Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Emily had known I was following them the whole time. She’d deliberately let me watch their sweet moments, hoping I’d take the initiative to back off.

I looked at the photos I’d taken over the past few days—all of them showing the two of them being intimate—and suddenly felt an urge to laugh at my own stupidity.

I’d once daydreamed about my future with Alex, imagining all kinds of sweet moments, but I’d also thought about what would happen if our marriage fell apart.

If we got divorced because we didn’t get along, I wouldn’t have tried to take advantage of him. But if he cheated on me during our marriage, I wasn’t going to let him off easy.

Looking at all the wedding preparations I’d spent so much time and effort on, I wanted to throw everything away.

Knock, knock, knock—

A knock on the door interrupted my thoughts. I went to check who it was.

The peephole was pitch-black, and then suddenly, a figure appeared right in front of it. My blood boiled instantly.

It was Emily Davis. She stood outside the door, dressed in trendy clothes with a light, fresh makeup look that made her appear innocent and lively.

She was the complete opposite of me—no makeup, wearing my pajamas.

I forced a stiff smile and opened the door.

“Hi, Sister! You’re Brother Zhang’s girlfriend, right?” Her voice was sweet. She greeted me proactively and skillfully placed the fruit basket she’d brought on the kitchen counter.

I pretended not to recognize her and asked, “And you are?”

“I’m a colleague of Brother Zhang’s. I couldn’t have gotten a full-time position without his help,” she said, her eyes fixed on me as if she was waiting to see me get angry—eager to satisfy her sense of superiority.

When she saw I didn’t react, she kept talking.

“Brother Zhang has taken good care of me ever since I joined the company. Now that I’ve even gotten a promotion, I wanted to come and thank him in person! Isn’t Brother Zhang at home?”

I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of seeing me upset. I clenched my fists and maintained my composure.

“Oh, I remember now! Alex mentioned wanting to quit his job for a while because he had this really incompetent new intern who kept causing him trouble. I talked him out of it for ages,” I said, then smiled genuinely.

As I’d suspected, Emily hadn’t discussed this visit with Alex—he probably had no idea she was here.

I abandoned the idea of kicking her out and instead let her put on her little act beside me.

I started preparing dinner, and she wandered around, looking here and there, before coming over to me.

“Sister, let me help you! I’ve never done this kind of stuff before, so I’ll need you to teach me. Brother Zhang takes good care of me at the company too,” she said.

I suppressed my anger, picked up a piece of fatty, greasy meat, and handed it to her. “Sister Li, just learn as you go—I’ll teach you.”

She’d been calling me “Sister” this whole time, so she looked stunned when I called her “Sister Li.” Before she could react, I stuffed the fatty meat into her hand.

Pretending not to notice her surprise, I kept talking.

“You might think Alex is good at his job, but honestly, neither of us is that old. His mom even told me to spoil him a little and stop him from hanging out with bad influences.”

She dropped the piece of fatty meat, and the smile on her face faded.

I acted like I didn’t see it and kept rambling.

“But you, Sister Li—you don’t seem like that kind of person at all. You’re probably three or four years older than us, so you’ve been through more. I could tell right away that you’re a sensible person. These days, more people are getting educated, so everyone’s better-mannered. No one would do something as shameless as that anymore.”

This woman, who’d claimed she’d never done housework, suddenly started chopping with the knife so hard it made a loud thud-thud-thud sound.

After a while, she seemed to remember something and smiled at me again.

“Everyone at the company says Brother Zhang is a family man who dotes on his wife. Now I see it’s because he has such a wonderful wife at home. If I were married to you, Sister, I’d rush home right after work every day.”

I thought about how Alex had been “working overtime” every day lately, and my anger flared up. My hands, which were holding the pot handle, trembled uncontrollably.

Soon after, Alex came home. His voice floated in from the entrance.

“It smells so good! Honey, what did you cook tod—”

When he saw both of us in the kitchen, his voice trailed off abruptly.

The room fell so silent you could hear his heart pounding thump-thump-thump.

I could tell Alex was panicking, scrambling to come up with an excuse—his fingers had started tapping nervously again, just like before.

Watching him fluster, a twinge of vengeful excitement stirred in my heart. I spoke first.

“Surprise!”

He must have thought I’d found out everything, because his eyes widened in panic. But he quickly masked it with a look of deep affection, frantically signaling to Emily with his eyes while reaching out to take my hand.

I tossed the meat she’d been chopping into the pot. Oil splattered everywhere, and both of them stepped back instinctively.

I talked as if I was talking to myself: “Sister Li said she couldn’t have gotten promoted without your help, so she came all the way here to thank you. You really are too ungrateful—you must have turned down all her invitations to dinner before, which is why she had to come all the way to our house.”

I added water to the pot, took off my apron, and handed it to him. “You stay and chat with Sister Li. I’ll go buy some cold dishes so she can have a proper meal here.”

With that, I went into the bedroom first, turned on the voice recorder I’d bought in advance, tucked it into the gap between the sofa cushions, and then left.

When I came back with the cold dishes, Emily was gone, and Alex had changed his clothes. He looked much calmer.

I smiled and pretended to complain.

