I Saved My Best Friend. She Took My Husband.

After my rich best friend's family went bankrupt.

To pay off the debts, her stepmother wanted to sell her off to some company boss past fifty.

The same day I got her call, my husband and I wired every liquid asset we had straight to her family's company.

When I saw her again, she was like a shattered porcelain doll.

"Kathy, my life is over. I can't do anything."

I comforted her, my heart aching for her.

"I'll take care of you. Come work at my company."

Beside us, Ervin Dickerson gave her a helpless look.

"You're coming to work, not to play the pampered heiress."

From the day Agnes Coleman joined Ervin's company, not a single day passed without him complaining about her.

The fifth time Agnes got the numbers wrong on a report.

Ervin all but begged me.

"She causes more trouble than a kid. Can I get rid of this third wheel?"

Everything stayed this calm, until the day I got a call from my secretary.

Ervin had left our biggest client waiting all afternoon and then vanished. No one could reach him.

We had a huge fight, and he refused to say where he'd been.

My best friend, pale and trembling, walked toward me.

"Kathy, yesterday he went to Ashford to pick me up."

...

My mind went blank. I could barely breathe.

Holding back a sob, I asked,

"You're saying Ervin drove three hundred miles to Ashford yesterday to pick you up, right?"

Agnes grabbed my hand, desperate to explain something to me.

"Kathy, I'm sorry. Ervin was worried about me."

"Yesterday I went to meet a client, and the client put his hands all over me..."

Before she could finish, I shook off her hand and looked at Ervin.

He was catching Agnes, who'd stumbled from my shove, his face full of concern.

Then he took her by the arm and shielded her behind him.

"Kathy, it's all my fault. I'm the one who fell in love with Agnes, and I'm the one who insisted on going to get her. Don't blame her."

It hit me like lightning. My heart clenched, again and again.

"Why... her? How could it be her?"

I pressed a hand to my chest, the pain so sharp I nearly fainted.

By reflex, Ervin pulled the fast-acting heart pills from his inner suit pocket.

"Kathy, breathe deep, don't get worked up, breathe deep."

The instant his hand touched me.

I shoved him away in disgust. The bottle shattered, and the pills scattered across the floor.

Agnes dropped to her knees in a panic, gathering them up.

Sobbing, she held them out to me.

"Kathy, take your medicine, please. Say whatever you want after."

As she bent down, I saw the kiss marks standing out plainly on her chest.

How many times had they done this behind my back? Last Friday when Ervin said he was staying out overnight for a client, or the day before when he said he had a business trip.

Images of them together rose up in my mind on their own, and I couldn't stop myself from retching.

"Disgusting."

With that, I turned and went back to our room.

The tears wouldn't stop. I raised my hand to wipe them, but no matter how I tried, they wouldn't come clean.

Just like the marks they'd left on my life, so sickening.

On my wrist I wore the bracelet and ring Ervin had given me.

On the vanity sat the ceramic piece Agnes had made with her own hands, and there were photos of us on the picture wall.

Every single thing reminded me that I had lost love and friendship at once.

I smashed everything that had to do with them like a woman gone mad.

The crash brought them running.

Agnes pounded on my door, crying.

"Kathy, open the door. Your heart isn't good. I'm worried about you."

After a long while, once I'd pulled myself together, I opened the door.

I went straight for Agnes, meaning to take back the necklace I'd given her.

But before my hand could reach her.

Ervin shielded Agnes behind him and stepped forward to grip my wrist.

"If you want to hit someone, hit me. It's all my fault."

I gave him an ugly smile.

"Don't worry. I wouldn't dirty my own hands."

Instead I reached past him and ripped the necklace right off Agnes's neck.

"Agnes, this is where you and I end. Now I need to talk about the divorce with him. You can go."

Agnes's big eyes filled with tears, her lips working as if she still wanted to say something.

Ervin patted her shoulder gently and soothed her.

"I've got this. I'll handle it. Go on first."

The huge room was left to the two of us. Ervin tugged at his tie.

"The house and my shares in the company are yours. I'll walk out with nothing."

Fighting down the heaving in my chest, I mocked him.

"Is your love worth so much? I, Kathy Swanson, don't want a single bit of this. I can earn it all on my own."

He froze for a moment, then looked at me, helpless.

"Kathy, you always act like the one on top. I'm not your business partner."

I waved a hand and let out a scornful laugh.

"As a husband and as a partner, you fail on both counts. The client you lost, I'll take from you. Better hurry back and get your plan B ready."

Ervin frowned, looked at me, and said nothing more.

He turned and walked away without looking back.

Leaving me alone in this home that belonged to the two of us.

Right now I was like a puppet with its soul pulled out, sitting dazed on the floor.

My heart hurt so much.

I cried myself to sleep, and somewhere in that fog the air conditioner shut off.

It was the middle of summer, and the stale, heavy heat woke me.

With my congenital heart condition, a room like that could almost smother me.

Gasping for breath, I called out,

"Ervin, I'm so hot."

