The news broke online that I was merely one of Damon Maxwell’s thirty-eight mistresses, a counterfeit Mrs. Maxwell. I was eight months pregnant at the time, busy running damage control for Damon after his latest round of leaked bedroom photos with a twenty-two-year-old model. Everyone in the Elite East Coast Circle called me the most professional PR Queen, the ultimate fixer. My husband’s scandals would fly, and I would clean up the wreckage without a tremor in my voice or a hitch in my stride. I’d handled hundreds of crises for Damon, sending out countless cease-and-desist letters and hush money checks to women he’d slept with. I just never imagined I would become the object of the public relations crisis myself. When I finally tracked Damon down, he was naked with Sally Bell in the sun-drenched nursery I had spent three months designing for our baby. Used condoms littered the plush, pastel rug. Seeing me, the man who was typically too lazy to lift a finger shushed me. “Take it outside, Jules. Sally is a light sleeper.” I didn’t react, only asking calmly, “Do you need me to handle today’s news?” Damon chuckled, recalling the photos Sally had posted—photoshopped wedding pictures, of all things. “Be a good girl, Juliet. Sally is fragile. Don’t ruin her fantasy.” “Understood,” I said. I turned and issued the statement online. [I confirm that Mr. Maxwell and I are not married. I wish Mr. Maxwell a very happy new beginning.] The public response was a bonfire of mockery. Damon, however, was satisfied, pulling me closer. “Once you deliver the baby, we’ll hold the official wedding you’ve always wanted.” I didn’t answer. He didn't know that once I delivered this child, the ten-year debt I owed the Maxwell family would be repaid in full. And the man who had waited a decade for me was finally coming home. Someone had already planned my wedding. … The man on the other end of the line was ecstatic. "Jules! You finally said yes to me!" "Wait for me! I’m taking the first flight back to marry you!" Hanging up, I realized Damon had appeared behind me. “Did you take care of the press? Is it handled?” he asked. I looked down at my contact list. The screen was a long scroll of journalists, editors, and lawyers. I hadn't realized I hadn't made a personal call in years. My life had been revolving around his crises for so long, I had no friends left to call. It was no wonder Damon assumed I was talking to a reporter. Seeing my silence, he frowned slightly, leaning closer. “What are you looking at?” I pressed the power button, dismissing him. “Nothing important.” Behind him, staff carried in a mountain of designer bags and boxes—luxury goods, many of which I had long coveted but could never bring myself to buy. Seeing the smug satisfaction on his face, I automatically reminded him, “I’m due any day now. I can’t exactly fit into any of that—” Before I could finish, Damon was already directing the staff excitedly. “Tear down the crib. Convert the nursery into a walk-in closet. Put all this in there.” Then, he held out his hand to me for a key. “Sally went home to pack. She loves this place. Jules, you need to move out for now.” I froze for a moment, convinced I had misheard him. “What did you say?” Damon’s smile was careless as he met my reddening eyes. He handed me a property deed. “A bonus for your hard work on this latest mess.” I watched the staff gut the apartment that had been our home, even tearing down the drapes I had personally chosen. The sudden, unfiltered afternoon sunlight was blinding. I remembered the first time Damon and I walked into this apartment. The sun had been just as bright. He had pressed the key into my hand, the notoriously lazy East Coast heir looking me in the eye with a rare seriousness. “Juliet, this is your home now. No one will ever kick you out.” I had confided in him, obliquely, that my mother and I had been thrown out of our home years ago. He knew that the one thing I wanted most was a safe haven. He gave it to me. I fell in love with him for the security he offered in that moment. That feeling had fueled me for ten years. It sustained me through every night he didn’t come home. It weathered the endless parade of women who challenged me. It endured the relentless scrutiny and sneers of the elite. Now, he was asking for the key back. Ten years later, I was being thrown out again. It doesn’t matter, I thought. I was leaving anyway. I handed him the key, took the deed, and walked out. Damon looked surprised by my lack of drama. I wasn’t the picture of stoic composure the media painted me to be. Every time he cheated, I had fought him like a maniac. I had threatened to end my own life. Each time, Damon had only soothed me lightly, tossing me a few checks or a piece of jewelry. But this time, I had no energy to fight. I had been resigned to staying—for the baby—to become the dignified society