When Her Cheating Husband’s Luck Ran Out Chapter 05

When Her Cheating Husband’s Luck Ran Out Chapter 05 Ten Years Gone

The one with the scar waved a hand and two of the men behind him stepped up.

One of them grabbed my arm and hauled me away from her. The other came up with tape and rope, bound my wrists in a few quick motions, and pressed a strip of tape over my mouth.

Everything I tried to say came out as a muffled noise behind the tape.

I fought as hard as I could, and it counted for nothing against them.

“Josie!” My mother lunged forward and the one with the scar put an arm out to stop her.

‘Easy now, ma’am.” He was still grinning. “You cooperate with us and nobody lays a finger on her.”

‘What do you want from us?” My mother’s voice cracked on the question.

They shoved me into a closet.

woke up in the dark of that closet, and it was already the next day.

The hashtags were #PierceWifeAffair, #Betrayed Billionaire, and #Vivian Pierce.

All three sat in the top slots on the trending list and cleared a billion views before noon.

The pictures went out with them, my mother and several men, her clothes torn half off her, her face perfectly clear in every frame.

The comments turned into a pile-on.

Adrian Pierce treated her like gold and she does this to him?]

Five guys. Five. Some people have no shame.]

She should walk away from that marriage with nothing.]

Poor guy built the whole thing from nothing and this is the thanks he gets.]

At ten that morning, Adrian held a press conference.

He wore a charcoal suit, his eyes were red-rimmed, and his voice came out rough.

“Thank you all for your concern for my family” He dipped his head toward the cameras.

“I don’t want to say much about my wife. She built this company with me from nothing and she went through a lot to do it. I think

she made one bad decision.

“I’m going to forgive her. She’s still the mother of my child.”

The livestream chat and the comment section went off at once.

Adrian Pierce is a good man!]

[He’s forgiving THAT? He’s too decent for his own good.]

[I’m crying. This is what a real man looks like.]

[Vivian never deserved him!]

I turned the phone off and looked over at my mother by the window.

A few days later, the story burned itself out. The house went quiet, as though none of it had ever happened.

When my visa came through, my mother drove me to the airport.

She turned to Marcus, standing beside me.

“Take care of Josie for me. Thank you.”

Marcus was around 38 and had never been much of a talker.

He nodded once. “You take care of yourself.” Then he took my hand and walked me toward the gate.

The plane climbed and leveled off.

Somewhere in the hum of the engines I thought I heard my mother, as if her voice had come from nowhere at all.

“System, take me home.

“Goodbye, baby. Mom loves you.”

Ten years went by. My office sat on the sixty-eighth floor of the Vantage Financial Center.

“Ms. Pierce, Kestrel’s third-quarter numbers.”

Nolan Reid, my assistant, dropped the file on my desk with the excitement showing behind his glasses. “Their cash flow is stretched about as thin as it goes. If we pull the Arclight contract out from under them this month…”

“We’re not waiting.” I set my coffee down and opened the report.

Ten years abroad had turned me into somebody else. Marcus had put me in the best schools with the best teachers. I skipped two grades through high school, finished a master’s in finance at 19, and started my own investment firm at 22.

For ten years, I slept five hours a night.

I studied economics, then finance, then management, then how markets actually moved.

None of it was for me. All of it was for this.

“Bid Arclight 3 percent under Kestrel. Tighten our technical proposal and have it on my desk before tomorrow.”

“Understood.”

After Nolan left, I got up and walked to the window

Vantage looked good at night, thousands of lit windows and neon running down the avenues.

Kestrel’s tower stood on the south side, a whole city away, and I could almost make out the logo burning on its roof.

Ten years earlier, photographs of my mother pinned to the floor by five men had spread across every feed in the country.

Now it was my turn to show Adrian what pain actually felt like.