For ten years, Victoria and I had an open marriage. We played our own games. She was deeply intertwined with her young boy toy, while I had a rotating cast of lovers by my side. I thought we would just live the rest of our lives like this. Until I met someone I actually cared about. She didn't care about my wealth; she just wanted to marry me. My heart skipped a beat. I went home and asked Victoria for a divorce. That night, Victoria smashed every fragile thing in our house and screamed hysterically: "Who gave you permission to get serious?!" Chapter 1 I was dozing off on the living room sofa when the doorbell rang. I shuffled over in my slippers and pulled the door open. A heavily intoxicated Victoria stumbled inside. The young male executive assistant holding her by the waist looked up at me, a distinct hint of provocation in his eyes. "Mr. Hayes, Victoria had a bit too much to drink at the gala, so she asked me to bring her home." He intentionally emphasized "asked me," acting like he was the man of the house as he smoothly added: "You should go blend a hangover smoothie for her. Don't add kale, she hates it." He smirked, dripping with implication: "She needs to drink it every single morning after getting drunk." I found it almost amusing. This fresh-out-of-college kid's attempt to mark his territory was so clumsy and pathetic that I couldn't even bring myself to care. I pulled Victoria into my arms, took the car keys from his hand, and said flatly: "Alright, thanks. Do you need me to call you an Uber home? "Victoria really should know better. You've been with her for so long and she still hasn't bought you a car? Making you drive the company vehicle just to drop her off." Noah’s face dropped. He immediately shut his mouth. I didn't waste another breath on him. I slammed the door shut and lightly nudged the slumped Victoria with my foot. "Alright, quit faking." Victoria didn't open her eyes, but there was zero trace of drunkenness in her voice: "Thanks. "He’s been a bit too clingy lately, kept dropping hints about marriage. Figured I’d leave him out in the cold for a bit." I didn't say anything. Noah Brooks was different. For years, Victoria and I had an open arrangement. Various frat boys and models came and went from her life, but none lasted longer than three months. She was naturally unfaithful, refusing to linger around any one person for too long. Back then, I thought I would be the exception. But only three years into our marriage, she couldn't resist playing the field again. Noah, however, was an anomaly. He had been with her for two years. It was obvious that Victoria truly cared for him. If it were anyone else, she would have replaced them by now. But this time, she just wanted to "leave him out in the cold" for a bit. She couldn't bear to cut him loose. If this had been the past, I probably would have flown into a jealous rage. Now, I just looked at her with a blank expression: "Victoria, let's get a divorce." Victoria lazily peeled her eyes open and let out a cold scoff. "Carter, what's wrong with you now? "Didn't we agree to an open marriage? Why are you throwing a tantrum again?" She rolled onto her side, her long, sheer-stocking-clad legs curled on the rug. Her slender fingers, painted with a deep burgundy polish, reached out to dismissively hold my hand. "Fine, tonight was my fault. I shouldn't have let him bring me home. "He's just a kid, young and naive. Don't stoop to his level." I pulled my hand away, opened the drawer of the coffee table, pulled out a divorce agreement, and tossed it in front of her. "I'm serious. "I've found someone else." Chapter 2 Victoria finally bothered to open her eyes fully. But she still wore that lazy, dismissive look, clearly convinced I was just trying to scare her. She picked up the divorce agreement and casually flipped through it, but the expression on her face slowly began to freeze. I leaned over to point things out, afraid she might miss the details. "We have 17 properties in total, including the ski lodge in Aspen and the penthouse in London. I had them appraised. I'll take 8, you take 9. "As for the company, my equity is 22%. You have the first right of refusal to buy me out at market price. "The rest of the assets are whatever. We can take our respective accounts. See if this works for you. If not, I can have my lawyers draft an addendum." Victoria slowly sat up straight. That lazy aura vanished from her body in an instant. "Carter." She looked up at me. Behind her rimless glasses, her sharp hazel eyes flashed with a cold light. Victoria’s eyes were naturally light. Under the living room lights, staring at her felt like looking at something inorganic and ruthlessly cold. "Are you serious?" Of course I was serious. It wasn't the first time I had brought up divorce, but those instances were years ago. Back then, I used every threat and negotiation tactic in the book just to force her to come back to me. But this time, I genuinely wanted out. "Carter, what is it you want this time?" Victoria irritably tossed the agreement back onto the glass table. "Noah isn't going to affect us. Why can't you just tolerate him?!" She assumed I was throwing a fit over Noah. And honestly, when I first found out about him, I did fight bitterly with her. I couldn't bear to hurt her physically, so I took it out on the house. I practically leveled the place. At my lowest point, I sat amidst the shattered ruins of our home like a madman, holding a shard of glass to my own neck, threatening her to cut ties with Noah. It was useless. She stayed with him anyway. I shook my head. I was such a pathetic, desperate romantic back then. Looking back, I wanted to travel through time and slap some sense into my past self. "It's not about him this time." I met Victoria's gaze and forced a polite smile. "It's this young girl I've been seeing. She's relentlessly insisting on marrying me. "I really don't have a choice." Chapter 3 It was rare to see such a blank, hollow expression on Victoria’s face. After a long pause, her expression turned incredibly