wife. Damon could have slept with anyone, but not Sally Bell. She was the living, breathing evidence of Victor Bell’s betrayal. Sally and her mother had driven my own mother to her death. When my mother fell from the thirty-second-floor window, her eyes were wide and staring. I knew she died filled with burning, unforgiving resentment. Damon grabbed my wrist. His fingers instantly recoiled, however, when they touched the crisscross of old, mottled scars. He scowled, unable to hide the brief flash of revulsion. Meeting my gaze, a flicker of guilt crossed his face, a look I rarely saw. “I’ll have the driver take you. The new house gets great light too. You’ll love it.” I nodded calmly. Halfway there, the driver suddenly looked back. “Mrs. Maxwell, Mr. Maxwell wants us to return to the apartment.” When I walked back in, the air was thick with smoke. The household staff stood nervously along the walls. Damon was standing over a scorched, ruined pot, his face a grim mask. Seeing me, he urgently pulled me into the kitchen. “Juliet, you need to show me how to make that soup you used to make for me.” I looked at him, truly seeing him. I watched him sweat nervously as he turned on the gas burner, struggling against his long-held phobia of fire. He was meticulously trying to cook a meal for his beloved, all because of one casual post in her social feed: “If someone could deliver a bowl of hot soup on this cold day, I’d owe him everything!” And so, Damon Maxwell, the man who had never done a household chore in his life, was awkwardly attempting to make soup for a flippant social media joke. A few days earlier, I had slipped and fallen in this very kitchen. Damon had kept his distance, acting as if he hadn’t seen anything. Later, he had posted the security footage of me struggling to pull myself up to a restricted social circle, a circle that purposefully excluded me. He had captioned it, “Looks like a stupid pig rolling around on the floor.” I silently prepared a fresh pot of soup for him. He was absorbed, intently listing every step in his phone’s notepad. His ringtone chirped. He answered without a second’s hesitation. My eyes fell on his screen. The contact name for the incoming call was listed as: “Wife.” A moment of dizzying realization hit me. If Sally was his wife, then who was I? As Damon walked out onto the balcony, cradling his phone, I instinctively called his number. I heard the rapid busy signal. He had blocked me. I laughed a quick, self-deprecating laugh and hailed a car. Lorelei Maxwell, Damon’s mother, was waiting for me at the family’s estate. She sighed when she saw me. “Juliet, you promised you would stay for the baby…” I didn’t let her finish. I placed the finalized divorce agreement on the table and looked her in the eye. “Mom, according to our agreement, once I produce an heir for the Maxwell family, the debt for my mother’s medical expenses will be nullified.” “My due date is in three days. Let me go after the birth.” Ten years ago, I met Damon at a dive bar. He was the reckless heir to an East Coast dynasty; I was a temporary dishwasher in the kitchen. He saw me once and chased me for eighteen months. His mother found me when my mother’s prognosis was terminal. She told me I was the only woman Damon had ever truly been obsessed with. She offered me a proposition: Marry Damon, manage him, and give the family an heir. The payment: All of my mother’s future medical bills. I agreed without hesitation. After the wedding, Damon and I had a brief, intensely sweet period. Then, he grew bored. Like all the women before me, I became the 'mosquito on his chest'—the thing he took for granted. Seeing my resolve, Lorelei finally nodded. “Damon is the one without luck.” “After the birth, I will arrange your release.” As I walked out of the estate, Damon, for the first time ever, posted a personal update. He must have forgotten to block me. The video showed him smiling with deep, doting affection. “Formal apology to my Wife. I missed the agreed-upon soup delivery time by one minute.” “My punishment is a lifetime of making soup for her.” The video quickly went viral. My social media mentions exploded in a new round of digital abuse. [Oh, so she really was the fake Mrs. Maxwell. The untamable Damon never posted sweet stuff like this for her!] [A mistress being this arrogant? Our Sally must have the patience of a saint!] [Bitch! How dare you try to take Sally's place as the main squeeze? Why don't you just die!] [PR Queen? Pfft. More like a dirty whore!] I closed the app. A text from an unknown number came in. [I’m coming to your place tonight. Will be home late.] Ten years married, and this was the first time Damon had proactively messaged me his plans. It was from a burner phone. Was he worried Sally would see it and get upset? I didn’t reply. A minute later, the text came again. [It's Damon Maxwell.] I lowered