The words echoed back at me, and only then did I surface from the daze. He hadn't been mine for a long time now.

I let out a bitter laugh, and after checking around for a while I found it was the breaker.

The moment I flipped it back on, the security camera in the living room swiveled toward me, and that familiar voice came through it.

"The AC keeps tripping lately. I've already put in a repair request with the building. It's hot out, so take care of yourself."

I froze where I stood. Only a few seconds, then I cut off every last camera.

Real feeling or fake, it made no difference.

I was going to pull Ervin Dickerson out of my life, piece by piece.

One night was all it took. I had my emotions back under control.

When I walked into the office in a sharp business suit,

every employee turned toward Ervin's office like they were waiting for a show.

He was in there, walking Agnes through her work file by file, the pages plastered with bright tabs, guiding her hand.

His eyes were full of tenderness and love.

Maybe they sensed something was off, because the two of them looked up at me at the same moment.

Agnes's face flushed a deep, ugly red in an instant, and she couldn't meet my eyes.

Ervin, easy as anything, pushed the door open and came toward me.

"You're here. I'll hand everything at the firm over to you when the time comes."

I didn't so much as glance at him. I walked straight to HR, who were still enjoying the spectacle.

"Process my resignation. From today on, I have nothing more to do with Swanson & Dickerson."

Swanson & Dickerson was the law firm Ervin and I built with our own hands.

From complete unknowns to the most respected name in the field.

Over the years, on a record with not one lost case, I'd overtaken Ervin to become the firm's star name.

People used to tease him about it, said we were the strong wife and the weak husband.

But he never cared. He even changed the firm's name to Swanson & Dickerson.

The day of the renaming, he knelt in our new home with a ring he'd made himself and proposed to me.

"Kathy, I'm willing to stand behind you forever, to be your shield. You just charge ahead over me, do everything you've set your heart on."

And he did exactly that. He stepped back into the second line, managing the firm,

while all I had to do was focus on my cases.

My work was too specialized, and Agnes could only handle the basics.

So I had no choice but to send her to learn from the ground up under Ervin.

That was how, with my own hands, I pushed Agnes toward him.

When I'd finished the paperwork and turned to leave,

Agnes trailed after me without a word, and just like in our school days, she caught the hem of my clothes.

My body went stiff. I ignored her and kept walking.

She seemed to work up her courage, then pressed a yellowed card into my palm.

My mind was dragged back to those school years.

I'd lost my mother young, and in middle school my father was framed as a murderer.

After that I was pushed out, shut out, no one willing to be my friend.

Then one day, after some classmates tormented me again and doused me in water,

Agnes came to me like an angel and carried me through the hardest years of my student life.

And this scrap of paper was the make-up card I'd given her back then, when I hadn't had a cent to my name.

My eyes blurred with tears. Hands shaking, I tore the card to pieces and turned to go.

"I wish you a long and happy life together."

The next time I saw them was at a Highcloud Group dinner.

Agnes had stepped into the role of Ervin's assistant, taking the place of his real assistant, seated at his side.

"Lawyer Dickerson, Lawyer Swanson. I already told you. You have no sense of commitment. The group won't be working with Swanson and Dickerson again."

Mr. Gray spoke first, breaking the deadlock.

Before Ervin or I could say anything.

Agnes, sitting beside him, flustered, pulled out proposal documents and handed them around to everyone.

"Mr. Gray, I'm truly sorry. Please take a look at this proposal first. I stayed up several nights putting it together. Compare it however you like, no firm suits you better than ours."

I turned the pages slowly. The notes, the layout, all of it was Ervin's shadow.

It looked flawless. A pity the baseline data inside it wasn't complete.

I curved my lips in something like mockery.

"Even the baseline data is incomplete. Swanson and Dickerson's professionalism is genuinely worrying."

"Or is it that Lawyer Dickerson treated the project like a game, just to win a pretty smile?"

Agnes looked ready to burst into tears, choking back a sob. "I'm sorry. The group didn't publish this year's data, I couldn't find it..."

I waved a hand and cut her off, roughly. "The most important thing for a lawyer is precision. Without data to support it, how do you make your case?"

Ervin's brow knit tight. He gave Agnes's shoulder a gentle pat.

"Kathy, that's enough. It doesn't affect the overall decision. There's no need to pick nits like this. It's cold of you."

I turned and looked at him again.

"The law has no feelings. You taught me that."

By now Mr. Gray's face was as dark as the bottom of a pot. When he stood to leave, I stopped him.

With a professional attitude and a nearly flawless proposal, I landed the firm's first major deal.

In the small hours, I turned up at the late-night diner outside the university gate.

The owner welcomed me as warmly as ever. "Kathy, how come you're on your own today? Where's Ervin?"

I dragged out a bitter smile that didn't sit right. "He's busy."

Just then, Agnes appeared behind me.

"Ervin said the two of you always come here for a bowl of soup to celebrate whenever you land a case."

The hand holding my spoon went still.

