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I Went to Watch a Cheater Get Caught—It Was My Husband
Novelix
Completed
Audrey follows her best friend to watch two women fight over a cheating husband. Then she recognizes the man in their photographs. Her husband. Both women have three children by him. Both are pregnant again. And neither knows Audrey exists. Instead of introducing herself, Audrey listens. Private schools. Hidden properties. A mother-in-law who knew everything. Then one mistress boasts about the restaurant fire Blake rescued her from—the same fire that killed Audrey’s mother. When Blake finally arrives, his wife has heard enough. Three households are about to discover how much one man can hide.
Chapters (3)
第1章
I went to watch a woman confront her husband's mistress.
I didn't know I was the wife.
Jules had seen the commotion on somebody's livestream. We were finishing dinner a block away, and my best friend had never once let curiosity mind its own business.
“Five minutes,” she promised, pulling me toward the Scottsdale shopping plaza.
We reached the front of the crowd just as a woman grabbed another woman's curls.
“How many times, Brielle? How many times have you been with Blake Kincaid?”
My stomach tightened.
Jules glanced at me. “Your husband has an evil twin.”
Then the woman threw photographs onto the pavement.
No twin.
My husband. My Blake. Kissing a woman I had never seen before.
The woman holding the photographs pressed a hand to her stomach.
“I'm two months pregnant with our fourth baby. You are not destroying my family.”
My phone buzzed.
Blake: Leaving now. Want me to pick you up at Jules's?
I sent him my location.
Come here instead.
Brielle pulled free and straightened her clothes.
“I've got three of his children, too. And I'm pregnant. So keep your hands off me.”
The other woman swayed. Someone caught her elbow.
“How old?”
“Five, four, and two. Boys. All of them.”
I had been married for eight years. Our son, Owen, was seven.
Blake had cried after Owen's difficult birth. He said he couldn't bear to risk losing me by trying for another baby.
I had believed that was love.
Now, while he forbade me a second child, two other women were carrying his seventh and eighth secret children.
Brielle smiled at her rival.
“He wants a little girl this time.”
“I gave him three daughters,” the woman whispered. “Our oldest is six.”
Jules looked at me.
I caught her wrist before she could say my name.
Not yet.
第2章
Blake traveled for work.
That was what we called the weeks he wasn't home. Conferences. Clients. Problems only he could solve.
Three families. One calendar.
Jules recognized him fully when she bent to look at another photograph. I shook my head, and she understood.
“I'm going to kill him,” she whispered.
“Stand here. Listen.”
People loved my husband. He remembered anniversaries, carried grocery bags, and told his mother to be kind to me. Our friends joked that I had him trained.
Apparently I had only been given the version of him that lived at my address.
The other woman introduced herself while demanding answers: Candace Roth. She called herself Mrs. Kincaid and began asking how much Brielle had taken from her household.
Someone in the crowd told her to get a lawyer.
“Find out where the money went,” the woman advised. “Fighting her won't tell you what he's hidden.”
Candace seized on that.
“How much has he spent on you?”
Brielle lifted her chin.
“My boys have houses held for them. Trust accounts. Private school. You think he gives that to somebody who doesn't matter?”
Candace's mouth tightened.
“Money doesn't make you his wife.”
“Neither does saying it louder.”
Jules started to speak. I gripped her wrist again.
I wanted to hear everything they knew before either realized I had a reason to know it, too.
The handbags. The jewelry. The cars they described. All the things Blake said we didn't need.
There was no answer in how either woman looked. Betrayal wasn't a beauty contest. He hadn't betrayed me because somebody else had won.
He had simply decided I didn't need to know what kind of game he was playing.
第3章
Our house was a modest three-bedroom place with a backyard Owen loved.
I worked from home doing freelance design. Blake contributed eight hundred dollars a month toward household expenses and told me the rest went back into his software business.
“We're comfortable,” he always said. “That's more than a lot of people have.”
When I suggested a private school for Owen, he'd argued that pressure ruined childhoods. I'd agreed to tour the local public school instead.
Now Brielle was listing tuition payments like trophies.
I turned to Candace.
“Does he do the same for your children?”
She wiped her face.
“He said the girls would run the business one day. He bought properties for them. Accounts in my name. He took care of my parents before they died.”
My mother had helped Blake start that business. Her money had become the floor beneath two households she hadn't known existed.
Brielle unlocked her phone.
“His mother puts my boys in the family Christmas cards. They're included in the family trust. Can you say that?”
She shoved a photograph toward Candace. I leaned just enough to see.
Gloria. My mother-in-law. Arms around three boys in matching sweaters.
The date was from a week when Owen and I had both had the flu. I'd asked her for help. She had been too busy.
Apparently she had been.
“Gloria takes them every week,” Brielle continued. “She and I go shopping. She knows who her real family is.”
Candace looked stricken.
I went cold.
This wasn't a man keeping two secrets from his wife. His mother had been helping him organize them.
Every time Blake defended me to Gloria, every performance of choosing me, had given us a convenient reason to keep our households apart.
And I had thanked him for it.