His Cruel Scheme, Her Sweet Revenge

After her husband Christian Sanchez caught her in bed with another man, Marjorie Pruitt spent every waking moment dreaming of getting him back.

Just one week after the divorce, she burned through a billion dollars, sending crate after crate of gifts to Christian's villa, begging him to forgive her.

By the second week, she went further. She orchestrated an auction where she put herself on the block, gambling everything on the hope that Christian still had a shred of love left for her.

And she won the bet.

When Christian stormed in and snatched her away from the ruthless youngest son of the James family, Marjorie threw herself into his arms without caring who was watching, her voice trembling with emotion.

"Christian, I knew it. I knew you still loved me. Please believe me, everything before was a misunderstanding!"

He wrapped his arm around her waist and pressed a soft kiss to her cheek. "I believe you. But Marge, this whole thing hit me hard. Give me a little more time. Six months, and then we'll remarry. Okay?"

The joy of having him back consumed her entirely. She didn't care what he said. She agreed to everything.

After they got back together, she devoted herself to him even more than before.

She dissolved her own company. She moved into the new villa Christian had bought her on the hillside. Every day, she cooked, she cleaned, and then she sat on the sofa and watched the sun set through the windows, waiting for Christian to come home.

Her entire world shrank until it revolved around him alone.

Even though he only came home once a week. Even though her best friend warned her she was no different from a bird in a gilded cage. Marjorie kept playing the role of the devoted girlfriend.

She had already lost Christian once because of her own mistake. She refused to lose him again.

Until the day she decided, on a whim, to bring him lunch at his office. And overheard his conversation with one of his buddies.

"A Bridget Quinn at home, a Marjorie Pruitt on the side. The wife becomes the mistress, and the mistress becomes the wife. Christian, you really are something else."

On the other side of the door, Christian twirled a pen between his fingers, a lazy, amused smile playing across his face. He let the silence hang before finally speaking.

"Bridget's proud. She'd never agree to be with me unless I divorced first. And Marge loves me so desperately she'd never agree to a divorce either. So I came up with the little caught-in-bed scenario."

Inside the room, his friend Kieran Shepherd sucked in a sharp breath. "Weren't you afraid Marjorie would find out the truth and actually leave you?"

"She won't."

Christian's voice was absolute. "I handpicked that man. No parents, no money, nothing. After it was done, I paid him twenty-five million and shipped him overseas. He's never coming back."

"As for Marge... it's not that I don't love her. But watching her go from that proud woman she used to be to this meek, careful little thing she is now, there's a certain novelty to it. Whenever I get tired of Bridget, I'll remarry Marge."

The lunch box in Marjorie's hand slowly dropped to her side. Her heart felt like it was being crushed in a fist, squeezed and twisted until she couldn't breathe.

A month ago, she had been invited to a charity gala. Someone kept filling her glass. When she woke up, she was lying in bed next to a stranger.

She grabbed her clothes and tried to leave. The next second, the door swung open, and Christian stood there, his face a mask of agony.

Marjorie would never forget the way he looked at her that night.

Rage. Disbelief. Despair. Hatred. Each one a blade driven straight into her chest.

Christian asked for a divorce.

It didn't matter that the hospital exam proved nothing had happened that night. He was set on leaving her.

She had believed he was too heartbroken to stay. She never imagined that from the very beginning, he had directed the entire thing himself.

Marjorie walked out of the Sanchez Group building like a ghost, every memory she shared with Christian flooding back.

They had grown up together. Childhood sweethearts.

When she was sixteen and kidnapped, Christian fought to pull her from the hands of her captors. His right leg was shattered in the process, and he never cried once. The first thing he did when he woke up was hold her face and tell her not to be scared.

When she was eighteen and bombed her SATs, Christian stayed up the entire night consoling her. Then he voided his own college applications and repeated the year alongside her.

After her parents died in an accident, Christian laid every asset he owned at her feet and proposed.

He said he would protect her for the rest of his life.

But the man who loved her that much had changed his heart three years into their marriage.

Rain poured from the sky without warning, cold water striking her face, snapping her out of her grief in an instant.

Christian was the one who betrayed her first. And now he thought he could keep two women on a string. She would not give him the satisfaction.

She ran through the rain all the way to the black market and found the man everyone knew as Scarface. She wired him ten million on the spot.

"Find the man who attended the charity gala a month ago and took twenty-five million from Christian Sanchez. I don't care what it takes. Make him go public with the whole deal."

Christian had destroyed her reputation to stage an affair so he could cheat. Fine. She would return the favor and hand him a gift of his own: complete and utter ruin.