After the Divorce, I Became the Billionaire's Lost Heiress

I was in a baby boutique, picking out a gift for my best friend's newborn, when a trending local post stopped my scroll:

My side girl just gave me a son. Every time I sneak her and the baby into the house, I come away smelling like milk, and my wife has a nose like a bloodhound. How do I keep her from catching on?

The comments were nothing but jokes and helpful tips.

I was about to swipe past when I saw the pinned top comment.

"Same boat as you, except mine's juicier. Three months ago my wife's best friend had my daughter. And my wife is childfree, so she doesn't know a thing about the kid. Every time I have my girl over, I order a seafood delivery first, the kind my wife can't stand. She smells the fishy stink, runs to the bathroom to throw up, and that's my window to get the girl out. Even if she does catch a whiff, I just say I've been into milk lately, and she buys it. Never once questioned me."

The replies were all praising his attention to detail.

Even God would have to upvote this one. A flawless cover-up.

I shook my head as I read it.

But when I got home, my phone rang. The delivery driver. "Miss, did you order the fresh seafood? I've left it at your door for you."

...

The words turned me to ice. My mind went white, then blew apart.

I thought of that top comment.

I have always hated seafood. Everyone close to me knows it, and no one knows it better than the husband who has spent years tending to my health.

And my best friend had her baby three months ago too.

It had to be a coincidence.

Probably the driver had the wrong address. Our food always came from an organic farm, delivered by Stuart's assistant.

All of New York knew Stuart Webb loved me down to the bone.

Because I'm childfree, he got a vasectomy to marry me, and swore that for the rest of his life I was all he would ever need.

He even handed my parents a blank signed contract before the wedding, to prove how serious he was.

Now it all felt like a lie. The vasectomy, a lie. And he had a child with someone else.

Three years of marriage. He knew everything about me. He knew I loved blue roses, so he bought an island and planted it edge to edge with them.

Once, an enemy of his kidnapped me and demanded a ransom of a hundred million dollars and that he get down on his knees. He didn't hesitate for a second. He wired the money and bent his knees and begged them not to hurt me.

After he rescued me himself, he ran his thumb over my crooked, mangled fingers, pain in his eyes, then paid those enemies back tenfold and had every one of their fingers cut off.

After that, everyone knew I was the one thing you didn't touch where Stuart Webb was concerned.

He was endlessly patient with me. He even looked after every person close to me.

Would a man like that, a man everyone praised, a man who loved me, sleep with my best friend?

But that post wouldn't let go of the fear and suspicion taking root in me.

I saved the call log and made up my mind fast.

I didn't text Stuart ahead to say I was home.

I wanted to know whether there really was a husband in this house cheating on me with my best friend.

At the front door, I caught myself searching before I even thought about it.

No seafood at the door.

So I let myself in quietly. The bedroom first.

I turned the whole room over, inside and out.

I dragged the closet openonly my clothes hanging there, and Stuart's, nothing that shouldn't be.

I pulled back the covers, ran my eyes over the sheets. Not a thing out of place.

I checked again, and still nothing answered the dread building in me.

The bathroom, the study, the balcony. Empty, all of it.

Just as the confusion was filling me up, the kitchen door opened.

Stuart stood there holding my favorite cake, surprise all over his face.

"Rosalind Carver, what brings you back so early? You said you wanted blueberry cake, didn't you? It just came out of the oven. Have a taste."

He pulled me down beside him, easy and fond, scooped a piece, and lifted it to my mouth.

I looked down at the cake, so tempting, and cursed myself for jumping at shadows.

That cake is a nightmare to make. An hour or two, at least.

Stuart had clearly been at it in the kitchen for ages, all to surprise me.

"I came straight home after I finished buying Luna's gift," I said.

The stone in my chest slowly settled. I bit the cake off the spoon and gave him a thumbs-up.

He nodded and smiled at me, indulgent. "Eat up, then. Dinner's almost ready. Two more dishes."

