Thirty Years Of Marriage I Thought Was A Mistake Chapter 06

Thirty Years Of Marriage I Thought Was A Mistake Chapter 06

Vincent picked me up from the hospital on the day I was discharged.

Adrian didn’t come. Apparently, he was dealing with the situation at Whitmore Holdings.

The SEC had opened a formal investigation. Whitmore Holdings’ shares had fallen even more sharply than Prescott Holdings’, Richard Whitmore had been called in for questioning, and the company’s senior leadership was in turmoil.

As I sat in Vincent’s car and watched the city pass outside the window, everything suddenly felt unreal.

In my previous life, I had married Adrian and spent thirty years as his wife. I had lived in the finest homes, worn the finest clothes, and eaten the finest food, but I had never truly been part of his world.

His business, his friends, and all his joys and sorrows had always seemed to exist behind an invisible wall.

I assumed he was simply distant by nature and treated everyone that way.

But the calculations he had made in the hospital, the way he had planned every move, and that entire trap-within-a-trap strategy had revealed a flesh-and-blood man with loves and hatreds of his own.

He had simply never shown me that side of himself.

“Vincent,” I said.

“Yes, Ms. Miller?”

“Did Mr. Prescott ever mention me before he met me?”

Vincent glanced at me in the rearview mirror, and something unreadable flickered across his face.

“What makes you ask that, Ms. Miller?”

“I’m just curious. The way he treats me is…”

I didn’t know how to put it. He treated me differently, yet he refused to admit he loved me. But if it was only obligation, why had he gone so far against Whitmore Holdings because of me?

Vincent was quiet for a moment as though carefully choosing his words.

“I’ve worked for Mr. Prescott for eight years. In all that time, I’ve never seen him genuinely care about any woman. Ms. Whitmore pursued him for years, and he could barely be bothered to look at her. But ever since you came into his life, Ms. Miller, he has done one thing after another that is completely out of character.”

“What kinds of things has he done?”

“Like giving you that black card.” Vincent smiled. “It draws from Mr. Prescott’s private account and has no connection to Prescott Holdings.”

“The money in that account came from the inheritance his parents left him and the returns on investments he made early in his career. It was his final safety net, the fund he planned to use to rebuild if Prescott Holdings ever collapsed.”

“He had never allowed anyone else to touch that account.”

I froze.

“He… handed me his entire safety net?”

“That’s why I wasn’t just being polite when I called you cute in the car,” Vincent said. “I genuinely thought you were remarkable. You got Mr. Prescott to entrust you with his lifeline.”

I looked at my reflection in the car window.

My face was pale, my lips had almost no color, my hair was tied back in a careless ponytail, and I was wearing a hoodie I had bought online.

I looked like the most ordinary woman imaginable.

Why was Adrian so good to me?

When the car pulled up outside my apartment building, I saw several reporters waiting near the entrance with professional cameras and recording equipment.

The instant I stepped out of the Maybach, camera flashes erupted around me.

I instinctively raised a hand to cover my face and hurried inside.

The first thing I did when I reached my apartment was check my phone.

No. 1 trending on X: #PrescottHoldingsShortSellingQuestions#

No. 2 trending on X: #WhitmoreHoldingsAccountingFraud#

No. 3 trending on X: #MysteryWomanSeenLeavingAdrianPrescottsCar#

I opened the third topic.

The post featured a photograph of me getting out of the car moments earlier. The image was grainy, but the side of my face was clearly visible.

The comment section was already in an uproar.

[Who is she? Is she Mr. Prescott’s new girlfriend?]

[She looks completely average. Is Mr. Prescott’s taste really that bad?]

[I heard she’s a receptionist at one of Prescott Holdings’ subsidiaries.]

[She’s a receptionist? Is Adrian seriously slumming it?]

[Do you think she’s using the pregnancy to lock him down? I heard she’s carrying Mr. Prescott’s baby.]

I stared at the comments, unable to identify the feeling twisting inside me.

I had been through the same thing in my previous life.

After I married Adrian, the internet was flooded with comments saying that fools had all the luck and calling our marriage a real-life Cinderella story.

No one thought Adrian and I belonged together. Everyone believed I had simply hit the jackpot.

I had assumed that being given a second chance at life would make those words stop mattering to me.