My Husband's Wife
Description
Maeve thought she'd found her forever. The orphan scholarship girl who married a billionaire heir-the man who defied his powerful family to be with her. Three years of love, one perfect wedding, but then his family turns cruel, and the man who once fought for her stands by in chilling quiet. All before, at a charity gala, he slips his grandmother's ring onto another woman's hand-his second wife, leaving Maeve devastated and heartbroken. Until a scarred stranger finds her with an impossible truth-her real father is alive. A ruthless Manhattan titan who's searched for his lost daughter for twenty years. Suddenly, Maeve isn't a nobody-she's an heiress.
Chapter 1
Oct 30, 2025
Maeve’s POV
The Dareth annual charity gala glitters like someone vomited diamonds all over the Plaza ballroom. Manhattan's elite swirl around in designer gowns and tuxedos, while I sit alone at the head table like a ghost in a thousand-dollar dress.
Two months old, already feels like a shackle.
Princeton's library keeps invading my head. Three years ago, me crying over scholarship renewal forms because losing that money meant losing everything.
Kael had found me tucked between philosophy stacks. Mascara probably running, looking exactly like the charity case his family always said I was. He didn't care.
"You look like you could use a friend," he'd said, sitting next to me like we'd known each other forever instead of just sharing awkward eye contact in Econ 101.
That's how it started.
Coffee that turned into dinner that turned into him kissing me against those same library stacks a week later. Tasting like love and something I didn't have a name for yet. Something that felt like being chosen.
"You'll never be alone again," he'd whispered against my lips.
And I'd believed him. God, I'd believed him so completely.
Years of relationship where he fought his entire ‘upper’ world for me. When his mother called me "that orphan," he cut her off for a month—wouldn't take her calls, skipped family dinners.
Made it crystal clear that insulting me meant losing him.
When some asshole spray-painted "charity whore" on my dorm door one day, Kael broke the guy's nose and got suspended. Came back to my dorm with bloody knuckles and this look on his face like he'd do it again in a heartbeat.
That Kael feels like a different person now. Someone I used to know.
Two months since our wedding.
Six weeks since he last touched me.
At first, he said he was exhausted from the wedding planning. Then it was overseas calls with Tokyo that somehow always happened at 2am in our bedroom, forcing him to take his phone to the office.
Then merger stress—something about Dareth Industries expanding into new markets, complications with board approval. None of it made sense but all of it sounded important enough that I felt guilty for wanting my husband to look at me.
Now he doesn't even bother with excuses.
He just... doesn't come home.
Victoria's voice, his mother, slices through my spiral like a scalpel through skin. "Poor Kael, trapped with a infertile wife."
She's two tables over, but her voice carries—she wants it to carry. Wants me to hear.
"You know what they say about scholarship girls." Victoria swirls champagne, her diamonds catching light like tiny weapons. "Probably ruined from some back-alley abortion at fifteen. No wonder he can't stand to come home to her."
The women around her titter behind their hands. Designer dresses and blood-red lipstick, laughing at the girl who doesn't belong and never will.
My nails dig into my palms. The champagne in my glass fizzes, but the sound seems miles away. My throat tightens, and dress suddenly feels like a straitjacket, its fabric suffocating.
Vera leans into the circle, Kael's sister with her phone probably recording this whole thing for her TikTok followers.
"Two months married and no pregnancy announcement? Obviously barren." She pauses, timing it like the theater major she was before daddy's money made her drop out. "Kael needs an heir, not a charity case playing dress-up."
More laughter. Louder this time, like they're gaining confidence.
Last week slams into me—the memory I've been trying to avoid.
I'd worn the black lace lingerie Kael bought me. The set he used to peel off me so slowly I'd beg him to hurry.
Waited in our bedroom for three hours, feeling stupider with each passing minute.
When he finally came home at midnight, he walked right past me. Not a glance, not a pause, just straight to his office. The lock clicking shut was the loudest sound I'd ever heard.
I tell myself he's stressed. The merger's been difficult—I've heard him on late-night calls, his voice tight with something I don't understand.
But my hands shake as I watch him at the podium now, commanding the room like he was born to it. Because he was born to it.
That's the main difference between us.
He looks perfect under the spotlight. Dark suit fitted to his 6'2" frame, every line precise. Hair styled exactly right, that jaw that used to press against my neck when he whispered my name now set in professional, distant lines.
He looks perfect. That's the main difference between us. But as he raises his glass, I see his hand. It’s the barest tremor, almost invisible, but I see it. The same hand that held mine for three years. He's shaking.
"The Polyamorous Marriage Act," Kael's voice rings out smooth and steady, filling the ballroom, "has opened new opportunities for strategic alliances. For our family as well."
Oh, no… I don’t like where it’s heading. The string quartet saws at a cheerful melody, but all I hear is a ringing in my ears. The ballroom lights seem to pulse, bright then dim.
My stomach doesn't just drop; it implodes, leaving a cold, sickening void.
“No,'” I whisper, but the word has no sound. “Please, no…”
"I'm pleased to announce my engagement to Gia Redfern as my second wife, uniting our empires and securing a strong lineage of our families."
The room explodes. Applause thunders through the ballroom like they've just witnessed something beautiful instead of my complete destruction. Champagne glasses raised in celebration, people standing, the sound hitting me in waves.
My world shatters so loudly I'm surprised no one else can hear it. The sound of three years splintering into nothing.
Gia Redfern steps forward in red silk—all old money looks, socially connected, and that kind of beauty that makes men stop mid-sentence. Tall, blonde, curves in all the right places.
The kind of woman who belongs on Kael's arm at events like this.
She kisses his lips, her hand possessive on his arm. Marking territory.
He still won't look at me. Won't meet my eyes even as he's announcing another woman. Even as I'm dying right here at the head table wearing the emerald dress he said made my eyes look like forests.
That was three months ago, back when he still noticed things like my eyes.
The ballroom doesn't go silent, but a ripple of quiet spreads from our table. The applause falters.
I’m on my feet, though I don’t remember deciding to stand. My hands are shaking so hard the table vibrates.
And finally—finally—Kael looks at me.
His eyes, the ones that used to look at me like I was the only person in the world, are wide. He looks shattered.
Gia’s smile freezes. Her hand on his arm tightens.
"Maeve," Kael says, his voice a low warning, not through the microphone, but just to me, across the distance.
I open my mouth, and one single, broken word comes out. "Why?"
My Husband's Wife
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