2: 2

2

The room went so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

I stared at Beryl Matthews's belly and said nothing for a long time.

Glen James stepped out from behind her, holding up a pregnancy test result.

"Mr. Gilbert, don't go scaring Beryl."

"She's carrying my child."

"If anything happens to the baby's father, it'll break her heart."

Beryl didn't argue.

She even turned and warned Glen to stay well away from those cups of bubble tea, in case he touched something he shouldn't.

Only after she was sure he wouldn't get hurt did she turn back to me.

Her tone was calm, as if she were discussing some business deal that had nothing to do with her.

"That time I went with you for your follow-up, Glen was waiting for me at the hospital."

"He insisted on making a bet with me. Whether you'd notice us kissing in the stairwell."

"One thing led to another, and we crossed a line."

"The baby was an accident. But since it's here, I'm keeping it."

She walked up to me and smoothed down the collar the wind had blown open.

The gesture was as gentle as it had always been.

But the words out of her mouth made me, for the first time, not recognize her.

"Barret, we both grew up in this world."

"Marriage and love were always two separate things."

"When a man keeps someone on the side, they call it charm. Why can't a woman have someone to pass the time with?"

"You were raised from childhood to be the Gilbert heir. You should know when it's worth making a scene and when to leave each other some dignity."

I looked at her, and suddenly I remembered something from many years ago.

The thing Beryl Matthews hated most was that so-called high-society dignity.

Her mother had a rotation of different men at her side, year after year.

Stewart Matthews kept the title of husband and ran his wife's company for her, and when he finally fell gravely ill and was hospitalized, Sara Matthews was abroad watching a fashion show with some young man.

The day Stewart Matthews died, nineteen-year-old Beryl Matthews stood outside the hospital room all night long.

The next day, she took my hand and said,

"Barret, I will never become someone like my mother."

At twenty-three, the Matthews family picked out a suitable match for her, a marriage of equals.

But she called off the engagement in front of the elders of both families, took my hand, and walked out of the old Matthews mansion.

Behind her, dozens of elders roared their condemnation, and a whole row of black luxury cars sat parked in the courtyard.

She didn't even turn her head.

That night, the Matthews family cut off her cards and took back the property and the position in her name.

I was the one who brought her home to the Gilbert penthouse.

Through the two hardest years of building her company, I courted clients for her, found investors, and stayed up night after night with her in the conference room.

When her stomach condition flared up, I turned down an overseas project and cooked for her with my own hands for half a year.

When the Matthews Group's cash flow snapped, I put up every liquid dollar my own company had, and then talked the Gilbert family into covering the rest.

When an enemy hired someone to hunt her down, I was the one who took the knife for her, and I've been down a kidney ever since.

Later, in the Gilbert family chapel, in front of all the elders, she signed a fidelity agreement.

The terms were spelled out plainly.

If she ever betrayed me during the marriage,

her Matthews shares, the fund in her name, and all her overseas assets would transfer to me.

Everyone told her not to sign it back then.

But Beryl Matthews handed me the pen, smiling, bold and certain.

"Sign it."

"It's not like I'll ever give you the chance to use it in this lifetime."

And I actually believed her.

So when she wanted funds, I gave her funds.

When she wanted the Gilbert family's voting rights, I put those voting rights in her hands.

The day she secured her seat as chairwoman of the Matthews Group, she told every reporter present,

"Everything I have now, Barret Gilbert gave me."

"In this life, I will only ever have one husband."

Now, she still has everything I gave her.

And she's finally become the very thing she hated most.

3: 3

3

When I stayed silent, Beryl assumed I had finally accepted reality.

Her voice softened.

"Once the baby is born, I'll set Glen up with a place of his own and some money."

"He won't move in with us, and he won't touch your standing."

"To the outside world, you'll still be the only husband I acknowledge."

Glen leaned against the desk, idly spinning his car keys.

"Mr. Gilbert, Beryl still can't do without you."

"I'm content just having her keep me company now and then."

His words gave ground, but his eyes were pure victor's provocation.

In their eyes, I suppose.

I was meant to be like Stewart all those years ago, swallowing every humiliation for the sake of appearances.

I let out a short laugh and called toward the door.

"Send the lawyers in."

A dozen or so lawyers filed into the room.

Marlin Dickerson, at the front, laid the documents in front of Beryl.

"Ms. Matthews."

"Mr. James's statement and the pregnancy report are more than enough to prove you breached the fidelity agreement."

"As of now, your forty-one percent stake in Matthews Group will be taken over by Mr. Gilbert."

"And the Gilbert family's financial support to Matthews Group is formally terminated."

Beryl's phone rang at once.

