I Stopped Saving My Cheating Husband

Chapter 2

I lay in that cold hospital room, gripping the edge of the blanket. No one beside me.

The man who'd sworn he would love me with his life was out there drowning in champagne and women.

Even then, I didn't give up.

I tried everything to win him back. I invoked our history, reminded him of the years we'd spent with nothing, tried to wake whatever had once existed in him.

But my desperate attempts at holding on were nothing more than a joke to him.

I confronted the intern with tears streaming down my face, my voice raw and breaking.

Julian simply handed the girl a tissue, then looked at me with cold disinterest.

"Since you love playing the tragic heroine so much, consider yourself permanently removed from the creative director position."

I thought he was just angry. So I stepped back. Faded into the background. Cleaned up every mess he left behind.

But the second time I saw him, the girl on his arm wasn't the intern anymore. She'd been replaced by a rising starlet.

I used my authority as a founding partner to block the starlet's endorsement deal.

Julian looked at me like I was a performing clown, his gaze cold and flat.

"Vivienne, that jealous shrew act is revolting. Though I'll admit, you're getting better at playing dirty."

So the third time, when I found him holed up in a hotel suite overnight with some socialite, I brought an entire PR team and broke down the door, trying to contain the scandal before it leaked.

I thought I was protecting his reputation. That it might finally wake him up.

But that day in the suite, Julian stood in his bathrobe, looking at me.

A smile on his lips. Eyes like knives.

He poured a glass of red wine and threw it in my face.

He watched me standing there, dripping and humiliated, and ordered every security guard out of the room.

Then he plucked the PR plan from my hands, tore it to pieces, and scattered it at my feet.

He looked down at me, his tone merciless.

"Vivienne, everything you have, every luxury you enjoy, exists because I allow it. What makes you think you can discipline me?

"Money, shares, the Ashford name. I've given you all of it. Don't be greedy. Love? You think you deserve that?"

My face went white.

It felt like a dull blade carving through my heart, inch by inch.

I never imagined those words could come from Julian Ashford's mouth.

From that day forward, I understood. One word from Julian, and I'd fall from grace into the gutter.

When he chose to acknowledge me, I was the glamorous Mrs. Ashford.

When he pulled the rug out, I was a pawn to be discarded at will.

Unable to find any reason for his change of heart, I finally believed what everyone whispered: Julian was punishing me for pressuring him into marriage all those years ago.

If I just stayed quiet. Stayed in my place. Waited for him to burn through his anger, surely he'd remember what we'd had.

So I learned to become invisible.

I fought to maintain some shred of dignity in this marriage.

When the media caught Julian partying on a yacht all night, I stayed up writing a press release, spinning it as a legitimate business function.

When he took his mistress to an auction and tossed away the first draft of our original design, the one we'd created together, like it was garbage, I anonymously bought it back for ten times the price.

Later, the beachfront estate he'd once sworn would be mine was transferred to his latest fling without so much as a blink.

I pretended not to know. Night after night, I watched old footage of us holding each other in that basement on my laptop.

But my silence and surrender earned me nothing from Julian. Not even pity.

By the second year, he started bringing women home to the master bedroom openly.

I was expected to quietly relocate to the guest room downstairs and endure the sounds from above that lasted through the night.

The painting on the wall, the one we'd created together, was taken down because one of his women said it bothered her.

Julian had it removed and thrown in the trash without a second glance.

At the company anniversary gala, I, the co-founder, was stopped by security at the entrance.

I later learned that Julian had stripped me of all authority to clear the way for his new woman.

The order barring me from the building came directly from him.

After that, I disappeared from the company entirely.

The lights at home went on and off, on and off.

But they could never illuminate the boy who'd once looked at me like I was his whole world.