This diner was Ervin's and my secret base.

Back when we were just starting out with no money, splitting one pack of instant noodles between us was a regular thing.

Two bowls of soup, for us, counted as a treat.

This diner had witnessed us falling in love, getting married, watching our business grow. What it meant to me went without saying.

"Kathy... Ervin and I shouldn't have done this. But do you know how low the odds are of finding true love among billions of people? Chasing true love, I did nothing wrong."

I stirred the soup in my bowl and slowly lifted my head.

"Your biggest mistake was making him fall in love with you. Your true love could have been anyone. Anyone but him."

Her voice thickened with tears, and she only grew more stubborn.

"Kathy, you and Ervin were never like a married couple. More like business partners."

"Ervin is an orphan. He's always wanted a whole family. What you couldn't give him, I can."

Then she pressed a hand to the slight swell of her belly.

The spoon dropped from my hand and shattered against the floor with a crisp crack.

"Kathy, just think of all the times I was good to you in the past as me paying off the debt for what I'm doing now. Now we're even."

A cold gust blew through, and Ervin thoughtfully draped a coat over Agnes.

"Kathy, we've been married all these years, and there was never anything in your eyes but work. You even hid it from me and got rid of our child, for the sake of work..."

"Forget it, it's all in the past. Take care of yourself."

Then he turned, his arm around Agnes, and the two of them vanished into the far edge of the night.

I shook my head with a bitter smile.

He would never know I ended the pregnancy because the fetus had a deformity, and that I hid it from him because I was afraid it would break his heart.

I was willing to carry the grief of losing a child alone.

I overestimated how much he trusted me. And he underestimated how much I loved him.

After that night, my life went quiet again.

Same route as before, back and forth between the same three points.

A soft chime. A reminder popped up on my phone.

"Today is Agnes's birthday. Remember to leave work early."

I stopped for a moment, then deleted every message on my phone that had anything to do with them.

Right then, from outside the office, came the envious chatter of the staff.

"Look at the screen across the street. Someone's proposing!"

I followed the direction of their pointing fingers.

On the big screen of the downtown high-rise, a few words stood out.

"Happy birthday, Agnes. Will you marry me?"

Behind them, photos of Agnes scrolled past one after another.

I stared at the screen, blank, until the sharp ring of my phone cut through my thoughts.

"Ms. Swanson, we found the witness who saw Darrell Chavez killed twelve years ago. He's agreed to testify in court."

My knuckles went white around the phone.

It took me a long time to steady myself. When I spoke, my voice was shaking.

"Can he prove that the one who killed Darrell Chavez was Warren Gallagher?"

The answer on the other end was yes.

A film of water blurred my eyes all at once, my hands trembling so hard I could barely hold anything.

Twelve years, Dad. I can finally clear your name with my own hands.

Before I knew it, the day of the trial arrived.

But the witness recanted right there in court, glaring at me with vicious eyes.

"I can't prove Warren Gallagher is the killer. It was all her. She said if I came and pointed the finger at Warren Gallagher, she'd give me a hundred thousand."

He'd even forged our chat records to use as proof.

I'd been set up. The case was lost.

Hollowed out, I made my way back to the old house, never once noticing Warren Gallagher trailing behind me.

The moment I closed the door, a group of men rushed in behind me.

I quietly switched on the voice recorder in my bag.

I forced myself calm and steered him toward saying what he'd done.

"You're the one who really killed Darrell Chavez. And the witness was someone you arranged to set me up, wasn't he?"

Warren Gallagher's lips curled in a sneer.

"So what if I did? I'm not just putting your father away. I'm going to destroy you too."

As he said it, he dumped the voice recorder and phone out of my bag and crushed them under his heel.

In the chaos I used my watch to dial Ervin Dickerson, still steering Warren Gallagher on.

All I could do was pray the old rapport between me and Ervin was still there, that he'd catch the crucial evidence on the line.

But it went the other way. Warren Gallagher found me out in the end, grinding my wrist beneath his foot.

"Kathy Swanson, you filthy bitch, still trying to play clever. I'll beat the life out of you."

He knocked me out with one punch after another.

When I came to, three days had already passed.

The one keeping watch beside me was Ervin Dickerson, his eyes red and raw.

Seeing him was like seeing a lifeline. I grabbed his hand hard.

"Ervin, did you get the recording?"

Watching him bow his head in silence, I refused to give up and shook him.

"You must have recorded it, right? We always worked so well together"

Beside us, Agnes spoke through her tears.

"I'm sorry, Kathy. Ervin and I were at a movie then"

The hope that had just flared died right there. Trouble never comes alone.

Warren Gallagher bought an army of paid trolls, and the story that I'd bribed the witness caught fire online.

The firm was hit with one problem after another. My law license was revoked too.

By that point, betrayed, torn apart online, my career and my love had collapsed completely.

The sheer weight of it left me unwilling to say a single word.

The pain in my heart was long past anything words could hold.

Without alerting a soul, in the quiet of one midnight, I left the city alone.