my eyes and blocked the number. I drove to the old, tiny apartment my mother and I had rented years ago. A notification popped up. [That was me. Why aren’t you responding?] Damon had removed me from his block list. I saw he had changed his profile picture. It was a candid shot of a girl in profile, smiling radiantly in front of a grand manor. The house was the one where I had lived for eighteen years. I blocked him again. I lay down on my mother’s narrow bed and, for the first time in weeks, slept soundly. I was woken by a loud knocking in the early morning. I opened the door to Damon, who was scowling fiercely, clutching a massive bouquet. “Why aren’t you answering your texts?” he demanded. “You didn’t have to run away if you didn’t want to move. You could have just said so.” He handed me the flowers, a gesture of grudging forgiveness. I didn’t take them. I looked him in the eye, unable to contain the question. “Ten years, Damon. Did you ever realize I’m severely allergic to pollen?” The shock on his face quickly morphed into a dark, angry color. He threw the bouquet away in a fit of pique. “Juliet Abbott, enough already. I was just fooling around with a minor celebrity. It’s not the first time. Why are you so damn dramatic?” He glanced dismissively at my large stomach. “You don’t think having a kid is going to give you leverage over me, do you?” He grabbed my arm and pulled me to his car, ignoring my protests. “Fine, you don’t want to move, I won’t force you. Just come home with me.” I sat in silence, scrolling through my phone. Sally had updated her social media again. She was sitting inside a heart shaped by a sea of red roses, holding a property deed. The caption: [I told him I didn’t want someone else’s leftovers, so my hubby bought me a gorgeous penthouse with a river view. This silly man even snipped the stamens off all 999 roses because he knows I’m sensitive to pollen!] I clutched my chest, trying to suppress the wave of sour despair. My baby, sensing my distress, began to kick violently. Damon saw my troubled expression in the rearview mirror. He slowed the car. “What’s wrong?” I gasped out, “Stomach pain. I need to go to the hospital.” Damon immediately turned the car toward the nearest emergency room. Then his phone rang. A soft, tearful voice came through the speaker. “Damon, darling, my period just started, and my cramps are awful. Could you please come be with me?” He slammed on the brakes. The tires screeched a sickening sound. The seatbelt bit painfully into my abdomen. I was drenched in cold sweat. The next second, Damon unlocked my seatbelt. His voice was urgent. “The hospital isn't far. Just take a cab from here.” Clutching my stomach, I gritted my teeth. “Take me first. It won’t take long—” He cut me off, shoving me out of the car. He sounded impatient. “A young girl’s pain is real, Jules. She can’t handle it. Not like you…” The car sped away, tires eating the pavement right next to me, the wind whipping away the end of his sentence. I fumbled for my phone to call 911. I managed to give the address before the pain overwhelmed me, and I passed out. When I woke up, it was the middle of the night. The doctor’s expression was grim. “A little later, and we would have lost both the mother and the child.” “The baby is breech. We have to do an emergency C-section. Where is your family? We need a signature.” I was reaching for my phone to call Damon when he burst into the room. I had rarely seen such a look of naked desperation on his face. He violently yanked me off the bed. “I need your help with something.” The IV needle was ripped clean out of my arm. Blood pulsed onto the sheets, but Damon didn’t notice. I struggled, fighting the intense pain, but Damon pushed me toward his security detail. “You take a separate car. Sally is in mine. She doesn’t like the smell of the hospital on you.” When I was dragged into the private dining room, everyone looked at me with smirks and knowing smiles. Franklin Calder, the man seated in the center, smiled a little too broadly. “Long time no see, Mrs. Maxwell. Oh, wait, I suppose I should call you Ms. Abbott now.” Seeing the man, my body began to tremble uncontrollably. I instinctively hid behind Damon. But he pushed me forward. He whispered, low and fast, “Sally has a movie deal stuck because of Calder. He specifically requested you to be the one to seal the deal.” “Jules, get this for her, and I promise I’ll never look at another woman outside again.” I stared at him, unable to breathe, barely finding my voice. I whispered, “You forgot? He almost sexually assaulted me ten years ago.” Damon dismissed it with a shrug. “But he didn’t, did he?” Before I could react, he had pushed me down into the seat next to Franklin Calder. Calder’s greasy eyes roved over me. He offered me a glass of champagne. “Since Ms. Abbott is here, would you do me the honor?” I