4: 4
4
I'd just reached the door when the lawyer suddenly called me back.
"Ms. Donaldson, wait."
His tone was heavier than I'd ever heard it.
"We just pulled the marriage registration records."
"There is no record of any marriage between you and Mr. Weiss."
My steps froze.
"What do you mean?"
Lawyer Swanson glanced at Philip.
"It means the marriage certificate in your possession is fake."
"From beginning to end, Mr. Weiss's legal wife has always been Althea Pruitt."
I slowly turned around.
The last trace of humiliation had left Althea's face.
She drew two marriage certificates from her bag and waved them at me, smiling.
"Amber, you didn't really think I was just some kept woman Philip kept on the side, did you?"
"The one who had to stay hidden, the mistress—that was you all along."
I stared at the date on the certificate.
Three years ago, June seventeenth.
The exact day I thought I'd registered my own marriage.
That day, after I got the certificate, I buried my face in Philip's chest and cried for a long time.
Philip kissed the tears away and told me,
"Amber, from today on, we're a real family."
But it turned out every bit of that day had been a lie.
Althea covered her mouth and laughed.
"Oh, and that day I made a bet with Philip too."
"I bet that you trusted him so much you'd never notice the clerk was fake, or that there was no real official seal on the certificate at all."
"If you caught it, I'd leave him forever."
"But if you didn't, he'd go with me to the real registry office and file for a license."
She flipped the certificate open.
"And sure enough, you didn't catch it."
"So the moment you carried that fake certificate home, Philip came to pick me up."
"We got to the registry office before it closed and filed the real marriage license."
I looked at Philip.
"Is what she's saying true?"
Philip avoided my eyes.
"It was just a bet."
"I never thought things would come to this."
Just a bet.
He lost, so he handed the wife's title that should have been mine over to Althea.
And I, because I trusted him too much, lost my own marriage with my own hands.
Althea stroked her slightly rounded belly, her smile turning even sweeter.
"Philip said something else that day. He said you were easy to fool."
"That all he had to do was hold you and kiss you, and you wouldn't look too closely."
"Amber, you lost three years ago and never even knew it."
"And now you want to use a marital loyalty agreement to carve off the Weiss family's shares? Don't you think that's absurd?"
Lawyer Swanson quickly flipped the agreement open, his face growing darker.
The first clause of the agreement stated it plainly.
The agreement takes effect from the date the two parties legally register their marriage.
But Philip and I had never legally married.
So whether he cheated, or whether he got Althea pregnant—
the agreement would never be triggered.
That thirty-seven percent of shares—I couldn't claim a single point of it.
Philip finally lifted his head again.
He straightened the collar the bodyguards had yanked out of place, and the confidence was back in his eyes.
"Amber, it's not too late to pull back now."
"Have the Donaldsons restore the funding, withdraw the pressure on the board."
"I'm willing to overlook the fact that you broke in here tonight with a crew of people."
"From now on you can move out to the hillside villa in the suburbs, wait quietly to have the baby, and stop making trouble."
I looked at him.
"And if I don't agree?"
Then, from beyond the door, came the sound of measured footsteps.
Several police officers walked in.
Althea instantly ducked into Philip's arms, clutching the spot where a lock of her hair had been sliced off, and burst into tears.
"Officers, it's her."
"She broke into my home with hundreds of people, held a knife to my face, and forced me to drink chili water."
"I have a baby in me."
"She wants to kill us both, me and my child."
Philip shielded her completely.
"Officer, this madwoman, Amber Donaldson, has been emotionally unstable lately."
"Making a scene at the mall wasn't enough for her—now she's brought people to my home at night."
"I'm afraid she'll hurt my wife and my child."
Wife.
He could finally call Althea that out in the open.
The officers looked at the dagger in my hand, then at the bodyguards filling the room.
"Ms. Donaldson, please come with us to cooperate with the investigation."
