I Stopped Saving My Cheating Husband

Chapter 1

Everyone in the business world knew.

Julian Ashford was unhinged. Cross him, and there was no line he wouldn't cross in return.

Scandals trailed him like exhaust fumes, one after another, each more brazen than the last.

He never bothered to dodge the paparazzi. If anything, he paraded his latest fling for the world to see.

The reason was simple. It was all to punish me, his wife, Vivienne Ashford.

In the study, I scrolled through the photos in my inbox.

Julian's features were the same as they'd been three years ago, but they no longer stirred a single ripple in me.

After all this time, I'd grown numb to his cruelty.

The first time I discovered he'd replaced me as lead designer with a fresh-out-of-college intern, it felt like plunging into ice water. I could barely breathe.

I'd ignored the stabbing pain in my stomach and stormed into his office, demanding to know why.

Julian Ashford simply twirled his pen, studying my ashen, trembling face with idle curiosity.

He fed my design drafts into the shredder and said flatly, "Your work is dull. It makes me sick to look at."

I watched my designs turn to confetti, and it felt like a blade dragging through my chest.

That was the first time Julian publicly humiliated me. His opening move.

After I left the office that day, I collapsed on the street from a gastric hemorrhage.

I could never understand why Julian had changed so completely.

Before we married, we'd been the partnership everyone envied. The startup fairy tale.

But soon, the humiliations came one after another.

During the week I spent in the hospital on an IV drip, Julian didn't call once.

His name kept appearing in the headlines, always alongside that intern.

While I lay curled in my hospital bed through the night, shaking with pain, he was busy flying his new girl to Paris for Fashion Week.

When a flight delay inconvenienced him, he flew into a rage and smashed up the airport VIP lounge.

While I gagged through a gastroscopy, he dropped a fortune on a private vineyard just to make that girl smile.

The day I was discharged, my assistant came to pick me up.

She opened her tablet, and the first thing I saw was a video of Julian strolling along the Seine with his new woman, right where he and I had first met.

Everyone mocked me. The discarded wife, about to be kicked to the curb.

That night, I flew to Paris to confront him.

On the very bridge where we'd once promised each other forever, I watched Julian Ashford drape a shawl over the girl's shoulders and lean in close, his lips brushing her temple.

The world tilted. A roaring filled my ears, and it felt as though my soul had been ripped out of my body.

And Julian?

He saw me. He simply tucked a strand of hair behind the girl's ear, strolled toward me with a half-smile, and gripped my chin.

"Vivienne, you can't even handle this much? The day you schemed your way into marrying me, I thought you were tougher than this."

The rain in Paris that night cut to the bone. I was shaking so hard my teeth chattered.

I stared at his back as he walked away with his arm around her.

Not once did he look back.

After returning home, I fell seriously ill.

In my fever, I drifted back to the early days. Back when Julian had treated me like his only salvation.

His family had cast him out. I was the one who sat beside him in that cold, damp basement, writing code and sketching blueprints.

I worked three jobs to support him. I stayed through the hardest years and helped push him to the top.

Our love had been raw and fierce and certain.

The day he proposed, he rented out an entire amusement park's carousel.

Under the stars, the way he looked at me was pure sincerity.

"I, Julian Ashford, will never betray Vivienne Langley. If I break this vow, let me rot for it."

And there, in front of a crude ring made from a pull-tab, I placed my hand in his without a second thought, eyes burning with tears.

Now the dream was over.