He Framed Me to Save His Mistress,Until I Exposed Everything on Live TV

Before the wedding could begin, the groom, Clive Sanchez, was hauled away for questioning. He'd raped his widowed sister-in-law.

I gathered up my wedding gown and rushed after him, desperate to explain, but he stopped me.

I turned myself in.

Jade's pregnant. Mom and Dad still hate her for running off with my brother, and they won't accept the child. Her family went to the police to force the Sanchezs' hand.

"I have to marry her. It's the only way to protect my brother's child, and to keep people from talking about them."

He took out the wedding ring and slid it onto my finger.

"You'll have to bear with being my mistress for a little while. Wait nineteen years for me. Once the child is grown, I'll come back to you."

He couldn't stand to see them whispered about, yet he could stand to see me branded the other woman.

Nineteen years. He said it as lightly as nineteen minutes.

"The wedding physical came back. You're pregnant. It's bad timing, so I've arranged the abortion. You'll go right after the ceremony."

The ache in my chest went cold all at once.

In that moment, I came fully awake.

The police car pulled away and disappeared. I worked the ring off my finger, dropped it on the ground, and ground my heel into it.

You thought you could bind me with this. Clive Sanchez, you think far too much of yourself.

I made two calls.

The first to my assistant: halt every deal with the Sanchezs. Without my backing, the company would seize up in no time, and Clive would lose everything.

The second to the housekeeper, going down the list of everything in the house that held a memory.

The wall art Clive and I had painted together. The matching pajamas we'd picked out. The couple dolls we'd made in each other's likeness

At my word, all of it went into the fire.

Watching the flames churn on the screen, I went on. "Pack up Clive's and Jade Jennings's things. Send them back to the Sanchez estate."

I paused, then added, "Leave the throw."

Two months ago, Jade had come back with news of Clive's older brother's death. The Sanchezs wouldn't take her in, her own parents wanted nothing to do with her, and when she had nowhere left to go, I was the one who took her in and let her stay in the wedding home that was in my name.

If Clive meant to marry her, I'd see to it the family welcomed them properly.

"Yesterday, Miss Jennings had morning sickness" The housekeeper faltered. "Mr. Sanchez used the throw to clean her up, and then he threw it out"

A sharp pain drove straight through my chest, and my breath caught.

That blanket. I'd stayed up a whole month of nights knitting it by hand.

Clive's skin took offense to so much. Leave him too long against the wrong fabric and it would turn red and itch, until even his chest went tight on him. And of course he loved to curl up on the couch to work. So I'd knitted him a throw, stitch by stitch, soft enough that it would never touch him wrong.

It was the first thing I'd ever learned to knit. Every mistake, I unraveled and started over. Dozens of times. By the time it was finally done, something in my wrist had given out for good, and it still catches me without warning, a pain that bites all the way to the bone.

Clive used to massage my wrist, pained for me, and he'd wash that throw by hand himself, like it mattered.

And now he'd used it to wipe up Jade's vomit and thrown it away like trash. Not a shred of regret.

I laughed at myself and pushed past the swarm of needling pain in my chest. "Never mind."

"There's a pendant under my pillow. Set it aside somewhere safe for me. I'm coming back for it now."

But the housekeeper went quiet for a moment, and when she spoke her voice was tighter still. "Last night, while you stayed at the old estate, I saw Mr. Sanchez take that pendant into Miss Jennings's room. She wore it out today"

My mind went white. I hung up and called Clive instead.

Once. Twice. Three times

On the ninety-ninth ring, he finally picked up.

His voice was low, gentle, and unable to hide how little he cared. "I'm filing the marriage paperwork with Jade. Be good, hm? The sooner I wrap things up here, the sooner I'll have time for you."

My fingertips had gone numb with panic. "You took my pendant?"

"That's what this is about?" His patience snapped, then strained back into softness. "Didn't you say the thing was supposed to calm the nerves? Jade can't sleep, so I gave it to her. Your pendant finally getting some use. So you didn't pray for it for nothing, right?"

That easy, entitled tone. As if taking what was mine and handing it to his new wife were the most natural thing in the world. As if I ought to feel honored.

"Don't go bothering Jade over it. I'll buy you ten to make up for it"

"Who would want them!" I finally broke, the words tearing out of me. "That was my mother's. She prayed for it for me when she was already dying!"

"You took something of mine and gave it to Jade Jennings without my permission. Clive Sanchez, that's stealing!"

