The Wife He Never Knew

Three years into their marriage, tonight was the first time Eleanor Hale had turned on the computer in Julian Cross's study.

If it weren't for an important document she urgently needed to send, she might never have seen this file in her entire life.

Every folder on Julian's computer was labeled with company project names, easy to recognize at a glance.

But one folder was different. Just three letters.

CQV.

Eleanor double-clicked it out of pure curiosity.

Inside was a single spreadsheet, titled

Revenge.

Eleanor came from a broken home, her mother chronically hospitalized. Given her circumstances, marrying into the Cross family, heirs to the publicly listed Cross Group, had always felt like marrying up.

Meeting Julian had felt like something out of a movie, and everything after had unfolded the same way.

When Julian was hit by a car whose driver fled the scene, it was Eleanor who dragged him to the hospital and saved his life.

Then one day, Julian showed up outside her university.

It was Valentine's Day. He handed her a bouquet of nine hundred and ninety-nine pink roses and proposed on the spot.

Flower prices had spiked that year, a bouquet like that would have cost tens of thousands of dollars around the holiday. It set the whole campus talking.

Eleanor kept the bouquet by her bedside, treasuring it, even though it eventually landed her in the hospital.

She was allergic to pollen.

She never told him. So every time they went on a date after that, Julian brought her pink roses.

She married him before she finished her degree, and became a housewife.

Julian was always buried in work, he needed a woman who could run the household without complaint.

His mother had said as much: Julian's stomach was delicate, and home-cooked meals were healthier for him. A nanny was still an outsider, she said. A wife's job was to manage the house, support her husband, raise his children.

So Eleanor cooked, did the laundry, kept the house, and spent her nights with Julian in their marriage bed.

Beyond that, the two barely spoke.

The spreadsheet in front of her now felt like a window into a man she'd never actually known. She opened it, and a wall of photos appeared.

Two columns. Almost no text. Just images.

At the top of the left column, the folder name: CQV.

Eleanor stared at it, turning it over and over, and still couldn't place who it stood for.

The right column was easier.

EH

Eleanor Hale.

Her hand trembled on the mouse.

Every entry in both columns carried a date and a photo.

The photos under CQV all featured the same girl.

In the first, an enormous bouquet of vivid pink roses, at least a thousand of them, sat at her feet. In the second, she was showing off a dazzling diamond necklace, the same roses still in her arms. In the third, she held a Hermès bag in both hands, beaming, more pink roses laid across the table in front of her.

Surrounded by that sea of pink, Eleanor made herself look at the column beside it.

Photos of herself.

The first: Eleanor, too, standing in front of an identical mountain of pink roses.

The second: the same diamond necklace. The same roses.

The third: the same Hermès bag. The same roses.

Fourth. Fifth. Sixth.

The spreadsheet ended with the girl on the left holding pink roses and wearing a pink diamond ring on her left hand, and on the exact same date, on the right, Eleanor being proposed to by Julian with a pink diamond ring nestled in pink roses.

Eleanor closed the laptop without a sound, as if she finally understood something.

She had always believed Julian loved pink roses, that was why he kept giving them to her.

He'd never once worn anything pink himself, but she'd told herself she'd uncovered his one secret softness, and she'd been quietly thrilled about it for days.

Turns out

It was the girl in the spreadsheet who loved pink roses.

Eleanor didn't sleep that night.

Julian hadn't come home, an all-night call with a partner in London, he'd said, though it wouldn't affect taking her to the hospital in the morning.

She'd had a dull ache low in her stomach for days, so Julian had booked her a specialist for nine a.m.

Really, nothing from tonight proved anything.

Even if Julian had once pursued her to spite another woman, it would have been before the wedding.

Since the wedding, he'd treated her neither well nor badly, her allowance came on time every month, gifts arrived on every birthday and holiday. This year: a pink Burberry suit, even though pink was her least favorite color.

As president of Cross Group, Julian was constantly surrounded by beautiful women, and yet in three years of marriage there had never been a single scandal. The one time a gossip account posted a photo of him with a famous actress, his PR team crushed it within hours and the account vanished overnight.

Eleanor turned over in bed again and again, telling herself to stop tearing herself apart over this.

Julian hadn't cheated. He simply might not love her the way she'd always imagined.

Her mother used to say marriage was just a series of compromises, and if you were lucky enough to marry someone you actually loved, you held onto it no matter what.

Eleanor held onto hers.

She loved Julian.

She'd loved him for ten years, since she was thirteen.

Julian had never known. Still didn't.

She picked up her phone and opened a password-locked photo folder she hadn't touched since her wedding day.

Only one photo inside. It looked like it had been taken in a cafeteria, the lighting harsh and gray enough to pass for a prison mess hall.

The subject was a girl, barely a teenager, full metal braces, a frizzy mop of prematurely graying hair.

No one looking at that photo would ever recognize the girl as Eleanor. But they'd instantly recognize the sharp, striking boy standing in the background.

Julian Cross.

It was the only photo Eleanor had of the two of them together.

If you could even call it that.

She didn't fall asleep until dawn, and less than three hours later her alarm dragged her back out of it.

Dark circles under her eyes, she stood outside Georgetown University Hospital waiting for Julian, the early spring wind sharp enough to make her nose run.

At 8:59, a text came through:

Emergency came up at the office, have to fly to London. Can't make it. Go on in without me, I already talked to the specialist. I'll be home tonight.

Eleanor pulled her coat tighter and walked in alone. She walked out holding an ultrasound printout.

Two months pregnant. Threatened miscarriage.

Her first pregnancy. Julian's first child.

She pressed a hand to her stomach, joy breaking openly across her face.

The doctor said the threat wasn't severe, but she'd need to be careful, real care, real rest, if she wanted to keep it.

She pulled out her phone to call Julian with the news.

She listened to it ring, equal parts thrilled and nervous.

He'd be happy. Wouldn't he?

Before last night, she wouldn't even have had to ask herself that question.

The call connected.

"Hey, honey, I"

"I'm in a meeting. Don't call unless it's important."

The line went dead, leaving only the dial tone ringing in her ear.

A gust of cold wind swept through, and something in her chest went hollow. She lowered the phone from her ear, and that's when a news alert lit up her screen.