Chapter 1

It was two in the morning, and Elena Sheridan was still slumped on the balcony, pouring one bottle of wine after another down her throat.

Her eyes remained fixed on her chat with Jasper Smith as she muttered: "Be good, Jasper. I was wrong. Come back to me, okay? I'll divorce him right now and be with you. I'll give you the place you deserve, okay?"

e words of comfort had already risen to my lips, but I forced them back down. There was a bitterness in my chest I couldn't hide. I was the one who was her lawful husband, and here I was, aching for the woman who cheated on me, and even wanting to comfort her too.

"Ugh..."

She'd had way too much to drink and hadn't eaten anything all night, so she kept throwing up between swallows. A sour stench of vomit mixed with the reek of alcohol and hung over the balcony. Just like our love, already rotten through. It made me sick to my stomach.

The floor was covered in broken glass from bottles she'd smashed without a second thought. When I went to try to calm her down, I ended up cutting myself on the shards. A shard dug deep into my foot. The pain snapped me back to my senses, but I knew it was nothing compared to what she'd put me through these past three years.

I didn't force myself to stay. I'd been avoiding her for days anyway. As far as she was concerned, I was the criminal who'd ruined her chance at real happiness.

My parents didn't know what was going on between us. When it was time for our family dinner, we still had to play the happy couple and head back to the family estate. On the drive there, I sat beside her like always.

"Why wasn't it you who died instead of Jasper? How do you get to walk around so at peace with yourself? If you weren't in the way, why would he have felt desperate enough to break things off?" she said coldly, looking at me like I was her enemy.

I took a slow breath and answered flatly, "My condolences. He's already dead. It's all over the news."

She looked at me like she wanted to burn me alive with her eyes. I couldn't blame her for hating me. I was the one occupying the position of her husband, the one standing in the way of the man she loved, the reason he jumped.

A few days before Jasper jumped, he'd actually come to see me and asked me to file for divorce. I didn't think twice before turning him down. I never imagined he'd tell Elena about it, and now here we were with a suicide on our hands.

My cold, distant attitude set her off, and she slapped me across the face without a second thought. "Don't think being an award-winning actor means I can't touch you. I can still bring you down. Whatever you did to Jasper, I'll do the exact same thing to you."

I heard she spent days crying at his grave before pulling herself together and turning back into the decisive, formidable businesswoman everyone knew. After that, we barely saw each other. She never came back to the house we shared. And out of nowhere, business deals started falling through, one after another.

"Owen, that partner is terminating the contract even though they’ll have to pay the penalty."

"Elena is withdrawing her investment unless they replace you as the male lead with some third-rate actor."

When I read my agent's messages, I knew exactly what this was.

Elena was getting her revenge, settling the score for the man she'd loved in secret.