The Other Mrs. Hayes

On her second day at City Hall, a clerk takes over a coworker's case: a young woman named Chloe Summers has come for the ninety-ninth certified copy of her marriage certificate. Chloe laughs that she and her wealthy older husband tear it up whenever they fight. Her husband, she says, is Hunter Hayes, head of the Hayes family, the wealthiest family in Havenbrook.

The clerk freezes. A photo on her phone shows her leaning against Hunter, the man she has secretly been married to for five years. Chloe snatches the phone and demands to know who she is. Claiming she once interviewed him as a reporter, the clerk escorts Chloe home to collect her missing IDs, and finds the apartment she once paid for with her own savings, now hung with a giant wedding portrait of Hunter and Chloe, and a six-month-old son named Ross.

Chloe explains the name: Hunter's first wife, Rose, died in childbirth. The clerk, whose own baby was lost at seven months, can only ask whether Hunter truly told her that.