First Love or Husband? I Choose Neither Chapter 04

First Love or Husband? I Choose Neither Chapter 04

After Adrian and I got married, he stopped acting like the charming playboy everyone else knew.

For two years, he stayed exactly where he was supposed to, right by my side.

But the clock was ticking on his fidelity.

A man like him was never going to stay loyal to anyone forever.

To me, the marriage had always been a strategic ornament, something that kept the Hale family from collapsing completely.

So I wasn’t heartbroken when things started to crack. Back then, my only concern was maximizing the lifespan of this hollow union or, barring that, ensuring I bled the Mercer estate dry when the end finally came.

What I hadn’t expected was that the woman would be Sienna, the same girl Adrian had looked down on when he first hired her.

And Sienna, unfortunately, had no intention of staying in her place.

The day she started sending me those obscene photos and videos, I was at a family dinner at the Mercer estate, playing the radiant daughter-in-law while Adrian’s parents pushed, once again, for grandchildren.

At the same time, my phone kept lighting up with messages from Sienna.

Sienna:[Ms. Hale, I’m pregnant with Mr. Mercer’s baby.]

Sienna replied:[We’re in love. Please let us be together.]

I acted like I hadn’t seen them.

I acted like none of it had happened.

What I hadn’t expected was Adrian stumbling home drunk that same night and confessing everything himself.

“Sienna’s pregnant,” he said, slumped across from me, his words thick with alcohol. “The baby’s mine.”

He looked at me through bleary eyes. “I want her to keep it.”

I just stared at him.

My mouth opened, then closed again.

My hand, resting over my lower stomach, gave an involuntary flinch.

“Are you sure?” I asked at last.

“If you are,” I said evenly, “I’ll make room for her.”

Adrian jerked his head up and stared at me, stunned, as if even he hadn’t expected such a bloodless surrender.

But the flash of relief on his face vanished the moment it appeared.

He grabbed my hand and demanded, “Celeste, did you never love me at all?”

His grip tightened. “Are you still thinking about that goddamn first love of yours?”

His voice rose with every word until he was almost shouting.

“If I cheated on you and divorced you, if I brought her home tomorrow and had her live here while she carried my child, would you seriously not care at all?”

I watched him spiral.

Watched him smash an entire floor-to-ceiling bar.

Glass shattered everywhere.

Amber spilled across the floor.

He stood there in the middle of it all, breathing hard, then looked at me like a man who had already lost.

“Celeste,” he said, his voice turning hoarse, “couldn’t you love me just a little? Just a little would’ve been enough…”

I said nothing.

After that, Adrian stopped coming home most nights. He took Sienna everywhere with him.

At parties, dinners, business events, any place I wasn’t there, he was playing her knight in shining armor, holding umbrellas over her head, driving her to and from work like they were paragons of a grand, forbidden romance.

The rumors exploded.

Every time they did, I stepped in and cleaned it up.

I killed the press, bought off the stories, buried every headline before it could spread too far.

I stayed comfortably in my seat as Mrs. Mercer, covering for Adrian again and again.

But Sienna ran out of patience.

Or maybe the baby in her stomach did.

“Ms. Hale, when are you finally going to agree to the divorce?” she asked me one day over coffee.

Her hand rested lightly over her abdomen. “I don’t want my child to be born without legal status.”

I stirred my coffee and almost laughed. “That part’s easy,” I said. “A man like Adrian can solve the paperwork with one phone call.”

Then I looked up at her.

“You’re being naive, Sienna. Marriages like mine don’t end with one signature and a clean goodbye. There’s too much money, too much influence, too much collateral damage.”

I let the spoon clink softly against the cup.

“Think about it. Do you really believe a family like the Mercers would ever let a mistress and an illegitimate heir walk through the front door and claim a seat at the family altar?”

I paused, then finished calmly, “And for the record, I’m not the one refusing to divorce him. Adrian is.”

Maybe I hit too close to the bone.

That night, Sienna tried to kill herself.

She slit her wrists.

The baby didn’t survive.

Adrian came storming home with his eyes veined with rage, grabbed me by the throat, and pinned me against the wall until the world turned grey at the edges.

“Who told you to go see her?” he snarled.

His fingers tightened so hard I could barely breathe.

“Do you have any idea how close she came to dying? Because of a few things you said, she lost the baby!”

He shook me like he wanted to rattle the life out of me. “Celeste, do you want this divorce that badly?”

Then he spat the words at me like a curse. “Fine. Then we’ll divorce.”

Later, I found out what had really happened.

Sienna had cut her wrists to force Adrian into leaving me, and in the process, she lost the pregnancy.

She told him I had gone to see her.

She told him I had pushed her there.

One sentence from her, I love you that much, was enough to keep Adrian’s heart tied to her.

And another, Celeste never loved you at all, severed the last thread between Adrian and me.

Then the rumors started again.

“Sienna was never pregnant to begin with.”

“She staged a phantom pregnancy just to trap him.”

“And honestly, Mrs. Mercer is way too generous. She agreed to divorce him just like that? If it were me, I’d make that cheating bastard and his little side piece miserable for years.”

By the time those words reached me, the hand that had been ready to sign the divorce agreement stopped cooperating.

I put the pen down.

“This divorce isn’t happening,” I said.

Then I looked Adrian in the eye and spoke each word slowly enough to draw blood.

“You’re the one at fault, Adrian. If this marriage ends, you walk away with nothing.”