Chapter 3

I stared at the screen for a long, cold moment.

I typed back a single word: Sure.

Her reply was instantaneous: How about tomorrow afternoon at three? I know a very quiet tea lounge downtown.

The following afternoon, the tea lounge sat nestled in a historic, quiet courtyard.

In person, Chloe was even more striking than her curated photos.

She wore a delicate sandalwood bead bracelet around her wrist. Whenever she spoke, she tilted her head with intense, manufactured empathy, as if shouldering the weight of the world's sorrows.

"Have some aged puerh first, Harper. Help yourself unwind."

She poured the dark tea with slow, meditative precision.

"Brandon has actually been doing sessions with me for over six months now."

Her voice was soft, melodic, almost therapeutic. "His work pressure is immense, and coming home, he feels completely misunderstood. It's not that he doesn't love you; it's just that the two of you seem to lack an emotional resonance."

"So you stepped in to be his resonance?"

She smiled, entirely unfazed, nodding with serene sincerity.

"You could put it that way. My calling is to help people rebuild their inner harmony. My bond with Brandon is purely professional. Please don't let your mind wander to dark places."

"And the $52,000 transfer was your session fee?"

"That covered a yearly retainer renewal plus customized course materials. Brandon enrolled in our premium executive healing program. Fifty-two thousand is the standard package rate."

She took a dainty sip of tea, resting the cup on the saucer.

"Harper, forgive my bluntness, but the core issue between you and Brandon isn't whether there's someone else in his life. It's your profound insecurity.

You comb through his iPad, audit his credit cards, track his every move. In psychology, that's called an anxious-controlling attachment style. It's deeply toxic."

"So you're saying this is my fault."

"I'm not passing judgment. But ask yourself: if you truly felt confident in your own worth, would you ever feel the urge to snoop through your husband's devices?"

Looking at her gentle, serene face, it suddenly clicked why Brandon had fallen hook, line, and sinker.

She had a terrifying gift: effortlessly shifting the blame onto you until you genuinely doubted your own sanity and self-worth.

She didn't scream, didn't fight, didn't make cheap demands.

She simply smiled with warm condescension and dismantled your confidence piece by piece.

Compared to a stereotypical mistress, a predator like this was on an entirely different level of lethal.

I picked up my purse and stood up.

"Thanks for the tea."

"My door is always open, Harper," she called after me.

I didn't look back.

When I unlocked our front door, my mother-in-law, Eleanor, was sitting on the living room sofa.

Brandon's blazer was tossed over an armchair, and he was sitting dutifully beside his mother.

"Hi, Eleanor," I said, slipping off my heels.

Eleanor eyed me up and down.

"Sit."

I took the armchair opposite them.

"Brandon told me everything," Eleanor started, her tone stern. "He says you've been constantly picking fights lately. Going through his phone, tracking his spending, trailing him to restaurants. Harper, you've been part of our family for seven years. I've always treated you like my own daughter, but don't you think you're crossing a line?"

"Eleanor, I'm not starting fights. He's keeping a mistress."

Eleanor sighed heavily.

"Men in high-stakes business have social obligations. There are optics, dinners, connections. If you interrogate him over every single woman in his orbit, how is this marriage supposed to survive?

Look at your sister-in-law. Has she ever breathed a single word about your brother-in-law's late nights? She maintained the household, gave him peace, and he settled right back down, didn't he?"

"Settled down?" A dry, humorless laugh nearly escaped my throat.

Brandon chimed in right on cue: "Mom, drop it. Harper's just being overly sensitive."

Eleanor waved her hand dismissively. "No, I need to say this. Harper, you're a brilliant girl. Brandon couldn't have handled all the tech stuff alone, and we all respect your contributions to the company.

But when a woman acts too aggressive, a man loses his pride. Step back a little, give him breathing room, and he'll come back to you naturally."

Brandon reached over, patting Eleanor's hand affectionately.

Before leaving, Eleanor turned back to add: "If it really bothers you that much, I can meet with this woman on your behalf. But you need to stop making scenes. It's bad for the family's reputation."

That night, I logged into our company's corporate equity management portal.

My thirty-five percent equity stake had been flagged under a transfer request submitted two weeks ago.

The recipient: Brandon's personal holding company.

Status: Pending Founder Approval.

He hadn't mentioned a single word about it to me.

I closed the tab and sat back in my desk chair.

In this very home office, I had drafted every foundational architecture diagram for our platform.

Every algorithm, every core function, every backend API bore my name.

My phone buzzed again.

Chloe.

It was a screenshot of Brandon's private social media feed from this afternoon.

A warm photo of Brandon and Eleanor, captioned: Nothing beats a mother's love.

Chloe added a note below: Brandon stayed on the phone with me for forty minutes before posting this. He told me his mother would easily keep you in check. Harper, don't you feel exhausted?

She was deliberately provoking me.

Yet every single word she typed was sickeningly plausible.

That was her cruelty.

Clutching the phone, I couldn't bring myself to type a reply.

Another message pinged: Sometimes, letting go of love is the real relief.

Followed by a serene smiling emoji.