After I had helped our law firm win nine hundred and ninety-nine cases in a row, my husband, who had kept our marriage hidden for years, finally agreed to hold a wedding and make our relationship public.

However, I waited until nightfall, and he never showed up. Instead, I saw a photo of him and his female assistant kissing in front of everyone at their wedding on Instagram.

Her caption read, [I was just being mocked by my coworkers for being a bachelorette no one wants, and then my lawyer hero came to save me. From now on, I’ll be his perfect employee during the day, and he’ll be my loving husband at night.]

In the photo, the wedding rings on their ring fingers were impossible to ignore.

For a moment, everyone expected me to break down and make a scene. However, I simply smiled and left a comment under the post.

[When are you two having a few kids? I’ll be sure to send over a big gift.]

The very next second, my husband, who had been unreachable all day, finally called me.

“Brit got pregnant out of wedlock, and the man who did it abandoned her,” he said coldly. “Her parents are extremely traditional. If this gets out, they’ll kill both her and the baby. As a lawyer, don’t you have any compassion for her at all?

“Delete that comment right now. Apologize to her personally,” he continued. “Once she gives birth to the child and everything settles, I’ll hold another wedding with you.”

I looked down at the divorce papers in my hand. Then, I let out a soft snicker.

“No need,” I said. “Mr. Larson, just wait to receive our divorce case.”

As soon as I said that, there was a brief silence on the other end of the call. Then, my husband, Sean Larson, spoke again, his tone edged with impatience.

“Andrea, can you be a little more rational? I told you, the wedding with Brit is just for show. Besides, I promised I’d make it up to you later and hold another wedding. Can’t you be patient? Can’t you wait a little longer?

“Do you really want to force things into the open? If people find out Brit got pregnant before marriage and was abandoned by some man, they’ll mock her and call her a tramp. Am I supposed to stand and watch as her parents kill both her and the baby?”

Listening to his self-righteous rant, I stood at the court entrance and let out a sarcastic laugh. Sean and I had registered our marriage seven years ago, but we never held a wedding and never made it public.

Back then, he had just poured everything he had into starting his law firm. He couldn’t afford a house or a car, and he couldn’t give me a real wedding. All he gave me was a promise of a future filled with happiness. So, we got married in secret, like thieves, hiding it from both our families.

For seven years, I waited for him to make a name for himself and finally give me the wedding he promised. And he did indeed throw himself into his career. Eventually, his client base grew, and his reputation grew.

Meanwhile, I had picked out the venue, the dress… everything. All it would take was one word from him, and we could have the wedding anytime. However, every time I brought it up, Sean always had another excuse and another speech, telling me to give him a little more time, wait for the law firm to stabilize, or wait for him to train the new recruits.

Just like that, I waited for seven years until last week. I worked day and night, barely sleeping, organizing case files and winning the law firm its nine hundred and ninety-ninth lawsuit. This time, he had no more excuses. He finally agreed to hold the wedding with me as a reward.

That entire week, I slept less than four hours a day, personally handling every detail of the wedding. The night before, I was too excited to sleep at all. However, on the day of the wedding, I waited until the sky turned dark and the guests had all left, yet he never showed up. All I saw were the pitiful looks people gave me.

If I hadn’t happened to see Brittany Donovan’s post, I might still be in the dark. And he still had the nerve to say I wasn’t patient? At the end of the day, he just didn’t want to have a wedding with me. He didn’t want to admit to the world that I was his wife.

Snapping back to the present, I didn’t back down like I used to. Instead, I let out a cold laugh and shot back, “You’re right. A wedding is just for show. But tell me, why is it that Brittany sheds a few tears, and you rush to her side immediately, while I waited seven years, and you couldn’t even spare a single day for me? You didn’t even bother to come up with an excuse. You just turned off your phone and disappeared.

“If we can’t even pretend to care anymore, then what’s the point of continuing this marriage?”

On the other end of the line, Sean fell silent. It was clear he hadn’t expected me to push back like this and tear off the facade we had maintained for seven years.

After a moment, he sighed, sounding helpless. “Andy, can you stop bringing up divorce every time something happens? I’m busy with the law firm and dealing with Brittany’s parents, and now I have to explain everything to you again and again. I’m exhausted. You’re part of the firm, too. You know how much we invested in training talents like Brittany. I’m doing all this to build a better future for you and for our future children. Is that wrong?”

There it was again, the endless lecture and the righteous justifications. For the past seven years, Sean had always been like this. He had acted as if he was always right and everything he did was for my sake, using love as an excuse to make me compromise.

However, no matter how he dressed it up, he couldn’t hide the fact that Brittany was incompetent. As the assistant he had personally chosen, her professional ability was practically nonexistent. She couldn’t even grasp basic legal knowledge, and she had angered several clients.