Even from where I stood, I could hear Sara screaming through the line.

"Beryl, what have you done?"

"The Gilberts pulled their funding out of nowhere, and the bank is already demanding repayment!"

"The board wants you suspended from every position!"

She gripped the phone, the color draining from her face bit by bit.

"Barret, we've been together all these years."

"You'd really destroy everything I have over one joke?"

I looked at her, and it struck me as absurd.

"Beryl, don't you like keeping someone around for amusement?"

"I'm leaving Glen with you."

"As for the house, the shares, and every last cent you used to keep him."

I slipped the villa keys from her hand.

"They're all mine."

"From today, I won't leave you a single one."

I turned and walked out.

Behind me, for the first time, Beryl dropped her pride and called my name in a rush.

I didn't look back.

At the door, I only said to Glen,

"Congratulations."

"This woman, who has nothing left, is completely yours now."

I had barely taken a step when Marlin suddenly stopped me.

"Mr. Gilbert, wait."

His tone was graver than I had ever heard it.

"We just pulled the marriage registration records."

"There is no record of any marriage between you and Ms. Matthews."

My steps froze.

Marlin glanced at Beryl.

"The marriage certificate you're holding is fake."

"Ms. Matthews's legal husband, from the very beginning, has been Glen James."

The disgrace vanished from Glen's face in an instant.

He drew two marriage certificates from a drawer and slowly opened them.

"Mr. Gilbert, you didn't really think I was just some man Beryl kept on the side, did you?"

"The other man, the one who couldn't see the light, was you all along."

4: 4

4

I stared at the date on the marriage certificate.

Three years ago, September twenty-sixth.

The exact same day I'd gotten my own.

That day, walking out of the registration office, I lost my composure in front of Beryl Matthews for the first time.

She wiped the sweat from my temple and smiled.

"Barret, from today on, we're a real family."

But it turned out everything about that day was fake.

Glen James opened the certificate, the smugness in his voice impossible to hide.

"That day, I made a bet with Beryl too."

"I bet that since you trusted her so much, you wouldn't spot that the clerk was a fake, wouldn't notice there was no real embossed seal on the papers."

"If you caught it, I'd leave her for good."

"If you didn't, she'd come with me to the real county records office and register."

He tapped the photo with a finger.

"And sure enough, you didn't catch it."

"After you went home clutching that fake certificate, Beryl came to pick me up."

"We made it before the office closed and got the real one."

I looked at Beryl Matthews.

"Is that true?"

She avoided my eyes.

"It was just a bet."

"I never meant to keep it from you this long."

Just a bet.

She lost, so she handed the role of husband, the one that should have been mine, over to Glen James.

And because I trusted her too much, I'd spent three whole years living inside a forged marriage.

Glen James added, smiling.

"Beryl said something else that day. That you're easy to fool."

"Just give you a hug, a few soft words, and you won't check anything too closely."

"Mr. Gilbert, you lost for three years and never even knew it."

"And now you still think you can take the Matthews shares with a fidelity agreement? Doesn't that strike you as funny?"

Lawyer Dickerson flipped the agreement open fast, his face darkening.

The first clause said it plainly.

The agreement takes effect from the day both parties are lawfully registered as married.

But Beryl Matthews and I had never been lawfully married.

So whether she registered with Glen James, whether she carried his child.

The agreement would never be triggered.

That forty-one percent stake, I couldn't touch a single share of it.

Beryl Matthews finally lifted her head again.

She smoothed her sleeve, and the certainty of the old Matthews Group chairwoman came back into her eyes.

"Barret, it's not too late to pull back."

"Restore the Gilbert funding. Withdraw the pressure on the board."

"And I can overlook the fact that you broke in tonight with a knife."

"From now on you move into that estate on the West Side, keep doing your design and your investments."

"As long as you behave, I won't let anyone look down on you."

I looked at her.

"And if I don't agree?"

Footsteps came from outside, even and measured.

Several officers walked in.

Glen James immediately pointed at the knife on the floor and the hair it had cut loose.

"Officers, it's him."

"He broke into my home with over a hundred people, held a knife to my face, and forced me to drink bubble tea that had been drugged."

"My wife is pregnant."

"He wants my whole family dead."

Beryl Matthews moved to stand beside Glen James.

"Officer, Barret Gilbert has been emotionally unstable lately."

"Causing a scene at the mall wasn't enough. Now he's brought people to our door at night."

"I'm afraid he'll hurt my husband and my child."

Husband.

She could finally call Glen James that out in the open.

The officers looked at the knife in my hand, then at the room full of bodyguards.

"Mr. Gilbert, please come with us and cooperate with the investigation."