"Why do you have to be so cruel about it?" Clive paused. "You only want the pendant because you're going through with the abortion, don't you?"

There was a sneer buried in his voice. "It's a minor procedure. Do you really need it for that?"

When Jade so much as slept badly, he treated it like a crisis and stole the one thing that mattered most to me.

But the procedure that would kill our child wasn't even worth a second thought to him.

The cold swept through me. I closed my eyes, hung up without another word, and drove straight for the county clerk's office.

On the way, Clive called.

I didn't pick up. A text came through instead.

That was me failing to understand how nervous you are before the procedure. I'm sorry. You'll get the pendant back. Just answer the phone first, Millie.

The phone buzzed again. I let it connect, and his voice came through at once.

"I ran into someone I know while I was at the office just now. Our wedding fell through today, and I'm worried people will start talking about Jade. I need you to step in and set the record straight."

"Just tell them Jade and I used to be together, that you schemed your way between us and that's why we broke up, and now you've come to your senses and want to admit publicly that you were the other woman. Apologize to Jade in front of everyone."

"You don't have to worry about people calling me a cheater over it. I can take a little heatthat's nothing to me. But I will not let Jade suffer for this."

"Do this right, and once the child is grown, I'll give you the pendant back."

I gripped the wheel, and suddenly I was laughing.

Laughing until the tears ran down.

He'd kept Jade wrapped up and untouchable, convinced that taking a few harmless insults made him some kind of martyr.

And I, the one actually wronged, the one only trying to take back what was mine, was supposed to be shoved out front to carry a crime I never committed and stand there while the whole world spat on me.

And he didn't care at all.

I said nothing. I just hung up.

When I reached the clerk's office, I caught Clive's car pulling away, and I went straight after it.

I followed it all the way to an upscale restaurant, where I watched with my own eyes as Clive climbed out of the driver's seat and opened the passenger door.

A foot reached out of the car, and he dropped to one knee, taking that slender ankle in his hand, carefully tying the loosened lace, brushing the dust from the toe of her shoe, and only then easing Jade gently out.

The sight went into me like a knife, and my eyes were wet before I could stop them.

In the Sanchez family's worst days, an investor had humiliated him on purpose, sticking out a foot as he stepped from his car and ordering him to shine his shoes.

"What I do to Millicent Maddox is none of your business, you're hired help. Understood?"

That became the deepest scar he carried. After that, he never bent for anyone again.

Once I'd only asked him to tuck a blanket over my mother's legs while she sat in her wheelchair, and he'd flown into a rage, with no thought for my embarrassment or how it made my mother feel.

Even that had made me ache for him. After that, every morning before we left the house, I knelt and shined his shoes, slipped them onto his feet myself.

I had guarded that wound so carefully. And now what I was watching slapped it all back in my face.

I got out of the car and walked toward them, one step at a time.

"Clive."

His head snapped around, his eyes darting away, his face caught between awkwardness and panic, and still he moved on instinct to shield Jade behind him.

"Millie, why are you here?"

The moment Jade saw me, her eyes went red. "It's all my fault! I'm the one who wronged you. Don't blame Clive, blame me"

Her little performance was all it took to set him off.

The flinching dropped away. He shoved me, hard.

"That's enough, Millicent! I already apologized, what more do you want? Just because you can't have a child of your own, you'd force Jade to die with my Sanchez blood inside her?"

"I forced her?" I looked straight at Clive. "When her parents and your family had backed her into a corner, I was the one who took her in!"

"If you wanted to keep her and the baby, you could have sent her abroad. Instead you'd rather burn down our wedding than not marry her. Is the child even yours?"

The slap landed hard across my face.

Clive's expression went black. "You knew Mom and Dad didn't like Jade, and you took her in on purpose so they'd unload all their anger on her. As if that wasn't enough, now you want to ruin her name too!"

A low ripple of gasps went up around us. A few of them, I realized, were guests who'd been at the wedding earlier.

"Wait, the wedding got called off because of this woman?"

"Tsk. Catching a mistress in the act, huh."

Someone called out, loud and deliberate, "Mr. Sanchez, what exactly is this lady to you?"

I twisted my lips. "Yeah, Clive. What are we?"

Jade pushed forward through the pointing fingers. "Millicent, hit me, curse me, do whatever you want. Just please don't put Clive on the spot in front of everyone"

I dodged the hand she reached toward me, and she suddenly clutched her stomach with a sharp hiss.

