My husband asked me to let my sister be his “wife” for one night. He said it like he was asking me to pass the salt.

Not my wife.
Not Carissa.
Not the woman paying the mortgage.
Not the woman whose last three bonuses had kept their lives from collapsing under the weight of his unfinished plans.

Someone else.

Carissa had spent years in boardrooms where men used euphemism like a weapon. She knew how language hid contempt. But nothing in those rooms had ever hit as cleanly as the sentence she was now hearing from the man she had married.

“So your solution,” she said, and she was almost proud of how level her voice still sounded, “is for my sister to impersonate me for a night because your ego can’t survive the truth.”

Damen leaned back in his chair. “That’s dramatic.”

“No,” Carissa said. “Dramatic would be me throwing this bowl at your head.”

He gave her a humorless little smile, as though her anger were a child trying on adult clothes. “It’s one night, Carissa. One event. These people don’t matter. I’ll do whatever you want after. Nice dinner. Weekend trip. You’re acting like this means something it doesn’t.”