Part 1Twenty Six Calls He Never Answered

When Corey Pierce came back to our marriage after his affair, I gave him three chances. Three chances to cut the girl out of his life completely.

He weaponized every single one of them. He used those chances to take her out for quiet dinners, to build custom furniture for her apartment, to spend entire nights by her side when she felt "anxious."

After the third time, he came home, threw away every physical trace of her, and took my cold hands in his.

"Trust me, Caroline," he had sworn, his eyes dark and earnest. "I will never betray you again."

I believed him. Right up until the moment my car collided with a young woman’s at a rainy intersection.

Through the cracked windshield, I watched the girl frantically dial her phone, tears streaming down her face. A moment later, a voice crackled through her car's Bluetooth speakers. It wasn't Corey. It was his best friend.

"Look, man, I'm telling you not to go," the friend’s voice echoed into the damp air. "You've used up your three strikes. Caroline is definitely going to file for divorce this time."

And then, I heard my husband. His voice was casual. Fearless.

"Caroline grew up in the foster system. She’s spent her whole life with nobody to love her, nobody to care if she lives or dies. She’s more terrified of divorce than I am." A beat of silence. "Just cover for me. I know what I'm doing. This is the last time."

I lay there in the wreckage, my blood pooling against the crushed metal, my entire body turning to ice.

The weeping girl standing in the rain wasn't a stranger. She was the mistress he had promised to abandon, the fragile little secret he was still so desperately protecting.

Twenty minutes later, Corey Pierce—the man who had sworn his soul to our family—burst through the emergency room doors like a hurricane, searching for her.

…

* * *

Separated only by a thin hospital curtain, I listened to Corey’s voice. It was thick with a frantic, aching reprimand.

"Why didn't you call me the second it happened? Is my number just for show, Brielle?"

I heard the rustle of sheets as Brielle likely forced herself to sit up. When she spoke, her voice was sickeningly sweet, laced with manufactured timidity.

"You told me your wife only gave you three chances. I didn't dare…"

"What the hell does that matter?" Corey’s voice rose, vibrating with raw emotion. "If you need me, you call me. If something terrible happened to you, what am I supposed to do?"

I lay quietly in the adjacent bay, staring up at the harsh fluorescent lights until my vision blurred into a sea of white.

When the crash happened, my mind had been sharp, adrenaline pumping through my veins. My first instinct, my only instinct, had been to call my husband.

Twenty-six times. The phone had rung twenty-six times. He hadn't answered a single one.

Brielle had called once, and he had answered on the first ring.

Because Corey knew the truth: I was a girl with no family, no safety net, and nowhere else to go. He knew I would sit in the dark and wait for his return call, no matter how long it took.

A doctor slipped past the curtain to check my bandages. The screech of the metal rings on the track was loud.

As the fabric pulled back, Corey turned. The venomous rage he had been harboring for the "reckless driver" who hit his precious Brielle vanished from his face the second he saw me.

He froze. But the shock only lasted a second before his defense mechanisms kicked in.

"You investigated her?" he spat, the words dropping like stones between us. "You tracked Brielle down and hit her on purpose?"

The breath was knocked completely out of my lungs. Not once did his eyes scan my battered body to see if I was hurt. His first, immediate instinct was to interrogate me. To protect her.

Ever since I had uncovered the affair, Corey had guarded Brielle’s identity like a state secret.

She comes from a difficult background, he had told me once. If you expose her to our social circle, it will ruin her.

Yet, my background—the fact that I was an abandoned ward of the state—was something he had casually broadcasted to every elite country club and boardroom in the city. He did it to remind everyone, and perhaps himself, exactly how dependent I was on him.

I swallowed the sharp, metallic taste of bitterness in the back of my throat. A hollow, broken laugh escaped my lips.

"That makes four," I whispered, my voice raspy. "You broke your promise."

Months ago, when I first handed him the divorce papers, he had climbed to the rooftop terrace of our penthouse.

If you leave me, I’ll jump! he had screamed over the wind, his eyes wild. I can’t survive in this world without you, Caroline! I told you, you are the only woman I will ever love!

My heart, stupid and starved for affection, had caved. I gave him three chances to untangle his life from hers. He scrubbed away the texts, the hotel receipts, the lingering scents of her perfume. I had been so hopelessly naive, thinking I had won the war for my marriage.

But today, reality had backhanded me across the face.

"Is there really a difference between three times and four?" Corey hissed, dropping his voice to a lethal whisper so the girl behind the curtain wouldn't hear. "She was in a car crash, Caroline. Are you really so cold-blooded that you'd expect me to leave her here to die?"

What could I even say to that?

Could I tell him that I was in that crash, too? That while his mistress had suffered a scraped knee, I had just received ten stitches in my torn shoulder?

"Corey?" Brielle’s soft voice drifted from the other bed. "What did the other driver say? Do we need to pay her off?"

My husband’s entire posture softened instantly. He stepped back toward her, his voice melting into a soothing hum. "Don't worry about her. She's fine. Just focus on resting."

Lying in my hospital bed, hearing myself reduced to 'that person,' I actually smiled.

No matter how fiercely my stitched skin burned, it was nothing compared to the agony shredding my heart.

Corey’s only act of mercy toward me that afternoon was waiting until he thought I was asleep to quickly sign the stack of hospital billing forms the nurse had left on my bedside table.

If he had actually cared—if he had bothered to read a single line of the paperwork he was blindly autographing—he would have noticed the document slipped perfectly in the middle.

A divorce settlement. Already signed by me.