ugly. "Carter, I've already told you, Noah won't get in the way of our marriage. "You don't need to be this petty and vindictive." She still didn't believe me. I almost laughed. "How about this? You can take a larger cut of the assets. The Aspen lodge can go to you, too. Deal? "She's rushing me, so just consider it compensation for your emotional distress." Victoria stared at me fixedly for a moment, as if confirming whether I was truly dead set on this. She narrowed her eyes, her expression suddenly turning unreadable. "Is it that young girl you brought home the other day?" I nodded. Lily had insisted on coming back to my place once, and Victoria had walked in on us. Lily had even smiled and politely said hi, calling her "Victoria." Victoria’s face had twitched, but she hadn't said a word. After all, she was the one who proposed the open marriage. Having lived by that rule for years, she had absolutely zero right to suddenly act like a hypocrite. Thinking of Lily brought an involuntary, genuine smile to my face. Today at the beach, she had given me a pair of diamond cufflinks. The diamonds were maybe half a carat, at best. Compared to my custom-made luxury accessories, they were the most unremarkable, modest pieces in existence. I initially thought they were cubic zirconia and hadn't paid much attention. But she handed them to me with absolute earnestness: "I know you have a lot of fancy stuff. Please don't hate these. I bought them with the money from my part-time job. I wanted to save up for something better, but... "Happy Birthday, Carter." Only then did it hit me—today was my birthday. Victoria hadn't remembered. Even I had forgotten. The ocean breeze was crisp and damp. Lily’s dark hair clung to her pale forehead. Her eyes were pure, shining light, reflecting nothing but me. A young girl's love burned wildly, like a fire indifferent to circumstance, carrying the courage to burn everything down. In that fleeting second, her courage infected me. A voice suddenly spoke up in my head. It was my own voice. I was 29. I had been tangled up with Victoria for nine years. How many nine-year stretches did I have left in my life? Was I supposed to live the next several decades exactly like this? The wind howled. The waves crashed against the rocky shore, spraying snow-white foam into the air. A long moment later, I heard myself speak. "Lily... I'll divorce her and marry you. Okay?" Chapter 4 Honestly, coming back home, I felt a slight twinge of regret. Being deeply tied to Victoria for so long meant that dividing our assets was going to be an absolute nightmare. For both of us, it was going to be a brutal, agonizing process. That was the silent reason why, despite our separate lives, neither of us had ever officially filed for divorce. But remembering the look in Lily’s eyes, a hidden excitement and a sense of reckless liberation surged in my chest. Maybe it was time. Time to start a new life. "You know how kids are," I smirked. "Impulsive and demanding. If I don't agree, she's going to throw a fit. "You understand, right?" I looked directly at Victoria: "Isn't Noah exactly the same way?" Victoria lowered her brow, a dark, unmistakable hostility bleeding into her expression. "Carter, are you actually serious?" Admitting that I was serious about a girl eight years my junior felt a bit awkward to say out loud. But I nodded anyway. "Lily isn't like the others." Those were the exact words Victoria had once used on me. When I cornered her, begging to know why she insisted on keeping Noah, she had smiled helplessly: "Noah isn't like the others." Her "others," of course, included me. I never expected I'd be throwing those exact words back in her face. Victoria froze. A violent storm gathered in her eyes, her fingers gripping the edge of the couch so tightly her knuckles turned white. She mocked: "Carter, you really are regressing. "What could you possibly have in common with an immature little brat?" She gestured with her chin toward my expensive overcoat tossed over the back of the sofa. "She could work for a year and still not afford that coat. "You two aren't even from the same world." It wasn't a lie. Neither Victoria nor I lacked money. While her heart hadn't been with me for years, neither of us had ever deprived the other materially. Victoria forgot my birthdays and anniversaries, but she would always return the favor when I bought her something lavish. Usually, it was a bespoke Armani suit or the latest Porsche. One year, after I bought her a coastal villa, she bought me a $60 million luxury yacht. No wonder Noah was fighting tooth and nail to stay with her. The lifestyle of the ultra-rich was an intoxicating drug. I brushed my thumb over the modest cufflink on my sleeve. It was an obscure brand. The clarity was average. The setting was generic. It was the kind of thing that had no business being on my person. Yet, I loved it more than anything else I owned. "It doesn't matter. I don't care about that stuff." Victoria clearly noticed me touching the cufflink. The ones she had gifted me were vintage, hand-painted 18k gold French antiques, won at a private auction in Hong Kong. God knows how many times more expensive they were. I used to wear them like treasures. But after the honeymoon phase of our marriage ended, the emotional distance set in. Or rather, she unilaterally got bored of me. During one of our explosive arguments, I had ripped those cufflinks off and hurled them across the room. I never found them again, and I stopped wearing accessories like that altogether. I repeated myself: "Victoria, let's get a divorce." She sat frozen for a moment. Then, she aggressively stood up! Her leg slammed into the glass table. A crystal vase plummeted to the floor, shattering into a thousand pieces with a piercing crash. I jolted back, but she lunged forward, grabbing me violently by the collar. Victoria glared down at me, her eyes burning with an unbearable, explosive rage. "Carter Hayes! Who gave you permission to get serious?!"
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