“Hm. Suspicious,” Nina could almost picture her squinting. Daphne was so much like Frank, even in her expressions.“All right, Mom. A surprise is a surprise.”
“Thanks, sweetie,” Nina smiled, even though her eyes were already burning with tears.
Daphne kept talking about something else, and Nina listened to her voice, feeling like her heart was literally being torn apart.
They said goodbye. Nina ended the call quickly, no longer able to hold it in.
She covered her face with her hands, sat in the car, and gave herself exactly five seconds. Wiped away the tears. Took a deep breath. Turned on the navigation.
She needed time to sort everything out.
Nina drove to a high-end hotel. For a few days, she’d hide there from her husband and strategize.She’d consult with legal counsel; clarity would follow.
In the end, this wasn’t the end of the world. Everything could have been catastrophic if she’d found out the truth too late. At least she’d stopped the share transfer, and the company would remain hers no matter what. Which meant she’d have money.
And Frank could go straight to his Vivian.
She suddenly caught herself on a strange thought. She’d never been madly in love with Frank. She wasn’t the kind of woman who looked at her husband with starry eyes, who trembled at a single touch. They’d been partners more than anything. Friends. Two people who’d lived through many years together and raised a wonderful daughter. She’d believed there was understanding, stability,a rock-solid foundation. He knew everything about her. And she, it turned out, knew absolutely nothing about him.
She’d never even suspected that for all these years he’d been living a double life, hiding another family, and possibly preparing for divorce not out of desperation, but to leave her with nothing.
How low that was.
Nina pulled into the hotel’s underground parking garage, killed the engine, and sat there in the dark for a few more minutes with her forehead resting against the steering wheel.
There wasn’t a single clear thought in her head. The pain was unbearable. She’d beenbetrayed with calculated, predatory cruelty.
And she… she’d done everything for him.She had given him her entire life.
And behind her back, he’d built a second family, paid for his mistress’s whims with her own money, and coldly prepared for a divorce.
She shivered with alternating waves of heat and cold. She had trusted him so completely and had been so terribly wrong.
In the room, the first thing Nina did was toss her phone onto the bed and walk over to the window. The night city shimmered with lights, cars rushed along the streets, people went on living their ordinary lives, unaware that hers had just collapsed.
She pressed her fingers to her temples, trying to pull herself together.
She couldn’t afford to lose her head.
She had to understand everything to the very end before taking any steps.
Nina sat down on the bed, picked up her phone, and opened the photos from the bank.
The birth certificate. The apartment papers. She scrolled through the images one by one, and with every new frame it became harder to breathe.
This hadn’t been an accident. Not a drunken fling.This was a parallel life, meticulously maintained for years. He had a child. And she’d been so naive she hadn’t noticed a thing.
Her hands started to shake.
Nina walked over to the minibar, took out a bottle of water, and froze. Maybe she should get something stronger? She usually stayed away from alcohol. Even the smell made her nauseous. But tonight, she didn’t care.
For so many years she’d lived with the certainty that Frank was her person.No thrilling passion, perhaps, but certainly a mutual foundation.
And now she understood that all this time a cold, calculating stranger had been living beside her.
He’d planned everything long ago. She wasn’t stupid enough not to see it now. Two years earlier, when she’d wanted to buy an apartment by the sea, he’d suggested registering it in his mother’s name. And Nina hadn’t objected. What was so strange about that? They’d been together for twenty years after all. How could you not trust your husband when he’d never once given you a reason?
Then he’d started gently planting the idea that he needed the company shares. That he was uncomfortable being just a proxy at shareholder meetings. He was the CEO, after all. He wanted more.