“Really, Alex? Sister Li went to all this trouble to come over, and you let her leave without even having dinner?”

“She had something come up suddenly. Let’s eat,” he said.

He must have felt guilty, because he was unusually attentive.

During dinner, he kept putting food on my plate, and after we finished eating, he even insisted on helping me wash the dishes.

I smiled and looked at him.

“You’ve been busy all day—go rest. I can handle this by myself.”

The smell of perfume on his clothes was so strong it made my nose tingle. I scrubbed the knife Emily had used under running water, trying to hold back the urge to lash out.

But he came over and hugged me, his voice tinged with flattery. “You’re such a good wife. We’re going to be so happy together.”

If I’d heard those words before, I would have been moved to tears. But now, they just made me feel sick.

“Hmm,” I replied, barely able to keep up the pretense.

He must have noticed my mood was off, because he kept trying to explain.

“That woman who was here earlier—she’s the colleague I’ve been complaining about. She’s always holding things up, and I had no choice but to help her a few times. She wanted to treat me to dinner to thank me, but I turned her down every time.”

The more he talked, the more animated he became.

“Honey, since I’ve been so good… later, maybe we could…”

I turned the faucet to the coldest setting and splashed water on my hands to calm myself down. When I realized he was hinting at moving back into the master bedroom with me, I cut him off.

“I’m on my period,” I said. I couldn’t bear the thought of letting his dirty body touch me—I was afraid I’d throw up.

But he pushed further, lifting me up and placing me on the bed.

“I’ll just hold you,” he said, his voice even sounding a little wronged.

I hadn’t achieved my goal yet, so I had to grit my teeth and endure.

I lay there stiff as a board, not moving an inch, until he started snoring. Only then did I slowly shift my body.

When he didn’t react at all, I was sure he was sound asleep. I got out of bed quietly.

I went to the living room, retrieved the voice recorder from the sofa, transferred the audio to my laptop, and listened to their conversation.

On the recording, Alex’s voice was rushed—he was clearly trying to hold back his anger.

“What do you think you’re doing? What are you doing at my house? If you keep pulling stunts like this, we’re done!”

“Brother Zhang, I’m so sorry! It’s all my fault. I just love you too much—I love you so deeply. Sister Liu was right… I’m just a shameless woman,” Emily said, her voice breaking into sobs. To anyone who didn’t know the truth, she would have sounded so wronged.

And Alex, of course, was that someone who didn’t know the truth. He immediately softened his tone and comforted her.

“What happened? Did she say something to you?”

Her sobs grew louder, and it was a while before she spoke again.

“Brother Zhang, I was being greedy. Sister Liu Shu is such a good person—I shouldn’t have been so selfish and wanted you to marry me instead. But please… don’t ignore me. Do you have any idea how I’ve been feeling these past few days? I’m so scared… just thinking about losing you makes me terrified…”

Her sobs stopped suddenly, replaced by the sound of kissing. I had to pause the recording several times to keep listening.

Alex’s voice was soft, and some parts were hard to make out.

“I’ll never ignore you again. I’ll never leave you. These past few days, ignoring you has been killing me too. Only now do I realize… the person I love is you.”

It took me a long time to calm down the surging emotions in my chest. I transferred the recording to my phone, made several backups, and then deleted the original files from both the laptop and the recorder.

I drank a glass of ice water to steady myself.

Patience is key to achieving great things.

In the days that followed, I still acted like I knew nothing, matching Alex’s little tests perfectly until he let his guard down again.

Half a month later, he couldn’t stop glancing at me during dinner, making it impossible for me to eat.

I put down my chopsticks early, and he seized the opportunity to speak.

“Why are you eating so little?”

“I’ve been trying to lose weight lately—I want to be the most beautiful bride on our wedding day,” I said.

He didn’t seem particularly happy when he heard that. He gave me a perfunctory reply, then got to the point.

“Don’t starve yourself. You’re the most beautiful whether you lose weight or not. I have to go on a business trip for a week tomorrow—to Guizhou.”

I’d been planning to start investigating Emily, and having him around would only get in the way. Now that he was leaving, I was more than happy to help things along.

“Is it for the market research project?” I asked.

He mumbled a vague “Hmm” and added a few more remarks.

Sure enough, after he left, Emily disappeared too.

Now I could focus on investigating Emily without holding back.

She’d covered her tracks well, and it took me a lot of effort to dig up information about her from a distant relative of hers back in her hometown.

Unlike Alex and me, she’d had a wedding first but never gotten a marriage certificate—no one knew why.

The man she’d “married” was named Michael Brown, a wealthy second-generation heir who owned his own company.

By coincidence, he was coming to this city on a business trip.

I found out where his business meeting was taking place and went there early to wait for him.

When I told him my story, he didn’t believe me right away. He stayed calm and talked to me rationally.

“Do you have any proof of what you’re saying?”

I showed him some of the evidence I’d prepared.

He still remained calm after reading through it, but he thanked me politely.

He asked me for some of the materials and exchanged contact information with me.

He also warned me that the evidence I had violated their privacy and couldn’t be used as valid proof in a legal case, but he said he would gather his own evidence.