Introduction

My wife, Sophia Hayes, was beautiful, poised, and utterly detached.

For five years, our marriage had been a bizarre, silent transaction: she'd disappear for days, even weeks, to "support" her childhood sweetheart and his failing tech startup.

Each time she returned, a lavish "guilt offering" would appear – a vintage Patek, a signed first edition, a priceless Ming vase.

Ninety-nine such gifts now filled our sterile mansion, each a screaming monument to her absence and my bitter complicity.

I was no longer the man who' d clung to hope, who' d screamed and shattered expensive crystal.

Today, as she fastened a diamond bracelet, preparing for her hundredth departure, she waved away my feigned concern for our anniversary, prioritizing his celebration.

"I need you to sign this," I said, offering a document I' d subtly placed among her latest "gift."

She signed, carelessly dismissing it as a prenup addendum, already thinking of David.

She didn' t read the fine print. She never did.

"PETITION FOR DISSOLUTION OF MARRIAGE" it read, the final decree awaiting its ironclad confirmation.

The world saw her as a successful patron, supporting a talented founder, but at a glamorous gala, the veil slipped.

A reporter, sensing blood, asked, "Are you two an item?"

Panic flashed in Sophia' s eyes, and in her fear, she sought me out – her hidden husband – to rescue her public image.

I stepped from the shadows, played my part, and then watched as she rushed not to me, but to him, murmuring reassurances.

That night, she didn't come home; the next morning, she arrived, exhausted but triumphant, thanking me for "saving us."

She dismissed my quiet anger as humility, oblivious.

"You asked me to be there, Sophia," I said, watching her carefully curated world unravel.

"I did? When?" she asked, genuinely bewildered.

Her memory, a weapon of convenience, had erased my very existence.

I nodded, utterly calm as she detailed her next trip with David, making another empty promise for "us" once she returned.

That date was the day our divorce would be finalized.

A cold, hard satisfaction settled in my gut; the world she had built was about to come crashing down.

Just not in the way she expected.