Chapter 1

My husband refused to touch me for five years, then his secretary somehow ended up pregnant. I asked for three hundred million as a settlement and walked away. Eight years later I came back to New York with triplets, and at the airport my son crashed into him: Mister, you look just like my dead dad.

The arrivals hall at JFK International Airport was a wall of noise.

"Noah Abbott, keep an eye on your sister. Don't let her wander off."

I turned my head and said it to my eldest son.

The words were barely out when Liam Abbott bolted, running straight into the legs of a man who'd just come through the VIP corridor.

The man's brow drew together, and the bodyguard behind him took an immediate step forward.

He wore a perfectly cut black bespoke suit, the air around him cold and hard.

He was about to lose his temper. But when he looked down and took in Liam's little face, he froze where he stood.

Liam brushed off his pants and got up, tipped his head back, and suddenly pointed at him and shouted, "Mister, you look just like my dead dad!"

His gaze lifted past the crowd. He saw me.

"Ruby Henson..." Fred Gilbert's voice came out badly hoarse, and beneath it his eyes churned with disbelief.

In my heels, I walked forward without hurry and pulled Liam behind me.

Then I gave him a perfectly polite curve of the lips. "Mr. Gilbert. A good dog doesn't block the road. Move aside."

Eight years ago, I asked for a three-hundred-million settlement and walked away from that disgusting man and his pregnant secretary without a backward glance.

Now I was back, riding high, with three smaller copies of him. Fred Gilbert, are you ready to take what's coming?

I am the eldest daughter of the Henson family in New York. Five years ago, for the sake of the family's interests, I brought a generous dowry and married, with all the fanfare it deserved, the man who ran Gilbert Group: Fred Gilbert.

The whole world called it a union of powers, a match made in heaven.

But who could have guessed that in five full years of marriage, Fred Gilbert never laid a single finger on me.

On our wedding night, he used an urgent international conference call as his excuse and spent the whole night in the study.

Every day after that, he either slept in the guest room or simply slept at the office.

The reason he gave me was very high-minded. "Ruby, I'm not used to sharing a bed with anyone. I have a serious thing about cleanliness. Feelings can grow over time. Give me some time."

I believed his nonsense, and I held to a wealthy wife's proper duties. Every morning, without fail, I got up to lay out his pressed suit, and every night I simmered a tonic and waited for him to come home.

In those five years, I endured every cold look and every put-down from my mother-in-law.

"Ruby, can't you even have a child? Did the Gilberts marry you in as a decoration? Five years, and you haven't so much as laid an egg!" Every day she brought me a bowl of black, sickeningly bitter herbal tonic and forced me to drink it down. "Drink it! No food today until it's gone!"

I swallowed the churning in my stomach and poured the bitter medicine down.

I thought that my patience, everything I gave, would one day warm that stone Fred Gilbert had for a heart.

Last Friday, Fred Gilbert's stomach acted up.

I spent hours making a gentle porridge for his stomach and drove it to the Gilbert Group's underground parking garage myself.

I had just reached his black Maybach when the passenger door swung open.

Madison Fox, Fred Gilbert's personal secretary, stepped out in a tight bodycon dress, beaming like a flower.

In that instant, something in my head went blank.

Fred Gilbert had once warned me sternly, "The passenger seat is my wife's, and only my wife's. I don't like the smell of another woman's perfume in my car." Once, a friend of mine had ridden in that passenger seat for a short stretch, and afterward he had the driver take the seat out and replace it with a new one.

But now Madison Fox was not only sitting in that seat, she was holding Fred Gilbert's private cup.

"Ruby? What brings you here?"

Seeing me, Madison Fox deliberately tucked the cup behind her back. "Please don't get the wrong idea. Mr. Gilbert was just going over the schedule with me in the car, and I wasn't thinking, so I sat in the passenger seat..."

Fred Gilbert got out of the driver's side, saw the insulated container in my hand, and frowned in displeasure. "What are you here for? Didn't I tell you not to just show up at the office?"

"If I hadn't come, how would I ever have caught such a wonderful scene?"

I gave a cold laugh and stared straight at him. "Fred Gilbert, don't you have a thing about cleanliness? Didn't you say the passenger seat was your wife's alone? What now, does the secretary count as part of the wife too?"

Madison Fox's eyes reddened at once, tears spilling with wronged innocence. "Mr. Gilbert, I'm sorry, it's all my fault. I'll resign right now. Please don't fight with Ruby..."

"Shut up!"

Fred Gilbert shielded Madison Fox behind him and looked at me with a face full of impatience. "Ruby Henson, don't make a scene! Madison is my right hand. We were discussing a project worth billions in that car. What would you know, a housewife who sits at home doing nothing all day? Don't drag everything down into your own filthy mind!"

Friend? Right hand? Housewife?

The three words drove into my heart like three knives.

Five years I'd lived like a widow with a living husband, five years I'd swallowed his mother's humiliation, and all it had bought me was his open favoritism and the charge of a "filthy" mind.

I looked at this man I'd loved for five years, and a wave of nausea rose in my stomach.

Right in front of them, I took the porridge I'd spent three hours making, container and all, and slammed it into the trash can beside us with a bang.

"Fred Gilbert, you make me sick."

I turned and walked away fast in my heels.

In that moment I knew: the five-year joke of our polite, respectful marriage was over for good.

For the two weeks after we tore off the mask, we went into a cold war.

It happened to fall right on the fifth anniversary of our wedding.

As I had every year, I'd reserved the whole of New York's finest revolving restaurant two weeks in advance.

I'd meant to use the occasion to lay it all out with him. If the marriage couldn't go on, then we'd end it with some dignity.

That night, in a bespoke gown, I sat in the empty restaurant and waited a full four hours for him.

The steak on the table had long gone cold, and the candles had burned down to nothing.

I called him all night. Every time it was, "Sorry, the number you have dialed is currently busy."

By midnight, Fred Gilbert still hadn't come, but a post from Madison Fox turned up on my feed.

In the photo, a million-dollar limited-edition Bvlgari necklace sat against the pale skin of Madison Fox's neck.

The caption read: "An unexpected surprise from working late. Thank you to the best boss in the world. Some people have only a marriage certificate with no warmth in it. Me, I have his favor."

The post was hidden from everyone else at Gilbert Group. I was the only one it was set to be seen by.