After my husband had an affair, his mistress’s husband came to me. He said, “I have a vast fortune. Just nod your head and tomorrow we will go to the city clerk’s office to get married. I have a net worth in the nine figures.”
I was sitting in a quiet corner of a garden café in SoHo, hidden behind tall green plants. From where I sat, I could see everything, yet no one could easily notice me. On my table, a glass of Arnold Palmer had long gone watery, the layers of tea and lemonade separating like my life had quietly split into before and after.
About thirty feet away, at a table beside a koi pond, sat my husband, Jason Miller.
He was not alone.
Across from him sat a woman in a striking red silk dress, elegant and bold, her laughter soft and intimate. Her name was Lauren Hayes, a well known socialite in New York and the wife of Christopher Vaughn, the chairman of Vaughn Maritime Group.
Jason was smiling. It was the same smile that once convinced me, Olivia Bennett, a disciplined senior audit manager, to leave a stable career and invest everything I had into his construction business. I sold my savings, my stocks, and even my retirement fund because I believed in him.