Clive caught her against him at once, and when he saw how pale she'd gone, something in his eyes turned to stone.

"Jade is my first love!"

He tucked her behind him and pulled a photo from his pocket. A picture of two people, a boy and a girl in school uniforms, standing side by side.

"I only found out recently. Back then it was Millicent Maddox who hired thugs to torment her, who forced her to break up with me. This vicious woman is the real mistress who tore us apart!"

My eyes went wide, and my voice shook at the sheer madness of it.

"Cliveyou sure that's how that photo really goes?"

After Raymond died, Clive sank into a deep depression. Watching him like that, I hated that I couldn't take the pain off him and carry it myself.

He said he wanted every photo of Raymond, and I went to acquaintances one by one, begging, doing whatever it took to give him that.

The one in his hand was the one I'd dug out after nights without sleep, sifting through tens of thousands of pictures on his old phone.

It had been a photo of three people.

Now Raymond, who'd stood in the middle, had been cut away, leaving only Clive and Jade.

Looking at how carefully it had been doctored, a cold dread crawled over my whole body.

So he'd prepared all along to pour every filthy thing onto me.

A bleak chill spread through me. I took out my phone, pulled up the original, and barely lifted my hand before Clive's face flashed with panic and he knocked the phone flying.

"Millicent Maddox! What else are you trying to do to Jade?"

"Isn't this all about you wanting back the thing I gave her? Fine, take it!"

He lifted the heirloom pendant off Jade's neck and hurled it against the ground.

"Take your thing and get out! Don't ever come bother us again!"

I lunged on instinct, but I was too slow.

The jade hit the floor a beat ahead of me, and a flying shard sliced a long cut across my face.

Blood welled up, but I felt nothing, my eyes red and fixed on Clive.

He took a step back without meaning to, panic crossing his face.

He had never once imagined that my eyes could look at him with hate.

"Millicent... I..."

Before he finished, Jade cried out in pain. "My stomach! Clive, the baby"

Clive snapped back to her and swept her up into his arms.

"Don't be scared. I'm taking you to the hospital right now!"

The leather shoes I'd once polished spotless ground down over the back of my hand, and his stride never wavered.

The pain blacked out my vision, but I kept my eyes open and watched his back as he walked away.

The image in my mind slowly overlaid it.

The Clive in my memory, the night that rich heir drugged me and dragged me off when I couldn't fight back, had thrown himself in without a second thought and knocked the man down with one punch.

That night, he'd held me just like this, and walked away just as fast, never once looking back.

He saved me, and that rich boy made him pay for it.

I cried so hard I couldn't speak, sick with guilt and the ache of watching him hurt for my sake.

But he only wiped my tears away, gentle as anything. "I'm here. I won't let anyone hurt you."

And now, for another woman, he had become the one who hurt me most.

I should have seen the change in him long ago.

When Jade Jennings first came back, he used to tell me the things she'd shared about his older brother.

Little by little, every other word out of his mouth was about her.

Someone said she loved roses, so he bought nine hundred and ninety-nine of them and scattered them all over the house.

He'd forgotten I was allergic to pollen.

He drove me to the hospital with his brow furrowed, scolding me the whole way. "Why didn't you say you were allergic? What a buzzkill. Jade was finally happy."

There was a time he carried a face mask for me everywhere we went, a time a single sneeze from me set him on edge.

Then there was the day a man stopped Jade on the street to ask for her number.

She only frowned, and Clive Sanchez, always so steady and even-tempered, lost his mind. He pinned the man to the ground and beat him until his face was a ruin of blood.

Afterward he ordered the hospital not to treat him, and the man was crippled for life.

I told him he'd gone too far. He just looked at me, disappointed.

"I was only thinking of how you used to be. Back then I beat that bastard for you too. So why is it, the second it's Jade, you don't understand me anymore?"

I didn't understand.

Back then he hit someone to buy us the chance to run.

This time, it was simply because Jade had lost her temper.

The memories churned and tangled. I shook my head, pushed myself up off the ground in front of all those staring eyes, and walked away alone.

I don't know how long I'd been walking when a few men cut me off.

"Well, if it isn't Millicent Maddox, the famous little homewrecker."

"Hear you hired men to ruin some innocent girl when you were barely grown. A slut like you ought to get a taste of her own medicine."

The words had barely landed before the thugs lunged and dragged me into an alley.

