Chapter 2

Silence on the other end. Then the line cut dead.

Belinda's text came through a second later:

"Ms. Fox, let's be honest—every cent you have is Mr. Henson's money."

"And you don't get to wave your wife title around to bully me."

"I've already frozen every account under your name and made sure nobody lends you a thing. When you're ready to apologize—and swear you'll stop spending Mr. Henson's money like it's yours—I'll think about unlocking them."

I read it, and my vision blurred, something hot and violent flooding up through my chest. Then I was gone.

But before the darkness took me, I got the call through to Attorney Pierce. I told him to fire Belinda Swanson effective immediately, suspend Fergus Henson from the CEO position, and have Fergus at this hospital within the hour.

A junior secretary—one month on the job. No one that low dares freeze the accounts of the CEO's wife unless someone above her is holding the door open.

But Fergus? My husband—throwing away everything we had for a girl who'd barely learned the building's floor plan? I couldn't make it fit. I wouldn't.

And yet the thought wouldn't leave.

The Fox family was worth tens of billions, and this generation had produced exactly one heir: me. I could have married into another dynasty and split everything down the middle. Instead, I chose to bring a man into my family—someone who'd marry into the Fox name and build what I told him to build.

To find someone honest and steady,

I hid who I was and slipped into Sterling Group as a low-level employee.

That was the year I met Fergus Henson, fresh out of school and just starting at the company.

Top university, empty pockets, but there was a quiet gentleness in him layered over something stubborn and unbreakable.

I noticed him right away.

He was always the first one in and the last one out.

While everyone else complained about overtime, he'd quietly re-check an entire floor's worth of reports on his own.

A few times I stayed late, and he'd appear at my desk with a cup of coffee, ears red to the tips, not quite meeting my eyes. Then he'd reach past me for the laptop, voice low and a little unsteady:

"It's too late for you to go home alone. I'll finish this—you head out."

I could feel my pulse in my throat for a full minute after he walked away.

But the moment I truly fell for him came during an incident at work.

A female colleague stole my project, presented it first, then turned around and accused me of plagiarizing her.

The general manager backing her wanted me fired on the spot, threatened to hold me liable for leaking company secrets, and demanded compensation.

Fergus was days from a promotion. He slammed both hands on the table and stepped between me and the room.

"Mamie Fox didn't do this! I know her—I'll stake everything on it!"

"You want to fire someone who's done nothing wrong? Then this company can't tell right from wrong, and I don't want any part of it. I'm walking out with her!"

He tore off his name badge and grabbed my hand, and we ran—out of the conference room, down the corridor, all the way through the lobby doors.

Right then, something locked into place inside my chest. This was the man I was going to spend my life with.

I grabbed him, still breathless, heart hammering so hard I could barely get the words out:

"Fergus! I like you! Do you like me? Marry me—say yes!"

After the wedding, I stepped away from the company so I could focus on my health and have my heir as soon as possible.

I left Sterling Group in Fergus's hands, with Attorney Pierce overseeing things alongside him.

And Fergus didn't disappoint. The company thrived under his management.

Until a month and a half ago, when he suddenly told me he wanted to recruit a batch of underprivileged graduates from his alma mater.

I agreed.

Belinda Swanson was one of them.

Within ten days of joining the company, she'd been promoted all the way up to the CEO's personal secretary.

That was when the whispers started reaching me.

One of the girls in the secretarial pool pulled me aside—Belinda had been carrying homemade lunches into Fergus's office, she said. The two of them would eat together behind a closed door and not come out for the entire afternoon.