When he carried the last dish to the table, I saw the plate of garlic oysters.

In that instant the fishy smell hit my nose, nausea climbing into my throat, and I asked in a shaking voice,

"Why are we having seafood tonight?"

Stuart pulled out his phone, a little sheepish, and opened the saved folder on my account. "Babe, I saw you'd bookmarked a few skincare articles the other day. I asked a nutritionist and a dermatologist, and they both said oysters help. I know you don't like seafood, so I prepped them until there wasn't a trace of the smell."

There wasn't a single thing in it I could pick apart.

Stuart was the heir to the most powerful family in all of New York. Every day there were endless files and meetings waiting for him, and still, whenever I was unhappy, he'd push it all aside and come to me.

Sometimes I couldn't stand to slow him down, and I'd tell him not to bother staying with me. He'd only pull me in, wounded, and bury his face against my neck.

"How could work matter more than my wife? Your stomach's bad, so I'll just come home every day and cook for you."

This time was no exception. He remembered every one of my needs, everything I liked, and he cooked for me.

I held back against the smell and didn't bolt right away.

He reached out, worried, and touched my cheek. "Are you not feeling well? I'll throw it out right now."

The moment his hand touched me, I caught it. A faint trace of milk.

But before I could be sure, his phone rang.

The instant he answered, his brows drew tight and his voice went taut.

"I'm coming right now."

He snatched the car keys by the door, urgent.

"Rosalind, something's gone wrong at the company. I have to get back and handle it. I'll make it up to you tonight with your favorite roses."

The moment he stepped out the door, the apartment went still.

The post had rooted itself in my head. My hands clenched the blanket, and the restlessness only sharpened.

Everything about Stuart, the way he acted, the things he said, was the same as always. The same gentleness.

But every little detail kept whispering that something was off.

I swallowed my nausea and went through the cabinet under the coffee table, the bookshelf, even the bathroom trash can.

Everything was normal. Just the traces of the life Stuart and I shared.

Had I really imagined the smell?

I knocked my knuckles against my own head and went to sink into the beanbag chair to rest, and that was when I found something in the crease of the couch.

My hand stopped. Slowly, I drew it out.

A pair of lingerie panties, still stained with a milky fluid, still smelling of milk.

And in the past two months, Stuart and I hadn't touched each other once.

In that moment, a roar went off in my skull.

Cold all over, hands shaking, I pulled out my phone and saw the new update under that top comment.

"Bro, I just used seafood to cover it, and my wife didn't suspect a thing. Works every single time. She didn't catch it last time either. Last time I was even going at it with her best friend right in the bedroom. Such a rush. Right now I'm with my little sweetheart, getting ready for her birthday party tomorrow."

The poster fired back instantly: "Bro, I've already got the seafood ready. You eat good, man! Got any pics of you two going at it?"

The top comment didn't write back. He just dropped a photo below it.

Two hands in the picture, fingers laced together. I knew Stuart's hand at a glance. And on the woman's hand was a distinctive red string, a charm for safety.

It was the one I'd prayed for, to keep Luna safe through her delivery.

So it was true. Stuart had been sleeping with Luna my best friend. And there was a child. He'd told me the vasectomy was done, that he only ever wanted me, and every word of it had been a lie. He'd brought her into our bed, into the home we built, and left the two of them smeared into every corner of it.

My chest caved in on itself. I couldn't get a full breath past the tears, only short, shredded ones that scraped going down.

Stuart remembered that I loved roses, remembered my favorite cake, remembered to cook for me, remembered to come home and give me a kiss.

He remembered all of it. He'd only forgotten the one promise that ever mattered.

When someone betrays you, the other person leaves forever.

A bitter little smile pulled at my mouth.

Stuart could love me down to the bone and still bring Luna home to tangle in our sheets, could love me and still have a child with her.

I sat there working my fingers together, helpless, desperate to know one thing. When did they start.

Had every bit of love he'd shown me been an act?

