too.

Melanie came from an ordinary family, but my father always said that as long as someone was good to you, their background didn't matter. So after a year together, I proposed.

And now, I was the villain everyone wanted to string up: the other man in someone else's marriage.

I didn't sleep at all that night. I had someone dig up everything on Melanie and the husband I hadn't known existed.

The man's name was Sean Hudson. He'd grown up in an orphanage, met Melanie in college, and had quit his job to stay home once they'd had a child.

I thought it over, and the next day, I had my secretary set up a meeting with him.

He was thinner than I'd pictured, wearing a shirt washed pale from overuse, his hair falling loosely over his forehead, his face worn with fatigue and unease. He held a little girl, maybe two years old, in his arms. She was well-behaved, playing quietly with a toy car.

The moment he saw me, his expression went from confusion to shock to fury.

"It's you?" His voice shook. "You're the one who…"

"It's me." I looked back at him steadily, without looking away.

He shot to his feet, his eyes going red, his voice rising. "You home-wrecker! Give me back my wife!"

The child in his arms flinched at the noise and started wailing. The café's waitstaff glanced over, their eyes bright with gossip.

I picked up my coffee and took an unhurried sip before looking up at him. "Mr. Hudson, sit down first. You're scaring the baby."

"Don't you dare play the good guy with me!" Sean's eyes were bloodshot.

He rocked the crying child while grinding out through clenched teeth, "When you were stealing someone else's wife, did it ever occur to you that he had a kid too?"

"I didn't steal your wife. Your wife came after me."

I set down my cup and looked at him. "I'm not here to gloat, and I'm not here to fight with you. There's no need to treat me like an enemy. I want to ask you something.

"Do you always have to have someone give your wife back to you like this? This time it was me. Next time, who's it going to be?"

He seemed to freeze at the question, opening his mouth without a single word coming out.

I kept my eyes on him and said it plainly, one word at a time. "There's no such thing as one act of cheating. Once someone crosses that line, it happens over and over. I think you already know that."

Sean's head dropped slowly, and he went quiet.

We were both adults. Who could possibly not understand that? And yet, he seemed to think he had no choice.

The pain etched across his face caught on something in my chest, like a small thorn. I took a slow breath and looked at him, my eyes serious.

"We're both victims here.

"Melanie deceived both of us at the same time. She let you believe she was out there working herself to the bone for this family. She let me believe I was the only one.

"The one at fault is her, Melanie, not us.

"Do you want to give her a lesson she'll never forget for the rest of her life? I'll help you take back everything that's yours.

"I'll make sure she never recovers from this. Can you live with that?"

He jerked his head up, staring at me like he couldn't quite believe what he'd just heard. Then, all the resolve he'd managed to gather deflated at once, like a balloon pierced by a needle.

The next moment, he pressed his hands over his face, his shoulders trembling, and something in my chest twisted at the sight. Given everything he'd been through, he must have spent all these years fighting just to hold his life together, and even then, no one had thought to appreciate a man that resilient.

I handed him a tissue. He took it, his voice hoarse.

"How could I not be able to live with it? The second I found out she'd betrayed me, I wanted her dead.

"But my child is still so young, and other than her, I have no one else to lean on.

"Mr. Starr, if everything you've told me is true, I'll help you with everything I have."

He took a deep breath and steadied himself. I patted his shoulder. "Don't worry. She'll get exactly what she deserves."