Two hours on that mountain road in the dark, and my legs were shaking by the time I hit the bottom.
I'd barely stepped onto the main road when a Mercedes shot up from behind me and cut to a hard stop at my side.
Morton and Lottie in the back seat. Neither of them blinking.
"Paula. You get it now, right? What leaving me looks like? Apologize to me and to Lottie. Do it, and you can get in the car and go home."
Lottie chimed in right behind him.
"Just say sorry, Paula. Morton just made manager—his future's wide open. Walk away now and there's no coming back."
I looked at that smug, passive-aggressive smile on Lottie's face and let out a cold laugh.
"You're welcome to him. I don't do trash. I have standards."
Morton's face went white, his eyes turning flat and dangerous.
"Paula. I'll be waiting for the day you beg me on your knees."
He floored it, and the Mercedes tore off down the road.
The moment he was gone, I walked straight to the Maybach parked beneath the streetlight.
As soon as I got in, Tim handed me Morton's personnel file.
"Ms. Sullivan, Morton Henson has no business being marketing manager. Without you he'd still be a junior sales rep. Say the word and I'll have him out by morning."
I waved the suggestion away, my gaze drifting toward the darkness outside.
"I want him standing at the very top before I pull the ground out from under him."
Morton had won me over with what I believed was genuine devotion. For the sake of his pride as a man, I'd given up everything to be the woman behind him.
I'd leveraged every connection and resource I had to pave his way, and the reward for all of it was betrayal.
That night I went back to my private estate, a property worth hundreds of millions. I was getting ready for bed when my phone rang.
A friend.
"It's bad. Someone's blasting doctored photos and videos all over the internet—you in bed with dozens of different men. And they used your face for a fake strip-tease game, posted it on an overseas site."
The second I hung up, notifications poured in, one after another.
I tapped open the first one and saw photo after photo of myself in bed with men I had never met. A link was attached below.
I opened the link. A strip-tease game loaded, and the woman on screen was me.
Before I could even launch it, my phone rang again.
An unknown number.
"Filthy whore. You deserve to be thrown in a river and held under. Go die!"
I slammed the call off, but a second one came in right after.
"Paula, you cheated and you're trying to frame Morton Henson? He must have been cursed for eight lifetimes to marry a woman like you."
Only then did I realize all my personal information had been leaked. I scrambled to pull the SIM card out of my phone.
Morton moved fast. The very next day, I received his lawsuit filing and a court summons.
That same day, I went to collect my belongings from the apartment.
But the moment I reached the entrance to the complex, I saw a pile of things scattered across the ground.
I stepped closer and realized they were mine.
Morton had thrown my belongings out like garbage.
I bent to pick them up, and that was when Morton's mother appeared with a crowd of people and closed in around me.
"This is the shameless whore right here! Sleeps around with God knows how many men, then makes up some excuse about a glass of milk to frame my son and demand a divorce."
Rotten cabbage leaves and stinking eggs slammed into my head, my shoulders, my back—I threw my arms up but they kept coming, the smell hitting me before the next impact did.
Then hands were on me, fistfuls of fabric twisting, seams ripping, nails catching skin as they tore at my clothes.