He came home every night to cook for me. The moment something went wrong in my life, he dropped everything to be at my side. That love, given without a single thing held back. How much of it had belonged to Luna all along?

My arms had gone numb. I sat on the couch and said nothing.

That night, my tears soaked into the cushions. I sent the lingerie from the bedroom to a testing lab to find out what the fluid on it was.

The next morning, something occurred to me.

I grabbed the car keys off the nightstand, a fire of urgency burning in my chest.

I drove faster than I should have, and before I knew it I was pulling up outside my parents' house.

"Rosalind? What brings you home today? Stuart didn't come with you?"

My mother stepped forward, folded me into her arms, and drew me inside the house, her voice full of shock.

And in that moment everything I'd buried came pouring out. I pressed my face into her shoulder and told her, muffled, that Stuart had cheated on me.

"Rosalind, could you have read it wrong?"

My father sat on the couch, two reports still in his hands.

"How could I read it wrong? The post mentions seafood, and seafood shows up at my house. How is that wrong?"

"This is exactly what men are. Restless, never satisfied. And that tramp out there has a child with him now."

"I thought Stuart would be the one who was different. I never imagined he'd give in and stray. The promises he made back then. That he cherished me, respected me, that we never needed children. Three years, that's all, and now he's out there chasing a thrill." My mother stroked my back, aching for me, and spat the words out in fury.

My father set down the reports and frowned. "Everyone knows Stuart loves Rosalind more than anything. To win her hand he took the family's punishment without flinching and ended up with a ruined leg, a limp for life."

"So what? A bad leg didn't stop him from cheating. I'm telling you, a man like that knows how to put on a show. Maybe all that devotion at the start was acting too." My mother shot back, glaring at him.

I lifted a hand and wiped my eyes, but my head was full of doubt.

It was just as everyone said.

All these years, Stuart had spoiled me to the skies, treated me like something he was afraid to lose.

He was the Webb heir, the man half the young women in New York dreamed about.

The night before our wedding, the Mitchell daughter, from one of the most powerful families in New York, had me kidnapped. She locked me in a warehouse soaked with gasoline, trying to force him to marry her instead.

Stuart turned her down flat. He pinned her down, put a knife to her throat, and demanded she tell him where I was.

But it was already too late. By the time he got there, the flames were roaring up all around me.

He didn't hesitate, not for a second. He charged into the fire, through the smoke and the falling beams, and dragged me out with everything he had.

His back was nothing but burns afterward. Three broken ribs.

And yet all he did was grip my hand, shaken to his core, his warm tears falling on my shoulder.

"Rosalind, I can't lose you. Only when you're here can I feel my own heart beating."

I'd seen him give himself to me completely. That was why none of this made sense.

Was it really because I wanted a childfree life?

What did Luna have that moved him, that turned his heart?

The next instant my phone started buzzing wildly.

I put it on speaker. Stuart's cold voice came through. "Rosalind, where have you hidden Luna?"

"What are you talking about? I have no idea where she is!"

I frowned, a mocking smile tugging at the corner of my mouth.

"Rosalind! How jealous can you possibly be? You'd believe some baseless garbage off the internet! Where is she?"

My father suddenly clutched his chest and crumpled to the floor, his lips moving.

"Luna? Luna's... gone?"

My mother and I rushed him to the hospital, but not a single doctor there would step forward to treat him.

"Rosalind, the moment Luna comes back is the moment your father gets his surgery."

Stuart's icy voice echoed against my ear through the phone.

"Stuart, the Webbs prize their name above everything. If word gets out that you cheated and left your own father-in-law to suffer like this, you know exactly what that brings down on you."

"The doctors can resuscitate him. But your father wakes up the moment Luna turns up, not before."

After I hung up, my mother had already dissolved into tears.

"Didn't you hear him? Get over here and save him, now!"

Doctors swarmed in and started CPR on my father.

"There's no time, Mom. We'll go bring her back, and we'll get the affair on camera while we're at it."