refused coldly. “I can’t drink.” I tried to stand up, but Damon’s hand clamped down on my arm. Sally leaned into Damon’s ear, crying plaintively. “If Juliet won’t help me, I’ll just toast Mr. Calder myself.” Damon immediately snatched the glass from her hand. “Absolutely not. You’re too young to drink.” Then, he turned a dark, angry face toward me. “I asked the doctor. You can eat anything before delivery. It’s just one toast. Stop being a drama queen.” At that moment, a deafening ringing filled my ears. When I married him, I was Sally’s age. To close a deal or cover a scandal for him, I attended countless parties like this. I went from never drinking to having stomach bleeds. And now, heavily pregnant, he didn’t spare a single thought for me. Calder suddenly lunged forward, forcing the bottle into my mouth. “Ms. Abbott is still so proud. I guess I’ll have to feed you myself.” I choked, struggling, my eyes locked on Damon. He didn’t even look at me. He was calmly and meticulously peeling shrimp for Sally. Bottle after bottle was poured down my throat amidst the drunken laughter of the room. My consciousness flickered, only to be dragged back by the wrenching pain in my abdomen. A hand forcefully grabbed and squeezed my breast. The horror of that terrifying night years ago flashed through my mind. The dark room. The fat man’s hands roaming my body. SLAP! I instinctively lashed out, striking the man in front of me. The room fell silent. Calder chuckled, holding his cheek. “I guess Ms. Abbott isn’t interested in this partnership.” Sally immediately clung to Damon's arm, whining. “Damon, darling, if I lose this movie, the whole industry will laugh at me!” Damon finally set down the shrimp shell. He looked at me blankly. “Apologize to Calder.” When I didn’t move, Damon signaled to his bodyguards. “Make her kneel and apologize to Mr. Calder.” Sally, eager to please, chimed in. “I heard Mr. Calder likes to watch animal tricks. Maybe Ms. Abbott could crawl around like a dog for him?” The men in the room roared with laughter, encouraging her. I looked at Damon, tears streaming down my face. “Damon Maxwell, I’m carrying your child. Please, let me go.” Perhaps the sheer agony in my eyes stunned him. He froze. I swayed, forced myself up, and staggered toward the door, leaving a trail of bloody footprints. But the moment I reached the doorknob, Sally dramatically chugged a glass of wine, coughing violently. “Mr. Calder, don’t be mad. I’ll drink with you.” Damon furiously snatched the glass away. “No! You’re not drinking!” From behind me, his voice, cold and sharp as ice, sliced through the air. “Stop. Who said you could leave?” He pulled out a familiar jade locket, laying it on the table. “Get this deal for Sally, or else…” The locket was the last remaining possession my mother had given me before she died. I resigned myself. I sank to my knees and began to crawl around the perimeter of the room. Blood continued to seep out, soaking my pants. They cackled. “Look at the dog in heat! She’s peeing on the rug!” “Yeah, yeah, she says no, but in the end, she still becomes Calder’s bitch.” My vision grew hazy, and I could no longer move. The severe abdominal pain was a constant, blinding fire. Franklin Calder walked toward me, smiling, and ordered his men to hoist me up. He addressed the room. “You’re all too much. Ms. Abbott is pregnant. Don’t tease her so badly.” “I’ll take Ms. Abbott to the room next door to rest.” I fought to keep my eyes open, whispering Damon’s name. I saw him embracing Sally, kissing her passionately. I closed my eyes in absolute despair. I used every last ounce of my strength to twist the diamond ring—the one I had worn for ten years—off my finger. I threw it onto the floor. In the dark room, the greasy man leaned over me. “You little bitch. If Damon Maxwell hadn’t had your back all those years ago, I would’ve had you then.” “He’s done with you now. He just sold you to me.” The moment my clothes ripped, the man above me cried out in pain and collapsed. A strong pair of arms lifted me in the darkness. “I’m sorry, I was late.” … The next morning, Damon’s hotel room door was kicked open. Lorelei Maxwell walked in, her face etched with a dark fury, clutching an infant. She slapped Damon hard across the face, several times. Woken abruptly, Damon was about to lash out, but he stopped when he saw his mother. “Mom, what’s wrong?” Lorelei shoved the baby, purple and lifeless, into his arms. “Look at your child before I take him for cremation.” Sally screamed at the sight. Damon stared at the infant, a terrible panic rising in his chest. Just then, news broke that the Maxwell family’s illegitimate son, who had been raised abroad, had returned home and announced his engagement. When Damon registered the familiar name in the article, he bolted out the door.
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