Part 1My Billionaire Wife Starved Me

Three months after the gnawing ache in my stomach turned chronic, I took a part-time shift as a barback at a downtown lounge.

That was where I ran into my wife.

Mallory was draped across a velvet booth in the VIP lounge, her long legs crossed, lazily swirling a tumbler of amber bourbon. Her childhood friend, Morgan, sat across from her under the dimmed club lights.

"Is three hundred thousand a month really not enough for him?" Mallory asked, taking a measured sip, her brow furrowed in genuine perplexity.

Morgan nearly knocked over her glass. "Three hundred grand a month? And he thinks that’s pocket change? What the hell is Connor doing with that kind of money? Is he keeping someone on the side?"

The lounge booth fell dead silent. A shadow passed over Mallory’s tailored, aristocratic features.

"Last night, he claimed he was short on cash again," Mallory murmured, her voice tight. "So I had another hundred thousand wired to his account. And then this morning? He texts me asking for a divorce. Said I was starving him out."

Outside the glass partition, I stood frozen, a tray of polished glasses shaking violently in my hands.

A sharp, familiar cramp seized my lower ribs—a white-hot blade of acid that had haunted me for weeks. Blood rushed to my ears, pounding so hard my vision blurred. I couldn't take it anymore. I kicked open the heavy door.

Before she could even register the crash of the door hitting the wall, I was across the room. My hand cracked across her cheek with a sickening, hollow pop.

"Tell me, Mallory," my voice cracked, raw and shaking with pure fury. "Just how many husbands do you have?"

Mallory clutched her burning cheek, her knuckles stark white against her skin. Her eyes welled with stunned, humiliated disbelief, but through clenched teeth, she whispered, "Only you. You’re the only one."

The rage in my chest hit a freezing wall. I stared at her, hollowed out.

"Then why the hell am I only getting a hundred dollars a month?"

* * *

After my stomach burned uninterrupted for an entire month, I finally dug into my scraped-clean savings and bought three packs of generic over-the-counter antacids.

A week later, the nausea had only worsened, forcing me to swallow my pride and sit in the drafty waiting room of a municipal clinic for an endoscopy.

The doctor held the imaging report against the light, his mouth pulled into a grim line. "Chronic atrophic gastritis accompanied by extensive mucosal erosion. If you leave this untreated any longer, you're looking at gastric ulcers, perforation, and eventually malignant neoplasia. You need to be admitted for aggressive treatment immediately."

He handed me the itemized estimate. My vision swam.

Huddled in the sterile hallway, I snapped a picture of the bill and sent it to Brett, my closest friend since college.

"What am I supposed to do, man?" I texted. "I'm in the worst financial shape of my life, and my body is falling apart."

Brett’s reply arrived in seconds.

"That cold-hearted bitch Mallory. Her own husband is coughing up stomach acid and she doesn't give a damn?"

Before I could type back, another message lit up my cracked screen.

"Wait, didn't you keep your private insurance plan? Are you an idiot, Connor? File the claim!"

I could practically hear his exasperation through the glass.

It wasn't that I didn't want to use insurance. It was that I couldn't even afford the upfront co-pay, let alone the diagnostic deductible.

With the measly hundred-dollar allowance deposited into my checking account every thirty days, I barely had enough to eat two meals a day, let alone front an inpatient deposit. Mallory was always buried under corporate mergers, red-eye flights, and boardroom politics. She was never home. She had no idea I was wasting away.

And so, untreated, a minor digestive ache had festered into open, bleeding erosion.

A violent cramp pulled me back from my thoughts. Clutched in my fist were thirty dollars Brett had just sent me through Cash App. I walked down to the discount grocer on the corner and bought a loaf of day-old clearance bread and a carton of milk near its expiration date.

Marked down fifty percent. That was the only luxury I could afford.

Leaning against the peeling brick exterior of the bodega, I forced down the dry, chalky bread, washing it down with lukewarm milk while my stomach violently rebelled.

A bitter, hysterical laugh caught in my throat.

Here I was, the legal husband of the CEO of Bishop Enterprises. I lived in a multi-million-dollar architectural penthouse in the city's most exclusive zip code, yet I was timing my grocery runs to buy dented cans and yellow-sticker clearance carbs.

After choking down the last bite, I dialed Mallory’s private line.

Predictably, it wasn't Mallory who answered. It was Damon.

Her executive assistant. The man tasked with managing the household logistics—including my monthly allowance.

"Mr. Bishop," Damon answered, his voice smooth, professional, and dripping with thinly veiled contempt. "If my records serve me correctly, this month’s living stipend has already cleared."

I squeezed my burning stomach with my free hand, fighting to keep the tremor out of my voice. "My condition took a turn. The doctor says I need to be admitted. I need an emergency draw this month."

A brief pause hung on the line, followed by a theatrical, mocking sigh.

"Last month you claimed you fainted from low blood sugar, and I went out of my way to approve an extra fifteen dollars for your vitamins. Now you're fabricating an inpatient stomach crisis? Mr. Bishop, Mrs. Bishop’s fortune isn't an open tap. You really ought to learn some restraint."

Before I could speak, he hung up.

When we got married, Mallory had sat across from me in our sunlit kitchen, her eyes soft, promising she would take care of everything. She’d told me to rest, to let her carry the financial weight, to heal from the trauma of my childhood.

Yet all that care amounted to was a hundred-dollar handout every four weeks.

A few months back, desperate to stop begging, I took a shift at a neighborhood coffee shop just to earn a few tips. When Mallory found out, she bought the entire building by the end of the week, terminating the owner's lease.

"Do I look like a woman who forces her husband to bus tables?" she had confronted me that night, her voice arctic. "Do you have any idea how that reflects on the Bishop name?"

She was a titan of industry. A woman worth tens of millions. But she hadn't increased my allowance by a single dime.

Brett’s earlier question echoed in my mind: "You can't sit on this. What's the plan?"

Truth was, I didn't have one.

Maybe, I thought naively, if Mallory saw the official medical documents with her own eyes, she’d remember we were once partners. Maybe she’d finally spare enough to keep me alive.