They tore at my clothes and twisted my injured hand so hard I bit down and tasted blood.

I screamed for help, but the passersby heard it was a homewrecker getting what she deserved, and watched with cold eyes.

Only one person couldn't stomach it. "Beating up a mistress doesn't mean you get to assault her in the street. Let her go, now!"

I clutched at it like a drowning woman grabbing a reed. "Please, save me! Please!"

One of the thugs shouted, "You know who she is? She's Millicent Maddox! You're really going to protect trash like this?"

The man's face changed. "The murderer Mr. Sanchez just exposed? Quick, haul her to the police station!"

Something roared blank in my head. The thugs froze too, and their grip loosened.

I fumbled my phone out and found the source of it all soon enough.

It was a video Clive had posted.

"The rumors online about me sleeping with my widowed sister-in-law are all Millicent Maddox's slander."

"Back in high school, she wanted me, so she hired street thugs to torment my first love until the girl dropped out. She had me fooled. I only learned the truth two months ago, and I broke things off with her immediately."

"Considering how young she was at the time, I wanted to cover for her. I never imagined she'd refuse to repent, that she'd spread lies about my first love and my brother. That's the only reason I'm forced to tell the truth now."

At the end of the video, he held up two marriage certificates.

"If it weren't for Millicent Maddox, my first love and I would have been married long ago. Everything's back on track now. I hope you'll all wish us well."

Beneath the video, one comment had been voted to the top.

Heard your brother's death had something to do with Millicent Maddox. True or not?

Clive replied: I've already gone to the police. I trust the truth will come out.

That reply blew the comment section wide open.

He went to the police, so he must have proof!

Killed his brother and then smeared his name too. Pure evil. Why couldn't it have been this slut who died?

Don't just curse her here. I found the witch's number and address. Let's all go pay her our regards together!

I called Clive with shaking hands.

"Why would you put out a statement like that?"

He didn't even pause. "Someone posted the whole thing online, and now everyone's asking me about it. What was I supposed to do? If you hadn't made a scene, none of this would be happening!"

"Someone recognized Jade at the hospital. She's just a young woman. Getting dragged into something like this is bad for her."

"And it isn't bad for me?" My voice broke.

He gave a short laugh. "You got drugged and walked around the next day like nothing happened. A little name-calling, and you're falling apart?"

"Stop blowing this out of proportion. I'm going to ride the momentum from the statement and do a livestream to give Jade the proposal I owe her. Bring me the ring. You can apologize to her on camera, in front of everyone. That clears her name, and maybe the public lets you off too."

"That ring is one I designed myself." I couldn't hold it in. "And you want me to hand it to another woman?"

His tone turned heavy with meaning. "It's just a ring, Millicent. The storm has to die down first. Only after thatafter a long time apartcan I come back to your side."

"I know I'm all you have. If there were any other way, I wouldn't leave you either."

He'd said something like that when he proposed too.

"I know I'm all you have. If there were any other way..."

"I want to be the one you lean on."

After my mother died and the shock left my father paralyzed by a stroke, Clive became the only thing I had to lean on.

And now he was using exactly that. He thought I couldn't live without him, so he could humiliate me however he pleased.

Whatever was left of my heart went cold.

The moment I hung up, someone shouted, "The police are here! Quick! We've caught the murderer, Millicent Maddox!"

So while I'd been on the phone, someone had used the chance to call them.

They took me to the station.

But what waited for me wasn't an interrogation. It was footage.

An officer pointed to the timestamp in the bottom left corner. "Does this date mean anything to you?"

"Yes."

It was the most painful day of my life. And the happiest.

Three months ago, at the Sanchez company gala, Clive was supposed to give the opening speech, and he never showed.

When I couldn't reach him no matter what I tried, the news broke that a pileup had happened on the only road he could have taken.

I rushed to the hospital and heard the blood bank was running dangerously low, while a patient named Sanchez urgently needed a transfusion.

I grabbed the first doctor who passed. "Take my blood! I'm his girlfriend! Take as much as you need!"

The bag slowly filled with red while my vision went black, and I kept praying he was safe, even if it cost me my life.

That was when my phone rang.

Clive's voice came through, perfectly fine. "Where did you go? I didn't pick up because I was setting up a surprise for you. Stop sulking and come back already!"

A false alarm. I was wild with joy. I ignored the nurse's protests and dragged my body, weak and cold from blood loss, out of the hospital. All I wanted was to see him.

