The CEO's Hidden Wife Strikes Back

Three months after I secretly started working at my husband's company, I ran into him in the break room. He had just come out of a meeting, and his tie was half an inch crooked. Without thinking, I reached over and straightened it. The next second, Vanessa Holt, a female director, set her coffee cup down hard and gave me a cold sneer. "What class do you think you are, daring to seduce the big boss?" Everyone in the room turned around. My husband lowered his eyes to look at me and said nothing. I didn't say anything either. I just looked at him and waited for him to choose. My name is Sienna Sinclair. Twenty-six years old, married for two years. My husband is Cole Grayson, the current CEO of the Grayson Group. In the whole company, only he and I knew. It wasn't that I insisted on playing some secret-marriage game. On our wedding day, Cole held my hand and told me, very seriously, "Sienna, you've never wanted people to call you somebody's accessory. So live your own way. If you want to join Grayson, send in your own résumé, do your own interviews, earn your own promotions. I won't clear the road for you." When I heard that, I was actually pretty moved. I felt like he understood me. Before that, I'd been an editor at a publishing house. Later the company couldn't stay afloat, and the entire content team was laid off. While I was out of work, my mom's back was bad and my dad was on medication all the time, so the household expenses were heavy. There was no way I could sit idle. Cole had said that even if I never worked a day in my life, he could support me. But I didn't want that. I'd been earning my own money since I was twenty. I was used to it. I didn't like holding out my hand. Even married, I didn't want people to bring me up and only say: oh, that's Mrs. Grayson. So when the Grayson Brand Department was hiring, I didn't tell anyone. I sent in my résumé myself. Written test, first interview, second interview, final interview. I passed them one step at a time. The night of my first day, Cole came home and held my employee ID badge in his palm, looking at it for a long time. "Grayson Group, Brand Department, Planning Specialist, Sienna Sinclair." He said, "Good." I thought it would be a good start. Only after I got in did I learn that a big company had a big company's polish, and a big company's dirt too. The Brand Department director was Vanessa, thirty-three, quick at her work and quick with her mouth. She had one favorite line in meetings. "If the results aren't there, don't talk to me about the process." It sounded capable. But when something actually came up, what she did best was dump the process on her subordinates and stick the results on herself. In my first week, I watched her take a proposal that Lily Foster from our team had spent three days on, change the cover, add a title, and carry it straight into a presentation. When she came back, she stood in front of Lily's desk in her high heels and said flatly, "New people should learn to do the work first. Don't be in such a rush to get your name on things." Lily's eyes turned red, but all she could say was okay. I was brand new then, didn't know anyone, and didn't want to get involved. I just noted one detail. Vanessa cared a lot about what was happening in the CEO's Office. Which day Cole came in early, which day he added a last-minute meeting, which day he was hosting clients, she always knew. She ran up to the 38th floor every few days. Sometimes delivering documents. Sometimes delivering coffee. Sometimes carrying nothing at all, just saying she was going to "align on messaging." Coworkers said privately that her mind wasn't on the Brand Department. It was on the CEO's Office. I didn't join in. But I wasn't blind. The new suits in her office, the golf photo on the corner of her desk taken with who knows who from an angle that made them look close, and the smugness she couldn't hold back every time she mentioned Mr. Grayson, all of it told people one thing: she wanted a higher seat. Ideally, she'd land the man along with it. What she didn't know was that the man she wanted went home at night to heat up soup for me. In my second month, the department got a big project. An anniversary campaign for the group's new hotel line. Tight timeline, big budget, and Cole was overseeing it personally. At a meeting, Vanessa named a few people: me, Lily, copywriter Derek Collins, and designer Casey Hale. She called it a project team. In reality, everyone knew we did the work and she took the credit. I didn't mind. Having something to do beat wasting time. The first time Vanessa really fixed her eyes on me was when I pitched a new direction at a proposal meeting. I suggested we not just shoot empty hotel rooms and fancy plated food, but come at it through real guests and service staff, and build an anniversary storyline called "The People Who Are Seen." It would feel like real life, and it would move people more easily. Vanessa tapped the table with her pen and only said, "Set it aside for now." The next afternoon, she came back from the CEO's Office in an unusually good mood. "The direction's decided. We're going with the version I laid out yesterday." She tossed the printout onto the table. On the cover, in the author line, it said clearly: Vanessa Holt. I glanced at it and said nothing. Lily secretly messaged me. "Just let it go. She's always like this." I replied, "Yeah." But Vanessa probably took my silence to mean I was a pushover. From then on, she ordered me around more and more easily. At eight-forty in the morning, she'd send me downstairs to buy the specific coffee she wanted. At noon, when everyone else took their break, I stayed at my desk fixing her PowerPoint. At nine at night, she'd toss a file onto my desk and say, "The CEO's Office needs this tomorrow morning. Finish it tonight." The most annoying part was that in front of others, she always acted fair. "Sienna, I'm giving you this work because I think highly of you." "Young people shouldn't be afraid of hard work. Everyone got here by grinding it out." "You've got ability. You just still need some grinding down." Every time I heard that, I wanted to laugh. Grind down what? My backbone? Once she kept me so late that I got home close to eleven. Cole was sitting at the dining table waiting for me. The soup on the table had gone cold, so he took it and heated it up again. He set the bowl by my hand and looked at the dark shadows under my eyes. "Busy lately?" "The project's on a deadline." "Is someone deliberately leaning on you?" I looked up at him. "Mr. Grayson, that question doesn't exactly avoid a conflict of interest." He smiled and reached over to pinch my cheek. "You're home. Don't call me that." I put down my spoon and told him seriously, "Cole, I didn't join Grayson to be a mascot. Stay out of it." He nodded. "Fine. I'll stay out of it." Then he added one more thing. "But remember, you don't owe anyone anything." At the time, I didn't understand what he meant. What finally made me and Vanessa drop the pretense wasn't her stealing my proposal. It was her publicly pinning the blame on me. As the hotel-line project neared launch, the partner suddenly changed the dimensions of the key visual, and the vendor had to redo the work again and again. Checking that was supposed to be the designer's job together with the vendor, but Vanessa called me out by name in the department's team Slack channel. "Sienna, who exactly confirmed the dimensions?" I was in a small conference room on a video call with the vendor at the time. When I saw the message, I posted screenshots of the chat history and the final email straight into the channel. "After the designer confirmed the first draft, you said not to send it to the manufacturer yet and to wait for feedback from the CEO's Office. Last night at eleven-forty, you forwarded me the final version, and I sent the forwarded version to the vendor." The channel went quiet for a few seconds. Soon after, Vanessa posted a smiley face.