In the tenth year of my split-bill marriage into the Sanchez fortune, I still hadn't sobered up from love—but William Sanchez's payment QR code was already shoved in my face.

"Tonight's condom. Venmo me your half."

I hadn't even had time to get dressed before I opened my phone. My balance: thirty dollars.

"I don't get paid until tomorrow," I said, voice small. "Can I send it then?"

William just looked at me with that smile of his. "That million you took when you betrayed me ten years ago—spent it all already?" He tilted his head. "You don't have to pay, of course. Just think of yourself as a hooker. We go another round, and I'll waive the fee."

My lashes dropped. I said nothing, scanned the code, and transferred the money. Only then did he get up and head for the shower.

What actually happened ten years ago was a blank in my memory.

When I woke up in the hospital, everyone told me the same story: that I'd eloped with William, couldn't handle the hardship, begged his mother Mary Sanchez for a million dollars, and agreed to disappear.

A few fragments flickered through my mind, and my skull split with pain—

William's phone buzzed on the nightstand.

Something possessed me to pick it up.

His secretary had sent several photos. Lingerie shots. Skin on display.

"Mr. Sanchez, when are you going to divorce the old hag?"

My hands trembled as I scrolled through their messages, punishing myself with every word. Conversations. Flirting. Dates. Locations.

Tears dried on my cheeks and fell again, dried and fell, over and over.

Finally, I typed a reply from his phone: "Tomorrow."

——

At two in the morning, I crept out of bed without a sound.

It was time to go clean the toilets at Sanchez Tower.

Ten years ago, I'd agreed to a split-bill marriage with William, but the cost of living among the ultra-wealthy was beyond anything I could have imagined. Even if I ate nothing but plain noodles in tap water, just breathing inside that mansion cost a fortune—monthly maintenance fees alone were astronomical.

Mary Sanchez had been generous enough to arrange a job for me: janitor for every restroom in the Sanchez Group building.

I knew it was meant to humiliate me. I took it anyway.

Because where else was I going to find a job that paid fifty thousand a month—enough to afford the price of staying by William's side?

But starting tomorrow, I wouldn't need it anymore.

The cleaning chemicals were especially harsh today. My eyes burned red, again and again.

It was nine in the morning by the time I finished scrubbing every restroom in the building, top to bottom.

That was Mary's requirement.

She'd looked at my smooth, unblemished hands that day and smiled. "Pamela Bishop, dear, every restroom in the building needs to be spotless before the staff arrive. You can manage that, can't you?"

I'd gritted my teeth and agreed. Even though those hands had once been made for painting.

Exhausted down to the bone, I curled up in the utility closet behind the last restroom to rest.

BANG BANG BANG—

The pounding on the door nearly stopped my heart.

I opened it. Vivian Lawson stood outside in a crisp designer suit, William's secretary, looking down at me like I was something stuck to her shoe.

"Mrs. Sanchez! So this is where you've been hiding to slack off." Her tone was perfectly polite. Her eyes were not. They slid over my cleaning uniform like a blade. "The second stall in the women's room is clogged. Would you mind taking care of it?"

My fists clenched at my sides, nails biting into my palms hard enough to draw blood. I didn't feel it.

In the end, I pulled on my mask and gave a numb nod.

When I reached for the long-handled pliers, Vivian raised a hand to stop me.

"Mrs. Sanchez, the company just replaced all the toilets. Each one is a fifteen-thousand-dollar smart toilet. Tools like that could damage them."

I frowned. "Then what do you want me to do?"

"I'm sure you'll figure something out. Just... no tools."

The implication couldn't have been more obvious.

I knew that if I didn't do what she wanted, she'd never let it go.

My paycheck hadn't come through yet. I didn't want trouble.

I dropped to my knees mechanically. My stomach lurched—whether from the smell or the humiliation, I couldn't tell. Acid climbed up my throat.

Tears slipped silently down her cheeks, absorbed by the mask before anyone could see.

Under Vivian's amused gaze, Pamela got to work.

As she pulled the obstruction from the toilet, she heard the click of a camera shutter behind her. Several times.

"Mrs. Sanchez, I just posted your hard work to the company group chat! Your fearless dedication to the job is truly an inspiration to us all!"

Vivian beamed at her.

Pamela didn't hear a word of it. She just stared at the thing in her hand. A pair of sheer purple panties.

The same ones from the photo Vivian had sent last night.

Vivian's brows pinched together in mock embarrassment. "Oh my, how did those end up in here? It must have been that day with Mr. Sanchez..."

Her cheeks flushed with theatrical indignation. "I'm heading to his office later for a work briefing, and he still wants to see me in them!"

"Mrs. Sanchez, would you be a dear and run an errand for me? There's an unmanned shop a few blocks down. Pick me up a new pair?"

She pulled a wad of bills from her pocket and shoved them into Pamela's hand before she could refuse.

Walking from the restroom to the front entrance of the tower, every person Pamela passed recoiled from her like she carried the plague.

Those who brushed by her covered their noses and snickered. She caught a whispered remark: "Gold diggers really go all in these days."

On the walk back to Sanchez Tower with the purchase, Pamela pressed a hand to her chest, over the numb ache there. What exactly did I dig up?

Ten years of marriage had left her with a bank balance of zero and a lover who had never loved her back.

Her phone chimed with a deposit notification. Her paycheck. The last bit of strength drained from her body.

Ten years hadn't been enough to grind down her pride or her feelings. But in that single moment, both evaporated into nothing.

She carried the underwear along with two documents she'd prepared and walked toward William's office.

One was a resignation letter. The other was a divorce agreement.