I yanked my phone open, pulled up Luna's social account to find her location, then opened a car-tracking app.

Back when the Webbs were under siege from their enemies, I lived in fear every single day, terrified the man I loved most would die under someone else's gun.

To put me at ease, Stuart installed a real-time car-tracking app on my phone.

After that, I used it to pull him out of his enemies' hands more times than I could count.

I'd always thought of it as proof of everything we'd survived together.

I never imagined it would become the tool that ended our marriage for good.

I let out a hollow laugh and looked down at the little green icon crawling across the map.

"That's Stuart's location? Isn't that Rose Island, where the two of you spent your honeymoon?"

I nodded and turned to tell the housekeeper to have the private jet ready.

My mother watched the icon come to a stop, and without a word she dragged me straight onto the plane.

"Stuart has ruined this family, and now he actually has the nerve to go off cheating!"

Just before takeoff, the housekeeper handed two reports to my mother.

"Mrs. Carver, these are the reports your husband left behind."

She snatched them and threw up a hand, urgent. "Understood. Take off now."

Her fingers clamped around the papers, her eyes full of worry and fury.

"I really thought Stuart was a good man. And look at him now. Cheating with your best friend, and on top of that, putting your father in a hospital bed."

"How can anyone be so heartless? He's your father's son-in-law! And he won't even let your father go in for surgery!"

"My poor girl. How can he cling to your side swearing he loves you while he can't keep his hands off another woman? I'll make sure those two lose every shred of face and get out of New York for good!"

Tears slid from her eyes, her cheeks flushed red with rage.

My parents had never wanted me to marry him. They thought the Webbs were too far above us, and they were afraid I'd suffer for it.

But to bring me into the family, Stuart took ninety-nine lashes, the whole punishment, before the family elders and my parents finally gave their consent.

I still remember that day, the way he pulled me into his arms covered in blood, grinning through clenched teeth, murmuring the same thing over and over.

"I finally get to marry my Rosalind."

I lifted my arms and held her tight, saying nothing.

When my mother had cried herself out against me, she sniffled and started reading those two reports.

Then her brow tightened, the color went out of her face, and she fell silent.

The flight took forty minutes before we reached the island where Stuart was.

The moment I stepped off the plane, I spotted his flashy sports car parked beside the island villa.

Saying nothing, I grabbed my mother's hand and rushed toward it.

I was too fixed on reaching that villa to notice the change creeping over her face after she'd finished the reports and seen the place for herself.

Her hand shot out and caught my arm, stopping me before I could go any farther.

"Rosalind, are you sure Luna Pruitt is here?"

I looked up at her panicked face, and something inside me said this was wrong.

"Mom, you saw it yourself. Her social media location matches this place exactly."

The reports were still in her hands. Her fingers trembled, and she forced an ugly smile onto her face.

"Rosalind, let's go back. Your father's still waiting for us. Let's just call the police and have them make the arrest, all right?"

I frowned at her, confusion thick in my chest.

"Mom, the only way to save Dad is to find Luna. A minute ago you were saying you'd tear that worthless man and that little tramp apart. We're almost there, so why do you want me to turn around now?"

Her tears dripped to the ground, frantic, and then she suddenly screamed.

"Rosalind! Come home with Mom, and Mom will still claim you as her daughter!"

"Mom really loves you. Everything I do is for your sake."

I didn't understand.

Why my mother had ached for me on that plane, had hurt for me, had wanted to fight for me, and then, the instant she finished those reports and saw this villa, suddenly started trying to hold me back.

Was it because of those two reports?

Or because of this villa?

Or because of some secret about the woman waiting inside?

The curiosity surged in me until I pressed my lips together and opened the villa door with my fingerprint.

"Beep!"

The door swung open at the sound, and there on the sofa was Stuart, bent over, kissing a woman.

And when I saw her face clearly, and the birthmark on her neck, my eyes went wide, and it was as if I understood everything.