If it were anyone else, they would’ve been fired long ago. Even a minor punctuation mistake or a vague legal phrase would have been enough for him to dismiss a newcomer. Yet, when it came to Brittany, no matter how many mistakes she made, he never punished her. He spoke to her gently, never once raising his voice.

He always said she was just a fresh graduate still adjusting to work, but he seemed to have forgotten that this was already her second year at the law firm. She was no longer a newcomer. His favoritism toward her had long crossed the line of a normal mentor-mentee relationship.

So, when she posted publicly about her wedding to Sean, no one was surprised. In fact, people joked in the comments, saying they had seen this coming all along, congratulating them on finally going public.

At the thought, my voice turned cold. “You’re right. You’re not the one at fault. I am.”

Thinking I had once again been persuaded, Sean nodded in satisfaction. “That’s more like it. Andy, as long as you realize your mistake, then I–”

Before he could finish, I cut him off. “Sean, do you know what my biggest mistake was? It was me not listening to my family and secretly marrying you seven years ago. And by the way, my divorce lawsuit has been accepted. I’ll see you in court tomorrow.”

I didn’t give him a chance to respond and hung up immediately.

Right after, I tried to send him the digital copy of the court hearing notice, but a red exclamation mark popped up on my screen. It meant he had deleted my contact.

I wasn’t surprised. Over the past seven years, every time I refused to obey him, he would cut off communication like that, change the door password, freeze my bank cards, and then emotionally abuse me to submit. However, this time, I wasn’t playing along. I didn’t want to continue this meaningless game anymore, and I didn’t want to continue this marriage.

Just as I was about to turn off my phone, Brittany suddenly tagged me in the firm’s client group chat and sent a message. The next second, the previously quiet chat exploded, and messages flooded in nonstop.

[Andrea, I know Sean is an outstanding guy. You’ve worked with him at the firm for years, and if you accidentally fell in love with him, I don’t blame you. But I just found out I’m pregnant, and you’re already messaging my husband, forcing him to leave me and divorce me in court. What am I supposed to do? What about the child in my womb? If you care this much, I can leave the firm. I’m only begging you to spare my unborn child and me. Please don’t take my husband away, okay? @Andrea]

The moment Brittany sent those messages, the usually quiet client group chat exploded. Messages flooded the screen in seconds.

[I feel so bad for Ms. Donovan. She just started a family with Mr. Larson, and now some jealous older woman is trying to ruin it.]

[You really can’t judge a book by its cover. Ms. Brown always seemed kind and reliable. I never thought she would be so vicious. Targeting someone’s marriage while they’re pregnant? How disgusting.]

[@Andrea, stop playing dead and show yourself. You call yourself a lawyer? You should be ashamed of yourself!]

[@Mr. Larson, if you don’t kick this kind of scum out of the firm, I’m canceling my contract and reconsidering which firm to trust with my case.]

In an instant, the group chat of hundreds of clients was filled with insults and accusations, every single one directed at me. Meanwhile, Brittany, the one who started it all, disappeared right after spreading her lies, hiding safely behind her screen.

I was so exasperated by her shamelessness that I burst out laughing. She stole my wedding, destroyed my marriage, and now she was twisting the story, accusing me of seducing Sean while she was pregnant?

What surprised me even more was Sean himself. He had always been a silent observer in the group chat, never speaking since the day it was created. Yet now, he suddenly stepped forward and responded publicly.

[What my wife said is true. I apologize for disturbing everyone. Please rest assured that there is no emotional or inappropriate relationship between Andrea and me. For the sake of the firm’s reputation, starting today, I will immediately begin the process of removing Andrea from the firm.]

Seeing his confidence in lying, as if it were second nature, I felt nothing but irony. Maybe even Sean himself had forgotten that once upon a time, he had been a lawyer who despised lies and betrayal above all else.

Back when the law firm had just been established, a client once offered him an outrageous fee of three million dollars to win a divorce case. However, after investigating, Sean discovered that the client was hiding his true intentions. In reality, he wanted to transfer his assets and run away overseas with his mistress.

Without hesitation, Sean dropped the case immediately, fully aware that he would offend the client and risk being blacklisted. It was because when he was young, his father had abandoned him and his mother in the same way, and it had remained a thorn in his side ever since.

Even so, back then, he had apologized to me with red eyes, saying that by dropping the case, he couldn’t give me a better life and that he wasn’t a good husband. Who could have imagined that in just one year since Brittany arrived, he had become the very person he once despised?

Love sure was powerful. It was powerful enough to change someone who once held firm to his principles, to the point where he could turn a blind eye to Brittany slandering me.

Fortunately, as the firm’s top lawyer, I wasn’t someone to be bullied. The next second, I directly uploaded the recording of my phone call with Sean into the group chat.

