004- For your eyes only

Ashley’s POV

I didn’t touch the envelope right away. I just sat there on the leather sofa in Ethan’s office, legs crossed, hands folded in my lap like I was waiting for a verdict I already knew was coming. The salmon had gone cold. Those stupid edible flowers looked like they were mocking me—tiny, fragile things trying to pretend everything was still beautiful.

He waited. He always waited when he knew the silence would do more damage than words.

Finally I leaned forward and picked it up. The paper felt wrong under my fingers—too light for what it carried. I tore the flap open.

I was expecting divorce papers. The final, tidy end to seven years. Paragraphs about irreconcilable differences, asset splits, maybe a quiet line about no-fault so we could both save face.

Instead, photographs spilled onto the desk like poison.

Me. Naked. Sweaty. Tangled in sheets that weren’t ours. My head thrown back, mouth open in a way I’d never let him see. Different hotel rooms—Meridian’s ugly geometric headboard, Regency’s mustard-yellow wall, Harbourview’s blackout curtains I’d drawn myself one rainy Thursday afternoon. Different nights. Different months. Different men.

My breath caught, sharp and painful, like someone had punched the air out of me. The office suddenly felt freezing, the kind of cold that seeps into your bones and stays there.

Taped inside the envelope was a small black USB stick. White label in Ethan’s perfect block letters:

For your eyes only.

My stomach lurched so hard I tasted acid. I gripped the edge of the desk until my knuckles ached.

I flipped through the photos again, slower, forcing myself to look at every damning detail. The timestamps in the corners didn’t lie. This wasn’t one mistake. This was a pattern. A collection. He’d been watching, waiting, documenting every time I stepped outside our marriage like it was inventory for a warehouse he planned to sell.

Ethan hadn’t moved. He stood behind his desk now, arms relaxed, tie still loose from earlier. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, almost gentle—no shouting, no rage, just the calm certainty of someone who’d already won.

“I’m not trying to ruin you, Ash.”

The words landed soft. That made them cut deeper.

“I’m trying to protect myself,” he said. “After everything you’ve done… I need to make sure I’m not left with nothing when this ends.”

I stared at him, waiting for the explosion that never came.

He just watched me with those steady eyes I used to think were kind.

“You’ve been sleeping with other men for years,” he continued, matter-of-fact, like he was reading from a balance sheet. “I have dates. Locations. Faces. Enough to make sure no court would ever side with you in a divorce.

Enough to make sure your family—your board, your cousins, the people who still think you’re the golden child—would never look at you the same way again.”

My throat closed. I tried to swallow and couldn’t.

He leaned forward slightly. “I know about the trusts. The properties. The accounts your parents left in your name because they trusted you to carry the name forward. Vina got nothing—nothing—because they wrote her out years ago. And now you’re sitting on it all while you’ve been… entertaining yourself elsewhere.”

A laugh tried to escape me—sharp, broken, more sob than sound. “You’re blackmailing me because I cheated?”

“I’m not blackmailing you,” he said, almost patiently. “I’m asking for what I deserve after seven years of being made to look like a fool. A fair share. Quiet transfer. No scandal. You keep your reputation. I walk away with enough to start over. We both move on.”

My hands were shaking now. I pressed them flat against my thighs to hide it.

“And if I say no?”

He gave the smallest shrug—the same one he used when a deal fell through and he pretended it didn’t matter. “Then these go public. Not just to your family. To everyone. The board. The press. Every man in those photos will have his name dragged through it too. You think they’ll stay quiet? You think your sister won’t use it to paint you as the villain who ruined everything?”

The room spun. I felt the floor drop away beneath me. This wasn’t a fight anymore. This was leverage, pure and cold, and I was the one dangling over the edge. I’d walked in here still believing I could hold my head up, still believing the moral high ground was mine even if I’d stumbled. Now I was negotiating like someone already guilty—someone who had to buy silence with money because the truth was too ugly to survive in daylight.

My eyes dropped back to the USB. In the desk lamp’s glow I saw it clearly now: tiny embossed labels along the side. Not one folder. Multiple.

Names. Some I knew—men I’d laughed with, kissed, fucked in secret hotel rooms. Some I didn’t recognize at all.

The realization hit like ice water down my spine. I wasn’t the only one he had dirt on.

He’d been collecting for years. Not just me. Not just my mistakes.

He had a whole goddamn archive.

I looked up at him. He was still watching me, calm, waiting for my answer like this was just another boardroom discussion.

My voice came out small, cracked. “How long?”

“Long enough,” he said simply.

The silence stretched between us, thick with everything we weren’t saying.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw the photos in his face. I wanted to run.

But mostly I wanted to disappear.

Because the worst part wasn’t the betrayal, or the money, or even the other men.

It was realizing that the man I’d married—the man I’d once loved—had been keeping score the whole time.

And now he was cashing in.