Chapter 1
The night my husband left on his business trip, I got a notification from my Walgreens rewards account:
[11:00 PM-Plan B Emergency Contraceptive-1 box-$38.99]
I shot up in bed like I’d been struck by lightning, frantically checking every detail of Liam Sterling’s supposed business itinerary.
What I found on the Expedia app made my blood run cold-
Deluxe Family Suite-Guest Name: Liam Sterling, Rosalie Carter.]
barked at my assistant to pull up everything on this Rosalie Carter in under sixty seconds.
Her Instagram had only three posts visible to strangers, all pinned at the top.
One flaunted a marriage certificate with Liam’s name on it.
Another showed a happy family of three with their newborn baby.
The most recent was a tourist shot of all three of them horseback riding across some prairie, captioned:
Hubby finally has time for me and baby! Once this trip’s over, we’re moving into our gorgeous 5,000 sq ft nansion in North Capitol!]
My phone slipped from my hands and shattered against the floor.
iam Sterling. I built you up from nothing into the business mogul you are today.
Cross me, and I’ll reduce your empire to nothing but ashes and regret!
Rosalie’s profile picture was a family portrait from their baby’s shower celebration.
In the photo, Liam’s smile was radiant as he cradled the child close to his chest. The kid had his eyes, his
nose-the resemblance was unmistakable.
And there was Rosalie, draped in a flowing white dress that accentuated her graceful figure, leaning tenderly against Liam’s shoulder.
What a picture-perfect happy family of three.
18:57
Walgreens Notified Me About His ‘Plan B’ Purchase… So I Upgraded Him to ‘Plan Bankruptcy
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Chapter 1
My chest felt like it was caving in.
My finger hovered over [Add Contact] for a moment before I hit it with grim determination.
She accepted immediately.
Me: [Do you know Liam’s married?]
Her: [Yeah, I know. I AM Liam’s wife.]
Look, I was hoping maybe she was just some naive girl who got played.
If she’d been deceived and was willing to cut ties with Liam, I would’ve paid to relocate her and the kid overseas. Covered all the child’s expenses, set them up for life.
But her smug response told me everything I needed to know.
I was the only one who’d been played for a fool.
I scrambled to my desk drawer, pulling out our marriage certificate, checking the date over and over. We’d
gotten married two years before them.
Me: [Liam and I have been married for eight years, so that certificate you’re holding has got to be fake,
right?]
Me: [For your sake and the kid’s, maybe double-check that. Because if it’s real, I can nail Liam for bigamy.]
Those few seconds where I could see her typing and deleting, typing and deleting-each one felt like a vice tightening around my heart until I could barely breathe.
I dug my nails into my thighs, leaving crescent-shaped marks.
Finally, her response came through: [LMAO girl, aren’t you just that rich cougar who used to keep Liam as her boy toy?]
[Liam gave you a fake certificate and you actually believed you were his real wife? You’re gonna sue for bigamy? With what proof?]
[Liam and I got engaged when we were eighteen. He was just too busy with work to make it official until now.]
[Now we’ve got our certificate, the kid’s birth certificate is all set, and Liam bought us our dream house in North Capitol. What, you can’t stand seeing our little family finally together?]
Every word hit me like ice water, numbing me to the bone.
Chapter 1
Even now, I still remember clearly that night twelve years ago when I first met Liam.
2 AM, on the street.
His white shirt was torn to shreds, blood seeping through fresh wounds.
A crowd of thugs held him down, pointing at dozens of bottles of piss lined up in front of him:
“Drink one bottle, we’ll knock off ten grand. You chug all of these tonight, that’s two hundred K right there.”
‘Hell, at this rate, you’ll have your debt paid off in just a year. Our boss is being real damn generous!”
The laughter echoing through the night made my skin crawl.
couldn’t stand it. I whipped out my checkbook and paid off his three-million-dollar debt on the spot.
Later, I kept him close, invested millions into his dreams, leveraged every connection my family had built over generations, handed him resources on a silver platter-all so he could reinvent himself into one of North Capitol’s most powerful players.
Never in my wildest nightmares did I think Liam would betray me like this!
calmed myself and called my assistant:
Pull Liam’s financial records. And check his marital status.”
Also, be ready to cut off all business ties with Sterling Corp. I want his funding frozen.”
If he can’t give me a damn good explanation for this, I’m tanking his company’s stock by morning.”
en minutes later, his response came:
Ms. Carter, your records show you’re unmarried.”
Mr. Sterling is married. Our investigation shows he registered his marriage with Rosalie Carter in Oakland ix years ago. The marriage is still active.”
Chapter 2
