CHAPTER 1

Clarissa

​My husband of seven years is getting married to a younger girl in four weeks, and I'm accidentally finding out through the wedding card he hid in our bedroom.

My hands trembled as I stood there reading the bold embroidered letters. *Drake and Brittany,* it reads in an elegant, looping script.

Together with their families, invite you to celebrate…

As those words blurred my vision, I felt a strange, cold numbness wash over me, starting from my toes and crawling up to my chest until it stole the air right out of my throat.

We were still married. We shared a bed—or at least, we shared the same mattress while he turned his back to me all night.

​I had spent five years of our seven-year marriage trying to save us. I had endured the hormone injections that made my hair thin and my moods swing like a pendulum. I had suffered through six miscarriages, each one taking a piece of my soul with it, leaving me hollow and exhausted. I had endured the doctor's hopeless fertility appointments, the pitying looks of friends, and the sharpened daggers of my sister-in-law and mother-in-law’s tongue.

All of it was for him. All of it was because I remembered the first two years, the bliss of a man who used to look at me like I was the only star in his sky.

He owed me an explanation for how his name ended up on this card.

With my legs trembling, I forced myself upstairs to the master bedroom where I usually found him. Because the mansion was so massive, it took me several long minutes just to reach the door. Just as I reached out to push the door open, Drake’s voice echoed through the gap. It was lower and darker than I had ever heard it before, “I love it babe. Keep going.”

My heart stopped.

My hands wrapped around the door handle tightly and just as I pushed the door open an inch further, my vision blurred as the gap revealed the brutal truth.

Drake was sitting on the bed, his trousers pulled around his knees, and his sprung-free cock erect. My brain scrambled, desperately trying to protect me from the reality of what I was looking at by convincing me he was just in the middle of changing his clothes.

As the door creaked open a fraction more, the illusion shattered. From where I stood, I saw them—another pair of hands, definitely not Drake’s, reaching out to slide his trousers the rest of the way down his legs

And the grim reality came into view.

A woman's face was buried between his legs, her hands and mouth frantically busy around his cock. She wasn't just anyone—she was the exact woman pictured on the wedding card in my hand.

​Drake didn’t even notice me standing in the doorway. His eyes were tightly shut in pleasure as he let out that deep, guttural grunt a man makes right before he reaches his peak.

​"Ugh, babe..." Drake panted, a satisfied smirk spreading across his face. "Babe, I swear you’re a thousand times better than that bitch I married."

​"Awnn," Brittany purred back. "It's your turn now, babe. Give me an orgasm."

​Before I could even blink, Drake was already on his feet. He spun her around, gripping her hips tightly and thrusting into her as she moaned heavily, filling the room with the sickening sound of their intimacy.

​Right there, my heart ripped completely apart.

What did I ever do to deserve this?

Something inside me snapped. The title Mrs. Hudson had always looked so beautiful on paper, but the reality was a living hell. Seeing Drake lose himself in his mistress was a brutal, cruel reminder of how I had wasted my life loving him. The fact that he was already planning his next wedding, and he hadn't even bothered to divorce his current wife yet proved it.

​Suddenly, the heavy thud of the front door downstairs snapped me back to a harsh reality. Drake must have recognized the sound, because he quickly abandoned his mistress and hurried out of the master bedroom. I held my breath, walking back into the hallway shadows as he rushed past.

​He hadn't even reached the ground floor before the silence of the mansion faded. The foyer was filled with the shrill, melodic laughter of my sister-in-law, Brenda, and the cold, haughty tone of my mother-in-law, Beatrice. The rest of my tormentors had finally arrived.

"The catering for the gala tonight needs to be perfect, Drake," Beatrice’s voice floated up the stairs. I guess they thought I was still not back from work. "The Gastons expect only the best. After all, Brittany is a princess."

"I know, Mother," Drake’s voice was tired, but there was a bit of excitement I hadn't heard in years. "Once the merger is signed, the debt won't matter. Everything changes in four weeks."

A roiling fury cleared the numbness in my veins. ​I didn't hide the card. I didn't tuck it back under the stack of shirts in his drawer where I’d found it while looking for a misplaced button. Clutching the card so tightly it crumpled in my fist, I headed for the stairs.