That night, with no warning at all, Clive proposed.

I was drowning in the joy of getting back what I thought I'd lost, in the happiness of a proposal from the man I loved.

I never noticed that his so-called surprise was a single ring that didn't fit my finger.

On the screen, that night finally came back to me as it had truly happened.

At the roadside, the window of an SUV rolled down and a skimpy maid costume came flying out.

The car rocked, and through the glass I saw themClive and Jade twisted together, moving, and the ring catching the light on her hand.

The ring Clive used to propose to me.

So while I was begging the nurses to draw eight hundred milliliters of my blood, ready to trade my life for his safety, he was rolling around with Jade.

And the proposal ring had just been slipped off her finger.

A tearing pain ripped through the heart that had long gone numb, and the tears came before I could stop them.

In silence, the officer opened another clip.

When I saw what was on it, my hand froze in the middle of wiping my tears.

I watched the footage to the end and said nothing for a long time.

Everything I felt finally collapsed into one low, ugly laugh.

Clive Sanchez. While you were spinning every thread to make a fool of me, did it ever once cross your mind that you were a toy in someone else's palm too?

My phone buzzed. A message from him.

Just come quietly and I'll drop the charges.

The internet's already started digging into your family. You don't want your mother to have no peace even in death, do you?

My eyes went cold as I killed the screen.

Clive, at your own proposal, I'm going to show you exactly who isn't going to get any peace.

By the time I reached the venue, the place was packed, cameras bristling from every angle.

The second I appeared, every gaze swung to me at onceshocked, contemptuous.

"Why is she here? The nerve."

"What nerve does a slut have? She's up to something, mark my words."

"She's not here to wreck the proposal, is she? Somebody stop her."

The crowd shifted, hungry for it. I quickened my steps, and someone shoved me hard.

My injured hand slammed against the floor, and the pain tore up through my wrist. I looked up to find Mrs. Sanchez, always so warm with me before, glaring down with a face like a storm.

"Millicent Maddox, you hurt Jade, and then you poisoned me against her so I'd take it all out on her!"

"And to think I treated you like my own daughter. You ungrateful, heartless thing. To do that to Clive's brother"

"I did not!" My head snapped up as I shouted it.

At once someone in the crowd bellowed, "This vicious woman wants to hurt Mrs. Sanchez! Stop her!"

They surged in like a tide. A hand seized my hair and dragged me sideways, and my scalp lit up with a raw, burning pain.

"Everyone, please. Calm down."

Clive had watched enough of the show. He came forward at his own slow pace.

The whole farce had gone out live, and the crowd's righteous fury only nailed my villain's role down tighter.

Something satisfied flickered behind his eyes. He raised his voice. "Millicent came here especially to apologize to Jade. She knows she was wrong. I'm asking all of you to give her another chance."

Then he steadied Mrs. Sanchez. "Mom, don't be like this. Maybe there's some misunderstanding about my brother. I don't believe Millicent would do that."

His magnanimous, kind-hearted image firmly in place, Clive pulled me aside. He couldn't keep the smugness out of his voice.

"If you'd been this obedient sooner, you wouldn't be apologizing on a livestream now."

"Here. Your pendant, as promised." He opened his palm. "Close enough to the one you lost, isn't it? It's not like it was worth anything. All that fuss over nothing."

I didn't take it.

His face darkened. "Not good enough either? Fine, I'll find you a more expensive one later. Happy?"

He unfolded a sheet of paper. "Jade was worried you'd get nervous, so she wrote you a script. You'll just read off this in a minute."

The speech had me confessing, in my own words, that I'd wanted Clive so badly I'd put thugs up to assaulting Jade Jennings, then threatened her and spread lies to keep it from coming out.

And then kneeling at her feet to beg her forgiveness.

And she would gently lift me up and pardon my crimes.

Me, ruined. Stripped of everything. The two of them walking off with the applause, the name, the money, all of it.

What a perfect plan.

But I had come for exactly one reason. To make sure it fell apart.

I took the script and the agreement, and under Clive's triumphant gaze, I rolled them into a tight tube and whipped them across his face.

The venue went dead silent.

I strode to the main camera.

The moment I planted myself there, the romantic proposal backdrop vanished from the screen.

In its place ran the security footage I'd copied from the police station.

"Clive Sanchez sent me here to apologize to Jade Jennings."

"But I came to tell all of you exactly who really assaulted Jade Jennings and spread those lies about her."