My straitlaced husband, the man who never understood a single romantic gesture, suddenly had a change of heart. Every night, he came home from work carrying a bouquet of flowers.

Even though my pollen allergy flared every time, my chest still went soft and warm with something I couldn't quite name.

To reward Phil Gilbert, I messaged my assistant and told him to hand Phil two high-paying, low-effort projects to pad his numbers.

The flowers lasted a week. But tonight, Phil came home empty-handed.

I sat on the edge of the bed, watching him stroll into the bathroom, humming, practically glowing.

The shirt he peeled off carried the scent of an unfamiliar perfume.

Some instinct I couldn't explain made me pick up his phone. I checked his messages, his texts, even his bank statements. Nothing seemed off.

Just as I was scolding myself for being paranoid, a dual-app notification slid across the lock screen.

I tapped it open and found Phil's second messaging account.

The pinned contact was labeled "Wife." They shared a couple's profile picture.

She had just sent him a coffee shop location.

“Tomorrow's our first date. Don't be late, boyfriend.”

No wonder Phil hadn't brought me flowers tonight. He'd already won her over.

But that account, the woman on the other end, looked exactly like the con artist who'd once swindled my childhood friend down to her last dime.

——

The water shut off in the bathroom. I set the phone back exactly where it had been.

Phil stepped out, the steam rolling out with him, scattering that cloying sweetness in the air.

I ignored the corner of his mouth lifting and asked, deliberately light.

“Why no flowers today?”

He froze, then dragged the towel through his hair, careless, evasive.

“The florist closed early.”

“Besides, you don't even like flashy stuff, remember?”

I lowered my eyes and rubbed the plain silver ring on my finger.

In three years of marriage, it was the only gift Phil had ever given me.

He always said the money had to go back home, that it needed to be saved for the children we'd have someday.

So I never once asked him for anything.

On Valentine's Day, my whole feed was women showing off transfers from their husbands.

I dropped Phil a hint. He sent me five dollars and fifty cents, then rolled over and pretended to sleep.

On our anniversary, I spotted a dress while we were out walking.

Even on sale it was only a hundred and thirty. He said it wasn't worth it.

But just now, scrolling through their chat history.

Phil had sent her flowers for ten days straight, over a thousand dollars' worth, plus little cakes that ran more than a hundred apiece.

Sometimes he even brought her a packed lunch he'd made himself, shaped into a little heart.

I never knew Phil could cook.

The last time my stomach acted up, when the pain pinned me to the bed and I begged him to just boil me a little porridge, he told me he didn't know how.

I swallowed the sob clawing up my throat and forced my voice steady.

“Do you really love me?”

Guilt flickered across Phil's face. He grabbed his phone, checked that nothing had given him away, then visibly let out a breath.

He sat down beside me, his voice turning gentle.

“Of course I love you. You take such good care of the house, you always understand me.”

A few hollow words, then he turned his back to me and typed out a reply.

Phil's eyes were smiling as he leaned in and nuzzled against my neck.

“Good wife, I've got an important meeting tomorrow. Put together a sharp, formal suit for me, would you?”

I bit through the inside of my cheek, my nails breaking the skin of my palm.

Phil didn't love me at all. He just needed someone to run the house, a maid who'd bend to his every whim.

I forced the tears back, got up, and went to the living room to cool down.

Three years ago, when I went to close a deal and someone slipped something into my drink, it was Phil who beat those lowlifes off and saved me.

He cracked three ribs doing it, then dragged himself through getting me to the hospital before he finally collapsed.

When I woke up, he'd even gone out and bought me a bowl of porridge.

That was the moment my heart moved. I had my assistant look into him.

I learned Phil came from nothing, that his résumé had been turned away everywhere.

So I brought him into my company. Afraid the pressure would weigh on him, I disguised myself as a coworker and pursued him.

I chased him for three years before Phil Gilbert finally proposed to me.

I'd thought I'd won him over. I never realized he just needed a thoughtful wife.

And now he'd met someone who actually made his heart race.

If he wanted to step out of line, he'd pay the price for it.

Early the next morning, Phil found no suit laid out for him.

He frowned and shook me awake on the living room couch, his voice thin with impatience.

"Agnes, why didn't you put my suit together?"

"I'm meeting a client any minute now."

The accusation came down on me like a hammer.

I opened my mouth to argue, but my throat felt like it was being scraped raw, and the pain choked the words back.

My head pounded. I touched my forehead and found it burning.

Phil seized my wrist and yanked me into the bedroom.

He threw open the closet and glared at me, seething.

"You've got five minutes. Pull something together for me, fast."

I was too sick to stand straight, sour bile rising in my throat, so I grabbed a few pieces at random just to get him off my back.

He changed in a rush and turned to leave.

My mind went blank, and I crashed hard to the floor.

Phil glanced back at me and started to reach down to help me up.

But a shrill phone ring cut the motion short.

He answered, the corner of his mouth lifting without his noticing, every trace of his earlier temper melting away.

"Almost there. If you're bored, go hit the mall and buy a bag first. I'll send you the money."

My consciousness blurred at the edges. With the last of my strength I clutched the hem of his pants and rasped out a plea.

"Hospital... take me to the hospital..."

But he pried my fingers loose and vanished from my sight in a hurry.

When I woke again, my assistant was keeping watch beside me while I lay on an IV drip.

A nurse came in on her rounds and sighed with regret.

"Your fever hit a hundred and four. If you'd caught it sooner and gotten to the hospital, the baby might have made it."

My assistant's eyes were rimmed red. She gripped my hand, her voice cracking.