They were all gathered in the foyer.

​Drake was standing by the door, frantically tucking in his shirt and buttoning his cuffs. His face was still flushed from what he’d just been doing upstairs, but he was trying desperately to look composed for his family.

Brenda was spinning around, clutching a shopping bag from a boutique I knew I wasn't allowed to shop at anymore because "we needed to be frugal."

“Drake.” The name slipped from my lips before I realized it. I hadn't called him that in years. But there was no way I could bring myself to call him sweetheart or honey anymore. Not after he paraded his mistress on our bed.

They all froze, their heads snapping upward. Drake’s expression shifted from victory to a weary, irritated mask the moment his eyes landed on me. Then, his gaze dropped to the cream-colored card in my hand.

I waited for him to flinch, to rush up the stairs and apologize, or at least explain. I waited for him to say something, anything. Seconds stretched on, and all that followed was silence.

“How annoying.”

It seemed he had finally decided to break the silence, but the moment those words left his lips, my hands dropped to my sides.

​"You weren't supposed to see that yet, Clarissa," he continued, stepping onto the first rug of the foyer. "It would have been handled properly through my lawyers next week."

​"Handled?" I whispered, descending the stairs one step at a time. The numbness was replaced by a slow, roiling heat. "You are marrying someone else in four weeks. While we are still married, Drake? Legally, spiritually, in every way that matters we were still fucking married.”

​"Spiritually?" Brenda let out a jagged, mocking laugh, leaning against the banister. "Clarissa, please. A marriage without a legacy is just a long, boring roommate agreement. You’ve had six chances to carry the Hudson heir. You failed every single time."

I reached the bottom floor, standing five feet away from the man I had loved since I was twenty-one. "I had six miscarriages because of a medical condition, Brenda. I lost those children."

"Working?" Beatrice stepped forward, her red heels clicking aggressively. She smelled of expensive French perfume and malice. With a sneer, she reached out and snatched the wedding card from my hand. "He was securing his future. Something your broken body is incapable of providing. Look at you—pale, thin, exhausted. You’re like overused soil, Clarissa. No matter how much seed is planted, nothing grows. You’re barren. Why should my son tether his entire life and the Hudson empire to a dead end?"

Ah! Those words stabbed straight into my chest.

I blinked back every tear that burned the back of my eyes.

I looked directly at Drake, waiting for a shred of human decency. I waited for him to tell his mother she had gone too far.

​But no.

"Mother is blunt but she isn't wrong about the situation. This is a business reality, Clary. The Hudson empire needs a legacy, and you can't provide it. Brittany provides both. She’s young, she’s healthy, and her father is a billionaire."

​"So I'm just... what? So my seven years of devotion mean nothing? A business casualty?" I asked, my voice trembling now.

​"You’re just like furniture," Drake said coldly. His eyes were dead, stripped of any lingering affection. "I offered you a deal months ago—give me a child or stay silent. You couldn't do the one thing a wife is supposed to do. If you want to stay until the divorce is finalized, you can live in the guest room. You can be the shadow wife. But don't you dare think you have the right to complain about me finding a woman who can actually fulfill her role."

​Brenda and Beatrice laughed in unison, a cruel, harmonious sound that echoed off the high ceilings. They began to walk toward the dining room, discussing flower arrangements as if I had already ceased to exist.

Unable to withstand their toxic laughter for another moment, I turned my back on that hellhole of a mansion and fled to the nearest café, desperate for a cup of brewed coffee to numb the agonizing pain.

I quickly reached for my phone to call my best friend, Layla, sobbing as I explained my nightmare to her.

Her response, however, only fueled the rage burning in my chest: "Clary, oh my god... please tell me you're calling a lawyer," Layla gasped with rage. "You need to divorce that bastard immediately and take him for every single penny he's worth."

I hung up, staring at the untouched glass. Layla was right about the divorce, but the thought of Drake parading his mistress around made me sick.

When I returned home about an hour later, I wasn't heading upstairs to pack for the guest room. Instead, I went straight to my closet and reached for my most provocative dress.

If they wanted a shadow wife, I was ready to give them a nightmare instead.