Serving My Husband's Mistress A Wife's RevengeChapter 1
Steam hissed into the quiet room as I pressed the iron over the pristine white fabric. I was preparing the lab coat Alex Delgado was scheduled to wear the next morning.
Then the front door clicked open. He walked in, bringing with him the sharp tang of hospital antiseptic layered over the cloying sweetness of a woman's perfume.
"She's pregnant."
His voice was calm, clinical. He might as well have been discussing a tumor or a fractured rib.
"Yolanda is an orphan," he continued, loosening his tie. "She needs me."
My hand froze mid-air. The steam curled up, blurring my vision.
A memory forced its way to the surface—the night I burned with a forty-degree fever. He had sat by my bedside, cooling my forehead with a damp towel, his eyes tender. In this life, I'll only take care of you, Lexi. No one else.
"Then what about me?" My voice was so faint it barely disturbed the air.
He frowned, impatience flickering across his face. "Lexi, you know the pressure I'm under at the hospital. Yolanda understands my ambitions. She supports me."
I didn't answer. I simply stopped fighting the gravity of my own exhaustion.
I let the heavy iron drop.
It landed flat against the chest of the white lab coat. A sharp hiss filled the silence as heat seared into fabric. Smoke rose, carrying the acrid smell of burnt cotton. I watched the brown scorch mark spread like a cancer, burning a hole right through the left breast pocket—right where his heart should have been.
I didn't cry. I didn't scream. I turned off the iron, walked past him into the bedroom, and stared at the ceiling until dawn.
Before I left the next morning, I placed the divorce agreement and my wedding ring on the entryway console. Beside them, I left the ruined lab coat. On the unburnt fabric, in my neatest handwriting, I left a final diagnosis:
Dr. Delgado, consider your patient, Alex Henson, permanently discharged.
——
I boarded the first flight to Seaside City.
For ten years, I had carved away pieces of myself to fit into the mold of Alex Delgado's perfect wife. I had given too much.
Silver Beach had always been on my bucket list. Every time I mentioned it, he brushed it off. Too busy. The hospital needed him. I just had to wait.
Wait, wait, and wait again.