"Ms. Winfield, when I couldn't reach your phone and rushed to your place, you'd already been lying in a pool of blood for who knows how long."

"I got you here as fast as I could, but we still couldn't save the baby."

My heart felt like it was clenched in some invisible fist, the pain stealing the breath right out of me.

Weakly I laid a hand over my stomach as tears spilled down my cheeks.

If only Phil had stayed one minute longer. If only he'd made the call for an ambulance.

This tiny life I'd never even gotten the chance to know would not have dissolved into a cold puddle of blood.

Outside the window, fireworks burst into brilliant bloom, lighting up the whole night sky.

My phone suddenly buzzed. A notification popped up: a transfer out of eight hundred and eighty thousand dollars.

Something pulled at me. I turned my head to look.

The fireworks ended on Phil's initials, then a heart, then another girl's initials.

A dull, sinking ache spread through my stomach. My assistant cried out in panic for the nurse.

"Ms. Winfield, you're bleeding again."

I bit through my lower lip and tasted the thick, metallic tang of blood.

"Chloe, have those two projects already gone to Phil?"

She shook her head, and I let out a soft laugh.

"Then put the word out. Pull the projects back from him, and demote him to a regular employee."

"His numbers are the worst of anyone. He doesn't deserve to lead a team."

Since the day Phil joined the company, his performance had never once hit target.

If I hadn't doctored the figures behind the scenes, if I hadn't had Chloe feed him projects,

he'd have been cut long ago. How would he ever have come up with eight hundred and eighty thousand dollars to keep his little mistress happy?

I'd rented an apartment with him, saved money with him, dreaming of the day we'd buy a place of our own.

Eight hundred and eighty thousand. Once this month's paycheck came in, we'd have had nine hundred and twenty thousand, enough to buy the place we'd had our eye on outright.

I called the landlord to end the lease and listed the furniture on the secondhand market.

If Phil Gilbert didn't want to build a home with me, then he could go sleep under a bridge and live on cold air for all I cared.

I'd spent three days in the hospital, and not a single thing in the apartment had changed.

A sour ache spread through my chest as I dumped every flower I'd left drying on the balcony into the trash.

I'd been such a fool back then. Four years we'd known each other, and Phil had never once given me a flower, never once said anything sweet.

So when he suddenly walked in with a bouquet, how could it possibly have been a gift for me?

It could only have been something someone else didn't want, something he was too cheap to throw away.

A sneer pulled at my lips as I tore the couple's photo off the wall and ripped it to shreds.

The door creaked open. I turned on instinct and met Phil's eyes.

He had a takeout box in one hand, and his gaze kept skittering away from mine.

"Agnes, did you see the bank withdrawal notice?"

I nodded, but I had no desire to press him about it.

After all, according to my childhood friend, that girl liked to coo and push some can't-lose, get-rich-quick venture.

And somehow, inexplicably, she got people to sign predatory loan contracts.

Phil opened the takeout box and took my hand to pull me down beside him.

I slipped out of his grasp without making it obvious, keeping a careful distance between us.

The mingled smell of food filled the air, and my stomach turned, bile rising in my throat.

The logo on the box belonged to the five-star restaurant I went to most often, and I couldn't help finding it absurd.

Phil only ever splurged on me on payday, taking me to the little food stalls downstairs to eat our fill.

And even then, the bill had to stay under a hundred dollars.

Last month I'd suggested taking him out for sushi, and he'd balked at the price, dragging me through an entire evening of calculating how much three thousand dollars could buy.

In his eyes, every dollar I spent was a mistake.

And the photos Chloe had sent me showed that in these three days, Phil had spent nearly a million dollars on the girl named Winona Cooley.

He'd poured eight hundred and eighty thousand into that bottomless-pit venture, fifty thousand on a designer bag for her, and another hundred and ten thousand on hotels and dinners while he kept her company.

Three years married to him, and I'd barely spent a cent of his money. I'd even subsidized him.

My eyes stung. I turned my face away and wiped the tears.

Guilt flickered in Phil's eyes. He actually thought I was crying because I was touched.

He took my hand and swore up and down.

"Babe, that eight hundred and eighty thousand went into a friend's venture, and she promised me the final payout would be five times what I put in."

"Once I get that four point four million, we'll get a new place and throw the wedding we never had."

I scoffed and watched, silent, as Phil put on his little performance.

He'd never been willing to spend a dime on me before. The moment he actually had money, the first thing he'd do was dump me and go chase his "true love."

Sure enough, Phil pulled a set of divorce papers out of his bag.

He pressed his lips together and looked at me with all the sincerity he could fake.

"But babe, every investment carries risk. I don't want to drag you down with me."

"Let's divorce first. Once it all pays off, we'll remarry."

The memory of how Phil had proposed flashed through my mind.

He'd held up three fingers and sworn that even if he amounted to nothing his whole life, he would never leave me, never abandon me.

My eyes went red, tears falling like beads from a snapped string.

Phil shoved the divorce papers into my hands and urged me on.

"Babe, you'll just have to put up with this for a little while."

"The company's been cracking down lately, and that demotion out of nowhere, it was probably someone reporting our office romance."

"Divorcing now is better for both of us."

With trembling fingers I picked up the pen, a sneer curling my lips.

"Right. A divorce is better for both of us."

The moment Phil saw me sign without resistance, his face split into a grin.

He snapped a photo and sent it to Winona like he was reporting a job well done.

Chloe told me Phil had booked a wedding banquet at a hotel for the weekend.

He'd already bought the tickets for his parents, relatives, and friends, planning to formally introduce Winona to everyone.