[Andrea, I told you, the wedding with Brit is just for show… Do you really want to force things into the open? If people find out Brit got pregnant before marriage and was abandoned by some man, they’ll mock her and call her a sl*t. Am I supposed to stand and watch as her parents kill both her and the baby?]

Almost instantly, the once chaotic group chat fell silent. Not a single message appeared. Sean probably never expected that I had recorded our call.

After a brief silence, the mood in the group chat flipped. Many clients began tagging Sean and Brittany, demanding an explanation.

I simply chuckled and exited the group chat. They could clean up their own mess for all I cared.

The next day, I arrived at the court on time, as scheduled, waiting for the divorce hearing. Sean, the defendant, however, never showed up. The court staff called him several times, but no one answered.

Just as the court was about to rule against him for his absence, Sean suddenly called.

As soon as I connected the call as instructed by the staff, Sean’s furious voice exploded from the other end.

“Andrea, have you had enough?” he snapped. “You leaked the call recording in the group chat, and now Brit is being cyberbullied so badly that she’s hospitalized. She almost lost the baby. Is that not enough for you?

“And now you’ve hired someone to pose as a court staff, saying you want to file for divorce? Do you have any idea how Brit feels? When she heard about it, she felt so guilty that she almost jumped off a building to make up for it. Do you have to push her to death before you’re satisfied?”

Listening to his agitated accusations, I finally understood. It wasn’t that he hadn’t received the court’s notice. He had simply assumed the divorce hearing notice was another one of my pranks.

Snapping back to my senses, I immediately shot back, “Brittany deliberately spread rumors about me and framed me, and you said it was my fault. Now that public opinion is turning against her, it’s still my fault? Let me remind you one last time, the hearing is real. If you–”

Before I could finish, he cut me off impatiently. “Enough! Andrea, I don’t have the time to play along with your nonsense. Brit is pregnant and emotionally unstable after all the backlash. She’s not fit to continue working right now. You shall handle her workload later, and tonight, make sure you attend the business dinners. Entertain the clients she’s in charge of.

“As long as you do a good job, I can overlook the jealousy-driven mess you caused before and keep your position at the firm.”

Hearing him issue the order like he was above me, I chuckled. He seemed to have forgotten that Brittany wasn’t the only one being cursed at yesterday. In this line of work, getting scolded by clients or even by the opposing side’s families was nothing unusual.

Back then, I had taken on several criminal defense cases. In one of them, I successfully reduced the defendant’s sentence by two years. The moment I walked out of court after the verdict, the victim’s family poured red paint all over me. They even beat me, calling me inhuman, accusing me of colluding with the criminal. At its worst, someone exposed my personal information online. Even my parents back home were dragged into it and publicly insulted.

At that time, I was so scared that I hid at home, too afraid to even turn on my phone. However, Sean acted as if it were completely normal. Not only did he offer me zero comfort, but he even blamed me for being overly sensitive. He said that since I chose to be a lawyer, I should learn to handle pressure and that emotional resilience was the bare minimum in this profession. If I couldn’t even endure that, I might as well quit and stop wasting time.

What I found ironic was that I had believed his manipulation back then. I thought I just wasn’t strong enough, so I worked myself to the bone with endless overtime. I even forced myself to smile when clients or opposing families insulted me, telling myself to endure it and be strong.

Brittany, on the other hand, had only been exposed in a client group chat and got a few harsh words thrown at her, yet Sean reacted as if the world was ending. Not only did he give her paid leave, but he even expected me to take over all her work.

Worst of all, he clearly knew I had just undergone surgery for a stomach condition caused by overworking and was still in recovery. And yet, he still wanted me to attend drinking engagements on her behalf. There were plenty of male lawyers in the firm, but instead of assigning any of them, he picked me, the one who had just had surgery.

To put it bluntly, he saw me as a convenient tool, so my health and my feelings did not matter. It seemed that when it came to love, people really did have a double standard.

Coming back to my senses, I no longer let his words manipulate me like before. Instead, I refused.

“Sean, I just had surgery, so I can’t drink. Besides, this is Brittany’s job. I have no obligation to take responsibility for it.”

The line fell silent. It was as if he couldn’t believe that I, the obedient workhorse who had always endured everything, would one day defy him.

Very quickly, his anger flared. “Andrea, I’m telling you, not negotiating with you. If I’m paying you a salary, you’re obligated to follow my orders!”

This time, though, I didn’t indulge him at all.

I shot back immediately. “Fine, then I quit. I’m not negotiating either. I’m just telling you.”

Without giving him time to react, I hung up.

After the hearing concluded, and I received the official judgment confirming the dissolution of my marriage with Sean, I immediately dialed an overseas number.

“Mr. Owen,” I said, my voice steady, “I’ll join your company.”