Husband by Mistake, Groom by Design

"That marriage certificate we bought from a street vendor worked like a charm. Jayden fell for it for five whole years. Can you believe how stupid he is?"

Eunice Mercer swirled the ice in her glass, wearing a self-satisfied smirk.

"And that's not even the best part. Even the child was born through a surrogate that Dylan and I paid for. He still thinks I adopted the baby from an orphanage. He's unbelievably easy to manipulate."

She casually swallowed a pill.

"I have this thing where I'm desperate for touch, but honestly, I'd rather take the pills than touch him. I gave Dylan my word."

The room erupted into laughter.

"But Eunice, you've kept the marriage and the child a secret. What about the fact that you took his virginity? Aren't you afraid he'll make a huge deal out of it?"

Eunice gave a cold, dismissive laugh.

"Oh, please. You don't know how desperate he is for me. If I walked away, he'd fall apart completely. Do you honestly think he'd confront me?"

She took a slow sip of her drink.

"Besides, everyone already thinks he was the other man for five years. Who would want to be with someone like that? I'm the only one who's ever been willing to keep him."

Laughter rippled through the room once more as her friends raised their glasses to her cunning.

A crushing weight pressed down on my chest, and a wave of bitterness surged up my throat.

The picture-perfect family I had believed in for years was nothing but a lie.

The woman I had called my wife for five years was fake, while the son I had loved as my own for three years was hers and Dylan's child.

And I had been nothing more than a pawn, kept in the dark for years.

In that one moment, I felt as though I had been ripped from heaven and hurled into hell.

It finally made sense why Eunice, who had never stopped loving Dylan Sterling, had agreed to marry me without a second thought.

It explained why she had never let me touch her in all those years, and why she had never once called me her husband in front of anyone else.

At that moment, everything finally added up.

But why did I have to go through this?

To protect her image, Eunice was even willing to throw me into another woman's bed. And yet, I had done nothing to deserve it.

A loud crash jolted me back to the present as a camera slammed heavily onto the table.

From inside the room, Eunice's cold voice echoed once more.

"I don't care which of you draws the short straw and ends up in bed with him. Just make sure you get it on camera. Otherwise, Dylan won't believe I kept my virginity for him."

She said it so casually, as though she were arranging something trivial for a pet. And just like that, she had decided my fate.

I leaned against the cold wall, tore the worthless marriage certificate into pieces, and tossed the fragments into the trash.