Lately, something has been off with my wife. I’d come home to find her lying on the bed, face flushed, her body rising and falling in a gentle rhythm, the sound of soft, shallow breaths filling the quiet of the room. Every time I asked, she was evasive. She’d murmur something about just finishing her yoga routine before slipping into the bathroom to shower. The knot of suspicion in my gut tightened with each passing day. I started searching the house while she was in the shower, my heart pounding against my ribs. But I never found him. There was no trace of the phantom lover I was so sure existed. Did he leave just before I got home? That had to be it. Stella could track my car’s location on her phone. Of course. The bastard was clearing out just minutes before I pulled into the driveway. This Wednesday, I took a half-day off. I left my car at the office and took a cab, determined to finally catch them in the act. 1 The entire ride home, my heart hammered a frantic, sickening beat against my chest. My mind was a cinema of betrayal, playing and replaying scenes of Stella tangled in the arms of another man. I had the driver drop me at the corner. I crept to my own front door like a thief, pressing my ear against the wood. And there it was. The sound I’d been dreading. A woman’s breathless moans, the kind of sound that was pure, unadulterated ecstasy. A hot wave of rage washed over me, obliterating all reason. I punched in the security code, threw the door open, and charged inside—only to find Stella in the living room, alone, moving through a yoga pose on her mat. I didn’t stop. I stormed through the house, a man possessed, flinging open closet doors, checking under beds. I even scanned the narrow ledge outside the window where the AC unit sat. Nothing. No one. Stella, seeing the frantic look in my eyes, rushed over to me, her voice a sweet, confused melody. “Ethan? What’s wrong? What are you looking for?” “That sound! I heard you from the door! What the hell were you doing in here?” I yelled, my voice raw with the fury of a man who couldn’t find the evidence he was desperate to discover. Her expression shifted from confusion to a deep, wounded hurt. Her perfect, cherry-pink lips trembled, and fat tears began to spill from her eyes, tracing paths down her cheeks. She looked so utterly broken that it almost took my breath away. She unlocked her phone and handed it to me. “This,” she whispered. On the screen, a Japanese porn film was playing. The sounds were so explicit I felt a blush creep up my neck. “Why are you watching this in the middle of the day?” My anger began to recede, replaced by a dull throb of embarrassment. “The other night… you seemed so distant,” she said, her voice barely audible. “You weren’t… interested in me. I thought, maybe if I learned a few new things… I could make it more exciting for us.” It all clicked into place. The fire in my veins turned from rage to a different kind of heat. I looked at her—this beautiful, vulnerable woman, her body lean and toned from her workout, her eyes full of a desperate need to please me—and my anger dissolved completely. I pulled her down onto the yoga mat, my guilt and suspicion consumed by a sudden, overwhelming desire. Afterward, as she lay curled in my arms, looking like a dew-kissed flower, a wave of shame washed over me. I opened my banking app and transferred thirty thousand dollars into her account. She squealed with delight and covered my face in kisses. 2 I’m a vice president at a publicly-traded firm. As long as my wife is happy, that kind of money is nothing to me. Stella used to be the receptionist at my company. Young, gorgeous, with a body that could stop traffic. I was obsessed with her from the moment I saw her. After a year of relentless pursuit, she finally agreed to marry me and become a full-time wife. Lately, I’d been putting in long hours at work, and I’ll admit, our sex life had suffered. I’m also seven years older than her, a fact that feeds a constant, low-grade fear in the back of my mind that she’ll one day leave me for someone younger. But after this whole misunderstanding, that fear vanished. I was sure, deep in my bones, that Stella would never betray me. Until a month later. I was working late, bored, and scrolling through some online forums. A thread with a shocking title caught my eye: “Giving My Cuckold Husband Someone Else’s Baby.” I clicked on it. It was a cesspool of pixelated, obscene photos and posts that read like mission logs. “Today’s Task: Make Master come three times, let the hubbie have one. Let’s see whose lottery ticket hits next month.” “Today’s Task: Let Master have his fun twice, then make the hubbie do the dishes tonight.” “Today’s Task: Following Master’s orders. Taking the little devil out to dinner with the hubbie. Must not get caught.” The posts were accompanied by selfies from various housewives, the most explicit parts blurred out. The sheer depravity of it all made my stomach churn. I slammed my laptop shut. A familiar panic seized me. I quickly opened the security app on my phone. The truth is, after the last incident, I’d secretly installed hidden cameras in the house. For a month, they’d shown me nothing but a perfect wife: Stella binge-watching shows, doing chores, cooking my meals. She was the picture of domestic bliss, and my spying felt increasingly pathetic and sordid. But tonight, when I opened the live feed, the house was empty. No sign of her in the living room or the bedroom. Was she in the shower? Just as I was about to call her, a man’s voice echoed through my phone’s speaker. “Feel good? Was I good this time?” It was followed by a woman’s sharp, ecstatic gasp. Of course. The cameras had blind spots. The front door and the area right around the couch. Those two bastards. This time, I had them. 3 I grabbed a cab, my mind racing. My office was close to home; I was there in under twenty minutes. I burst through the door and found Stella lounging on the sofa, a face mask on, casually watching a TV show. Impossible. The sounds I heard on the feed… they were just getting