Chapter 1

Every time Conrad brought a mistress home, he brought a man for me as well.

“I need novelty. You need company. We each get what we want, so neither of us has the right to complain,” he always said.

Then his mistress got pregnant, and he brought home yet another man. This time, he informed me coldly,

“Sherry won’t have the baby unless I give her a proper title. We’ll divorce for now. Before we remarry, you can get to know him. I won’t stop you.”

In private, someone asked him,

“Conrad, that’s the wife you knelt through ninety-nine stone steps to win back. Are you really willing to let her sleep with another man?”

Conrad merely took a slow drag of his cigarette.

“Everyone knows Cecilia has a purist streak when it comes to love. She won’t touch him.”

Just as everyone assumed I would do what I had done before, write the man a check and send him away, I smiled.

“All right. I’ll do as you say.”

…

The cigarette between Conrad’s lips stilled.

Someone nearby sucked in a sharp breath.

“She agreed?”

“No way. She’s not kicking him out this time?”

Conrad quickly recovered his careless expression.

He stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray, walked over, and patted my shoulder.

“Enjoy yourself.”

Then he put an arm around Sherry and headed upstairs.

Behind me, whispers rustled through the room.

“Is Cecilia serious this time?”

“Oh, please. She loves Conrad too much. I bet she’ll still write that guy a check and send him packing.”

“Conrad got someone pregnant this time. She’s probably just putting on a show to make him jealous.”

I clenched my fists and walked forward with Adrian.

They were right.

Before this, every time Conrad brought another man to me, I handed him a check with a cold face and drove him away.

I thought that was loyalty to my marriage. I thought that at least I was cleaner than Conrad.

In the end, Sherry’s belly began to swell.

What my so-called purity earned me was a divorce agreement, a bed I slept in alone, and the mocking eyes of everyone in the living room.

I pushed open the bedroom door. When I turned around, I bumped straight into Adrian’s chest.