Before pushing open the door, she glanced at the secretary's desk outside his office. Empty.

William looked up when she entered. A telltale flush colored his face.

"What are you doing in here?" His voice was hoarse, his tone strained with something barely held in check.

Ten years ago, he had spoken to her in that same low register, soft and tender. Pamela.

"Pamela?" he called.

The ice in his voice snapped her back to the present. She set everything on his desk.

"Your secretary asked me to buy her underwear. She said you needed them urgently."

William arched a brow and scoffed. "You'll really swallow anything to keep the Sanchez name, won't you?"

"This is my resignation letter."

Surprise flickered across his face. The cutting remark forming on his lips died before it landed.

Because she continued, her voice perfectly level: "The other one is our divorce agreement."

William's expression sharpened in an instant, cold and scrutinizing.

His fingers clamped down on the leather armrests of his chair. He drew several deep breaths before he trusted himself to speak, and even then his expression was far from pleasant.

"Playing hard to get doesn't work on me, Pamela."

If she hadn't known exactly who was crouched beneath his wide executive desk at that very moment, she might have actually believed he was asking her to stay.

"Mr. Sanchez, I'm tired."

"Tired?" William laughed. His handsome features held no trace of warmth. "Pamela, you couldn't bring yourself to leave the Sanchez family's lap of luxury for ten years. What changed today? Or have you already latched onto some other rich man with that body of yours?"

"Don't think for a second I'll go soft."

Every word was a blade, sinking into her chest one after another.

He picked up her divorce agreement between two fingers, gave it a careless glance, then flicked it into the air.

The pages drifted to the floor, weightless. Just like her dignity. Just like her heart.

His thin lips moved, and what came out was vicious and vile.

"I don't agree to a divorce. I'm not done with you yet, Pamela."

"Ss—!" The words had barely left his mouth when William winced and hissed in pain.

His little mistress, apparently unhappy that he'd refused the divorce, was throwing a tantrum under his desk.

I laughed at myself bitterly. But after that hollow laugh faded, ten years of buried grievances came surging to the surface like a tide that could no longer be held back.

I tried to speak calmly, to hold on to whatever shred of dignity I had left. But when I opened my mouth, my voice came out trembling, cracked with tears. "William, I'm begging you... just let me go."

The color drained from his face. His whole body seemed to lose its strength, and he fell back hard against his chair.

When he spoke, his voice was thick with barely contained fury. "Being with me makes you that miserable?"

"Please, just let me go. I don't want anything anymore..."

The title of Mrs. Sanchez? I didn't want it.

William, and everything we'd once had together? I didn't want any of it.

Even the reason I'd taken that million dollars and left him all those years ago, I no longer cared to dig into.

That memory, that love. The moment I discovered his affair, none of it mattered anymore.

The light in William's eyes dimmed, going dark as stagnant water.

"On what grounds?" Every word ground out through clenched teeth. "It's always been you. You come when you want, you leave when you want. Have you ever, for one single second, considered how I feel?"

He hated me. Every syllable dripped with it.

"When my family disapproved, I eloped with you. When the Sanchezes blacklisted me and I couldn't find work anywhere, I hauled bricks at construction sites just so you could paint in your studio with clean hands and a clear conscience." His jaw tightened. "And what did you do?"

William laughed. Without warning, his eyes went red.

"You played me for a fool. One day you told me we'd be together forever. The next, you went to my mother and took a million dollars to run off to Northgate."

"In your heart... I was only ever worth a million dollars."

Northgate.

A dark basement. A sickening, clammy sensation flashed through my mind.

I forced the nausea down and smiled bitterly. "I've already given you ten years to make up for it, Mr. Sanchez. Isn't that enough?"

William opened his mouth to say something else, but the door swung open and someone walked in.

He reined in his expression instantly. The visitor was Piers Rodriguez, a key partner of Sanchez Group.

"Mr. Sanchez, your secretary wasn't at her desk, so I let myself in." Piers smiled politely.

William let out a low grunt through his nose. All he could do was press his curled index finger against his lips and bite down.

The argument with me had already drained him. He was teetering on the edge of an explosion.

Piers glanced at me and clearly assumed I was just a cleaner. He pulled a contract from his briefcase without a second thought.

"About the proposal from last time, Mr. Sanchez. We're very pleased with it. I came today specifically to sign."

He stepped forward with the contract, but William raised a hand and growled, "Stop."

Piers froze mid-step, a flicker of displeasure crossing his brow.

William recovered quickly. "I think the proposal could still be refined. Give me a moment to gather the team for a meeting."

Piers chuckled. "Always thorough, Mr. Sanchez. Well then, why don't I just call everyone up to your office right now?"

Before William could object, Piers was already ignoring the strained look on his face, firing off messages in the project group chat to summon people for the meeting.

Office workers moved fast. Even though William's office sat on the top floor of the building, everyone filed in within a minute.

They all stood there, eyes fixed on William, waiting to hear what needed to be changed.

William's entire body was coiled tight. He suppressed every raw, primal urge clawing at him and launched into a measured, point-by-point discussion with the group.

I pulled out a rag and pretended to clean, working my way from the front of the desk around to the display cabinet behind it.

That was when my eyes met Vivian's under the desk. She glared at me, her gaze seething with hatred.

I reached into my bag and pulled out the purple underwear I'd fished from the toilet that morning. Without a moment's hesitation, I tossed it right onto her.

The fabric was still damp, still smeared with filth. The instant it touched her skin, Vivian let out a shriek of pure revulsion and scrambled out from under the desk.

Just like that, disheveled and half-undressed, she stood face to face with every single person in the room.

And because two companies were involved, there was a live video conference running too.