started. There’s no way they could have finished that quickly. Stella looked up at me, her expression a mask of pure confusion. She blinked her wide, innocent eyes. “Ethan, you’re home! I thought you were pulling an all-nighter.” I scanned the living room. The sofa was pristine, not a single cushion out of place, no sign of a frantic struggle or a passionate encounter. Stella was fully dressed, her demeanor calm. There was no hint of deception. But I heard what I heard. The filthy sounds were burned into my memory. This constant back-and-forth was fraying my nerves, turning my mind into a battlefield of suspicion and doubt. My work was suffering. I was making stupid mistakes. But looking at Stella, so perfectly composed, the rage simmering inside me had nowhere to go. It was like punching at smoke. “Ethan? Why are you ignoring me?” She rose from the couch and coiled around me like a beautiful, slender snake. I didn’t answer. I pushed her away, the frustration too much to bear, and walked out, heading back to the office. I found Kevin, one of our IT guys, still at his desk. He was a wizard with anything network-related. “Kev, can I ask you something?” I said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Mr. Hayes, of course.” He stood up respectfully. “Why would a home security camera suddenly start picking up… strange noises?” “Oh, that? It happens sometimes. Signal interference, network cross-chatter. You can get audio bleed from a neighbor’s baby monitor, or even from another Wi-Fi network if the channels overlap. It’s a weird glitch, but it’s not uncommon.” He gave me a long, technical explanation that slowly untangled the knot of anxiety in my chest. I thanked him and went back to my office. My phone was lit up with missed calls and a string of texts from Stella. “Ethan, what’s wrong?” “You seemed really off.” “Are you okay? Is work stressing you out?” “I can give you a massage when you get home tomorrow?” “Honey, why aren’t you picking up?” Reading her words, I felt like a complete bastard. A wave of self-loathing washed over me. Here was this loving, devoted woman, and I was treating her like a criminal, my mind poisoned by paranoia. I texted her back, lying that I’d forgotten a file and was in too much of a rush to talk. I promised to make it up to her. 4 The next day, I took the day off and took Stella on a shopping spree to make amends. She wore a slip dress of emerald green silk that clung to every curve. Every person we passed, man or woman, turned to look. She was, without question, a work of art. We walked into the Louis Vuitton store, and she immediately collided with a woman holding a little girl’s hand. “Watch where you’re going,” Stella snapped. I noticed her shift her weight uncomfortably, her posture suddenly stiff. “Daddy!” a small, familiar voice cried out, and a little girl launched herself into my arms. It was my ex-wife, Amelia, with our daughter, Lily. Yes, I was married when I started chasing Stella. She wouldn’t agree to be with me until I was divorced. I was so bewitched by her that I did everything I could to force Amelia into a separation, even giving up primary custody of my own daughter. I adored Lily, so I still saw her secretly whenever I could. In her innocent world, her parents weren’t divorced; we were just living apart for a little while. I looked at Amelia and barely recognized her. Before the divorce, Amelia was a full-time mom who wrote novels in her spare time. After Lily was born, she’d struggled with her weight and never seemed to find the time for herself. She breastfed Lily until she was three because our daughter had a sensitive stomach, and she refused to diet for fear of affecting her milk. She’d become… frumpy. Overweight, tired-looking. I grew to resent her for it. The woman standing before me now was a different person entirely. She was dressed in a chic, tailored LV suit, holding a matching handbag. Her skin was flawless, her figure was slender and strong, and her hair fell in expensive-looking waves. She exuded an aura of quiet power. To get the divorce, I’d given Amelia two-thirds of my assets—a settlement of nearly twenty million dollars. It looked like she was putting it to good use. “Ethan, control your little girlfriend,” Amelia said, her voice dripping with ice as she lifted Lily from my arms. “Before she makes a scene.” “Who are you calling a dog!” Stella shrieked, lunging forward, though her movements seemed strangely restrained. “Ethan, she’s attacking me!” Stella turned to me, her eyes wide with fabricated victimhood. “Amelia, for God’s sake, can you just be civil?” I snapped at my ex-wife. “Oh, the bitch is hurt, so the stud comes running,” Amelia scoffed, her eyes filled with a disdain that cut me to the quick. That was it for Stella. She flew at Amelia, grabbing a fistful of her hair. The movement was so abrupt that something small and pink fell from under her dress and skittered across the polished floor. Before I could get a good look at it, Stella had snatched it up and stuffed it into her purse. In that split second of distraction, Amelia slapped Stella hard across the face. Stella tried to retaliate, but the store manager had already summoned security. They grabbed Stella and me, escorting us firmly toward the exit. Amelia, however, was treated with the utmost deference and invited into a private lounge. Stella’s humiliation turned to rage. “She started it! Why are you kicking us out? I was going to buy a ten-thousand-dollar bag today! What could she possibly afford? You’re all just a bunch of snobs!” The manager gave Stella a withering look. “Ma’am, that woman is one of our V.I.C.s. Her total spending at this boutique has exceeded two million dollars.” Stella froze. I froze. Two million? I’d only given her twenty. Had she gone insane and spent it all on handbags? Or had she found someone else? A billionaire? The drive home was a blur. Stella was sobbing hysterically, demanding to know how much money I’d really given Amelia, accusing me of hiding assets from her.
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