Ten Years of Split-Bill Marriage, Then I Walked AwayChapter 1
In the tenth year of my split-bill marriage into the Sanchez fortune, I still hadn't sobered up from love—but William Sanchez's payment QR code was already shoved in my face.
"Tonight's condom. Venmo me your half."
I hadn't even had time to get dressed before I opened my phone. My balance: thirty dollars.
"I don't get paid until tomorrow," I said, voice small. "Can I send it then?"
William just looked at me with that smile of his. "That million you took when you betrayed me ten years ago—spent it all already?" He tilted his head. "You don't have to pay, of course. Just think of yourself as a hooker. We go another round, and I'll waive the fee."
My lashes dropped. I said nothing, scanned the code, and transferred the money. Only then did he get up and head for the shower.
What actually happened ten years ago was a blank in my memory.
When I woke up in the hospital, everyone told me the same story: that I'd eloped with William, couldn't handle the hardship, begged his mother Mary Sanchez for a million dollars, and agreed to disappear.
A few fragments flickered through my mind, and my skull split with pain—
William's phone buzzed on the nightstand.
Something possessed me to pick it up.
His secretary had sent several photos. Lingerie shots. Skin on display.
"Mr. Sanchez, when are you going to divorce the old hag?"
My hands trembled as I scrolled through their messages, punishing myself with every word. Conversations. Flirting. Dates. Locations.
Tears dried on my cheeks and fell again, dried and fell, over and over.
Finally, I typed a reply from his phone: "Tomorrow."
——
At two in the morning, I crept out of bed without a sound.
It was time to go clean the toilets at Sanchez Tower.
Ten years ago, I'd agreed to a split-bill marriage with William, but the cost of living among the ultra-wealthy was beyond anything I could have imagined. Even if I ate nothing but plain noodles in tap water, just breathing inside that mansion cost a fortune—monthly maintenance fees alone were astronomical.
Mary Sanchez had been generous enough to arrange a job for me: janitor for every restroom in the Sanchez Group building.
I knew it was meant to humiliate me. I took it anyway.
Because where else was I going to find a job that paid fifty thousand a month—enough to afford the price of staying by William's side?