He Chose Her Over Me, so I Chose His Rival

As I stepped out of the elevator into the office, the TV on the wall was still playing Sienna's story on a loop.

On the screen, Nathan Sinclair, my husband and CEO, had his arm wrapped around the waist of his personal assistant, Sienna Marsh.

Two juniors at the reception were flipping cards onto the counter, betting on what punishment Nathan would hand me this time.

"This time he’ll transfer her to the lower division branch by Monday. Mark my words."

"No way. He'll make her apologize to Sienna in front of the whole floor again, like last spring."

When they noticed me behind them, one of them grabbed the remote and switched the television off. They both lowered their heads, but the mockery never left their eyes.

None of it surprised me anymore.

It had long been known around the building that Nathan was shamelessly partial to Sienna.

He had created her position out of thin air, pushed out his senior assistant of eleven years to make room for her and poured the best projects into her hands.

Every time she caused serious damage to the company, he found excuses to cover for her and praise her.

Once, Nathan handed Sienna the client list I had spent half a year compiling for Sinclair Group.

Within a month, she sent it to the wrong email address. It landed in the rival's inbox.

By the end of the quarter they had taken more than half our clients, and the company lost half of the year's profit.

Nathan gave her the Outstanding Employee of the Year award in front of the whole company, then had her office renovated from floor to ceiling. He said a young employee who had just been through such a shock needed encouragement, not punishment.

My own office had been leaking for three months. I had asked him to fix it several times, but he never once bothered.

During that same period, I forgot to sign the last page of an internal memo. No client had seen it, and it hadn't cost the company a single cent.

Nathan cut off my allowance and took back the company car. He said everyone was watching us, that the company could go down if the public thought he was partial to his wife, and he had an image to protect.

So I stood at the bus stop at six in the morning, arrived soaked when it rained and late when the traffic stalled, and every time I was late he wrote it down.

The next month, Sienna posted a photo of herself leaning against my car in the office parking lot.

"Thank you for the car, Nathan. You always know when someone needs a little help."

I went straight into his office. "Did you give my company car to Sienna?"

He barely looked up from his laptop.

"Sophie, she fainted in the elevator last week. Do you want her to keep taking the subway in that condition?"

"And you've put on a little weight lately. The walking will do you good."

I stood there without another word, and after a moment he sighed and softened his voice.

"Alright. You've been tense lately. This week is Halloween. I'll book the private haunted mansion you've always wanted to go to. Just us. I promise."

But ever since Sienna joined the company, no plan Nathan made with me had survived a full evening.

On the night of our fifth anniversary, I sat in the restaurant he had booked until the waiters started stacking chairs around me. The call came at eleven. Sienna's landlord had changed her locks and she had nowhere to sleep, so he had driven across the city to sort it out.

The morning my mother went in for surgery, he promised he would be at the hospital before she woke up. He never came. Sienna's cat had stopped eating, and he spent the whole day at the vet with her while I sat outside the ward alone.

After that, I stopped listening whenever he said just us.

But this Halloween was different. He came home with two costumes in garment bags. He bought tickets for the haunted mansion night at the old theatre, gave his driver the evening off, and put a red line through the date in his calendar so his secretary would not book anything over it.

Against every ounce of common sense, I trusted him one more time.

I spent the whole evening getting ready, looking at the time every few minutes with my heart actually excited for the first time in years.

And of course, he let me down again.

The two juniors at reception were still watching me from the corner of their eyes, waiting for the show. I walked past them straight into HR.

The manager was halfway through her lunch. I slid the resignation letter I had printed a month ago across the desk.

She froze in shock. "You're resigning?"

I nodded.

She was already sliding it under the pile of papers at the edge of her desk. I pulled it back out and pushed it an inch closer to her. "Call him."