You Forgot I Was A Morgan

For a year, I played the part of the perfect, long-suffering wife, enduring my husband' s public affair. I did it all for one reason: to win full custody of our son, Colton.

But when Colton was arrested, he didn't turn to me for help. He looked at me with disgust and spat that our family's problems were all my fault.

Later that night, my husband, Jackson, demanded I apologize to his mistress. When I refused, he shoved me into the freezing lake.

As I drowned, I saw him and my son comforting her on the dock, a perfect family silhouetted against the moonlight. They were watching me die.

The last of my love for them turned to ash.

They forgot one thing. I wasn't just a housewife. I was a Morgan.

My fingers found the emergency beacon my billionaire father gave me. And I pressed it.

Chapter 1

Hazel POV:

In our circle, the wives had a saying: you can forgive a man for cheating, but you can' t forgive him for being sloppy about it.

It was a bitter little piece of wisdom, usually whispered over glasses of Chardonnay that cost more than most people' s weekly groceries.

For the past year, I had become the living embodiment of that sloppiness. Hazel Morgan, the woman whose husband, tech titan Jackson McKee, wasn' t just having an affair-he was broadcasting it.

I was the subject of their pity. At charity galas, they' d look at me, their eyes lingering on my simple sheath dress and the faint weariness I couldn't seem to hide. They saw a woman left behind, a relic of a past Jackson had outgrown. A quiet, elegant, but worn-down suburban mother. A ghost at the feast of his success.

"Poor Hazel," their sympathetic glances said. "She sacrificed everything for him, and this is her reward."

The men in our circle, the tech bros and venture capitalists who idolized Jackson, saw it differently. They didn't pity me; they held me in a kind of contempt. In their eyes, I was a fool. A doormat.

They saw Jackson with his mistress, Campbell Kirby-a social media influencer whose every breath was a curated image of effortless perfection-and they saw a conqueror. He had it all: the empire, the trophy wife at home, and the shiny new model on his arm. I was just a domestic accessory, a testament to his ability to have his cake and eat it too.

But they were all wrong.

My patience wasn't weakness. It was a strategy. My silence wasn't acceptance. It was a weapon I was sharpening in the dark.

I had endured the public humiliation, the private neglect, and the slow, soul-crushing erasure of my own identity for one reason and one reason only.

Colton.

Our son.

I wanted him. All of him. Not just weekend visits and holidays, but full, unconditional custody. And in our world of cutthroat lawyers and vicious PR battles, a scorned wife fighting a beloved public figure needed to be flawless. A saint. A martyr.

So I played the part. I tolerated the intolerable. I smiled when I wanted to scream. I pretended not to see the tabloid photos, not to hear the whispers, not to feel the shard of ice that was permanently lodged in my chest.

Jackson, of course, mistook my strategy for surrender. He' d grown so accustomed to my compliance that the idea of me fighting back was laughable to him.

I watched him now, his lean, powerful body moving with rhythmic precision on the Peloton bike that sat in the middle of our glass-walled home gym. He was training for another marathon, another public display of his discipline and strength. Sweat glistened on his brow, and his jaw was set in a line of focused determination.

He hadn't spoken a word to me all morning.

I stood in the doorway, my hands clasped in front of me, the picture of docile domesticity.

"Jackson," I said, my voice quiet but clear.

He didn't break his rhythm. "What?"

"We need to talk."

"I'm busy, Hazel."

I took a steadying breath. This was it. The first move in a war he didn't even know had been declared.

"I want a divorce."

The rhythmic whir of the bike faltered for a second, then resumed. He didn't even look at me. The sheer audacity of my statement, the sheer impossibility of it in his worldview, made him treat it as if I'd just commented on the weather.

I almost flinched. The force of my own words surprised me, a tremor running through my hands. For years, the thought of saying them aloud had been a terrifying fantasy. Now that they were out, hanging in the air between us, I felt an unexpected wave of relief wash over me. It was like a lungful of fresh air after years of suffocation.

The whirring of the bike stopped. He swung his leg over, grabbing a towel to wipe his face. He still didn't look at me.

"Did you remember to call the caterer for Saturday?" he asked, his voice dismissive. He was scrolling through his phone now, his thumb flicking impatiently across the screen.

My divorce declaration was less important than party planning.

Just then, his phone buzzed with a notification. A specific buzz. One he' d set for a specific person.

I saw the change instantly. It was a subtle shift, but to me, who had studied his every micro-expression for seventeen years, it was a seismic event. His face softened, the harsh lines around his mouth melting away. A faint, almost tender smile touched his lips.

He angled the phone away from me, but it was too late. I' d seen the name on the screen.

Campbell.

He began typing, his thumbs moving quickly. The smile on his face widened as he read her reply. He was in his own world, a world where I didn't exist.

The shard of ice in my chest twisted. It was one thing to know. It was another to see it, to witness the affection he denied me being given so freely to someone else.

"Jackson," I said again, my voice stronger this time, edged with a steel he hadn't heard in over a decade. "I am divorcing you."

He finally looked up, his eyes filled with annoyance, as if I were a buzzing fly he couldn't swat. He tossed the sweat-drenched towel onto a pristine white bench.

"Don't be ridiculous, Hazel," he sneered, his voice dripping with the casual cruelty that had become his primary language with me. "You're not divorcing me."

He took a step toward me, his six-foot-two frame looming over me, a tactic he used to intimidate. It used to work.

"And what happens to Colton in your little fantasy?" he said, his voice low and threatening. "You think any judge in this state is going to give custody to a broke, unemployed housewife over me? You'll be lucky to see him on Christmas."

He thought that was his trump card. He thought the threat of losing my son would send me scurrying back into my cage.

But as I looked into his cold, arrogant eyes, I realized something with chilling clarity.

I had already lost him.