Chapter 3

"Go to Chloe's desk right now. There's a file that needs to be delivered to a client. Take care of it, and hurry. They're waiting."

The lobby went quiet for a beat, then filled with muffled laughter. I stood there holding the phone, and even though I already knew Andrew had stopped taking me seriously a long time ago, it still stung.

Not long before this, he'd promoted Chloe to the same level as me so she could boss me around more easily. He framed it as "helping each other out," but in practice, every tedious task on Chloe's plate got dumped onto mine.

By now, the news of my resignation should've already reached him. And he was still sending me on errands for her.

I scoffed. For once, I didn't swallow my pride to keep the peace. "Chloe's work is Chloe's responsibility. Why would that fall on me?"

He wasn't expecting that. There was a pause on the other end.

Before he could recover, I kept going. "And I don't have the time. Her files, her delivery."

I hung up, handed the phone back to Diana, and walked straight out of the building while everyone stared. A few steps past the front entrance, I stopped and looked back at the office building I'd spent eight years in.

Through the glass windows of Andrew's office, I could see the orchid I'd given him years ago sitting on the windowsill, wilted and brown. Right next to it, the succulent Chloe had given him was thriving.

I smiled to myself, took out my phone, and made a call.

"That project you mentioned before. I've made my decision.

"I'm in."

…

Andrew and I met through a blind date. We hit it off right away, and within two months, we were married.

Shortly after the wedding, he told me about his dream of starting a company. I believed in him completely. I quit my six-figure job, brought my expertise and every dollar I'd saved, and helped him build it from scratch.

To keep the pressure off him, I kept my own salary low. Even now, with the company on the verge of going public, I'd only ever gotten one raise, and it was barely a thousand dollars.

Other companies had come knocking over the years, offering five times what Andrew paid me. I turned them all down.

It wasn't just because the company felt like something I'd raised from nothing. Years ago, when I got sick and needed surgery, Andrew went to everyone he knew, begging for money to cover the cost.

He practically got on his knees in front of the surgeon. That meant something to me. I truly believed what he always said, that we were partners, that we were in this together, that there was no yours and mine.

Then Chloe showed up, and everything changed.

He humiliated me in front of colleagues to take her side. He'd never once cared about splitting a dinner check, but suddenly he wanted to go halves with me on everything.

A little while back, my car broke down. I'd been driving it for ten years. At the shop, I didn't have enough cash on me, so I transferred a thousand dollars out of our joint account to cover the repair.

Andrew was furious. He went on and on about me spending recklessly, and then changed the account password without even telling me.

"Wendy, I know some of that money is yours, but we've got a long road ahead. There'll be plenty of expenses coming. You can't just keep dipping into savings whenever you feel like it.

"What happened to you? You used to have so much drive. I miss that version of you."

He loved talking about how he had no respect for women who depended on men. But then I found out he'd bought Chloe a fully loaded new car for her birthday. When I confronted him, he had the nerve to call it a "performance bonus."