Part 1After the Happy Ending

I’m five years older than Liam.

So, when he turned twenty-eight, I was already thirty-three.

He was the one who once swore to me that age would never be a barrier between us.

But later, he told his best friend, “I don’t know why, but once Clara hit thirty, she just started to seem… a little unclean to me.”

After that, he found a lover—a girl who looked a little like me.

He gave me his heart, and he gave her his body.

He thought he had crafted the perfect, compartmentalized life.

Until I handed him the divorce papers.

I smiled as I told him, “You know, there’s one huge advantage to loving and marrying an older woman, darling. We know how to play the game, and we know how to take a loss.”

* * *

Sometimes, a woman’s intuition is just that sharp.

While Liam was in the shower, his phone buzzed. A local number, no caller ID.

I answered it.

I said “Hello?” twice, then asked, “Who is this?”

The line was silent. Then, they hung up.

In those few seconds of dead air, an unspoken understanding passed between us. The person on the other end knew exactly who I was. And I knew, with a sinking certainty, that something was deeply wrong.

I unlocked Liam’s phone.

I used the number to find the person on his social media. It was a girl. Her avatar was a soft, cutesy anime character, her screen name was “Peaches.” There was no contact name saved for her, and he had her notifications silenced.

Their chat history was pristine.

Only a single unread message remained: 【I miss you.】

Just those three words, and my heart seized in my chest.

My mind went cold with the single, stark realization: Liam was cheating on me.

The phone felt weightless in my suddenly nerveless grip.

I clicked on the girl’s profile.

Her cover photo was likely a selfie—hair in a messy bun, lips in a playful pout. It screamed youth, and I had to admit, she was pretty.

I didn’t linger on it. Instead, I took out my own phone and snapped a picture of her profile.

Her feed was full of posts.

I scrolled quickly, my thumb a blur, until one post made me freeze.

She’d written: 【I only want 199 from him, not a penny more!】

Beneath the text was a screenshot of her conversation with Liam.

She had him saved under the contact name: My Princess’s Provider.

She’d asked him: 【Where’s the 199 you promised me?】

Liam had sent her twenty thousand dollars.

She hadn’t accepted it. She’d sent it right back.

【I only want 199!】

Liam replied with a string of ellipses but complied, sending her the exact amount.

She followed up with: 【Do you know what 199 means? It’s a pun. It means I want to be with you for a long, long time! Forever and ever!】

My face remained a mask of calm as I took another picture.

I backed out of her profile and went straight to his transaction history, filtering for all their transfers.

One after another, they scrolled down the screen, a river of payments with no end in sight. The most consistent were the large deposits: fifty thousand dollars at the beginning of each of the last three months.

Beyond that, the smaller amounts were countless—a thousand here, two hundred there. Sprinkled among them were numbers thick with meaning: 199, 520 for I love you, 1314 for forever.

I photographed every single transaction, my movements methodical and precise.

Throughout the entire process, I was eerily calm.

I even remembered to mark their chat as unread before I closed the app.