Chapter 6: The Mistress Returns

And then she waited.

Seconds ticked by. No response. Her smile faltered. She refreshed, stared, and willed the bubbles to appear. Nothing.

He wasn’t playing along. He wasn’t even curious.

He had erased her.

The fury rose hot and fast, burning through her veins until her hands trembled. If Gabriel wanted to pretend she never existed, fine. She would remind him in another way. She would remind him through Eve.

With a few swipes, she pulled up her gallery. Old photos, strategically chosen. One of me at a restaurant last year, laughing with a male friend, cropped to look intimate. A fabricated narrative already wrote itself in Emily’s head.

The devoted wife. The pure homemaker. The innocent. What a joke.

Her nails tapped the screen as she uploaded the image, typed the caption, and hit “post.”

Within minutes, the comments began.

> So THIS is Mrs. Grayson, the perfect wife?

No wonder he strayed.

Can anyone say hypocrite?

Emily’s lips curved as the likes multiplied. It spread faster than she expected, faster than fire in dry grass. She didn’t even need to fan it. People loved tearing down someone they thought was better than them.

I would see it. Gabriel would see it. And when we do, Emily would be waiting for the fallout.

Emily leaned back in her chair, espresso cooling beside her untouched. Her pulse slowed, steady and calm now. The first strike had landed.

Somewhere across the city, my perfect little world was about to bleed.

My phone buzzed across the counter, the vibration sharp against the quiet of the kitchen. I was stirring soup, steam curling up into my face, when I glanced over. The notification banner glowed at the top of my screen: “Have you seen this??” from an old college friend.

My stomach knotted. I wiped my hands on a dish towel, swiped open the message, and clicked the link.

My own face stared back at me.

It was a photo I barely remembered—taken almost a year ago at a small restaurant downtown. I was sitting across from Daniel, a childhood friend I hadn’t seen in years. We’d laughed over old memories, taken a quick picture, nothing more. But here, in the cruel context of the post, it looked damning.

The caption screamed betrayal:

“So THIS is Mrs. Grayson—preaching about her perfect marriage while sneaking around with him. No wonder Gabriel moved on.”

My breath caught in my throat.

The comments swirled below:

> Fake. She had this coming.

Billionaire men don’t cheat for no reason.

Look at the way she’s smiling at him—pathetic.

My chest tightened. My hands trembled as I scrolled, as though I could claw my way to the truth through sheer will. But the truth didn’t matter. Perception did. And right now, the world believed I was a liar.

“Eve?”

The voice behind me made me spin so fast the phone almost slipped from my fingers.

Gabriel stood in the doorway, damp from the shower, hair falling over his forehead. He wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t curious. He was holding his own phone—angled toward me, the glow lighting his face in a pale wash.

For a beat, silence stretched between us.

Then he spoke, low, almost careful. “Do you… want to explain this?”

My heart cracked at the phrasing. Not *This is nonsense. Not I know you. Just a cautious question, as though he wasn’t sure which way to lean.

My throat closed. “It’s not what it looks like—”

“That’s Daniel, right?” Gabriel cut in, his brow furrowed. “From your hometown?”

“Yes! He’s—he’s like a brother to me. It was one dinner. One photo. And someone twisted it.”

Gabriel didn’t reply. He just looked at me, his jaw tight, his thumb still resting against the edge of his phone as though he couldn’t quite put it down.

The silence felt heavier than shouting.

I felt heat prickle the back of my eyes. Not because he’d accused me—but because he hadn’t defended me.

Emily’s trap was already working.

“Gabriel…” I whispered, stepping closer. “Do you really think I could—after everything you did—”

He flinched at that, the reminder of his betrayal slicing through the fog of his amnesia like a knife. His gaze dropped, unsettled. “I don’t know what to think right now.”

The words landed like a slap.

For a moment, I wished the soup pot behind me would boil over again, scald me, anything to distract from the ache spreading through my chest.

Because the truth wasn’t that he doubted me. It was that he didn’t trust me—not yet. And without trust, what did we have?

I wrapped my arms around myself, forcing my voice not to break. “Someone is trying to destroy me. Us. And if you can’t see that, then maybe we already lost.”

Gabriel’s eyes flickered with something—guilt, maybe? But before either of us could say more, the sound of another notification pinged from both our phones.

At the same time.

We looked down.

A new post. Same account. Same attack.

But this time, it wasn’t just words.

It was a video.

The phone buzzed again, another notification from the same cruel thread. I didn’t want to look, but my thumb moved on its own. The headline blared across the screen:

“CEO’s wife exposed? Who’s the mystery man?”

I tapped it open.

The footage was grainy, taken from the corner of the restaurant. A wide angle—too wide to be casual. Someone had clipped together surveillance footage with jerky shots from a phone, edited to make it look like I and Daniel were practically sharing secrets in the dark. One frame froze on me laughing, head tipped forward, mouth too close to his ear.

My stomach lurched. “This… this isn’t real. Not like this.”

Gabriel’s eyes darkened as he leaned closer, scrutinizing. “That angle… that’s not some random bystander. That looks like surveillance.”

My breath caught. Surveillance. He was right. The wide shot had come from above, like a ceiling camera.

And then I knew.

Emily.

Who else? She had been Gabriel’s secretary for years, with access to his office, his staff, even his company’s networks. She knew how to pull strings, how to call in favors. And if she had bribed or manipulated someone in security for this—then nothing was off-limits.

My hands trembled. “She did this. Emily. She’s behind it.”

Gabriel was silent, his jaw working. The silence was worse than denial, worse than anger. Because silence meant doubt.

Outside, the city roared on—cars, horns, life as usual. But inside the apartment, everything hung by a thread, unraveling strand by strand.