I was erased from the family portrait the day my husband became CEO.
It was a digital edit, they said. A simple crop for the annual report. But when I saw the final proof on Warrick’s screen, my space was just… empty air. His mother, his father, his sister, his childhood best friend, Elodie, all smiling. Where I should have been standing, there was only a sliver of curtain.
He never cheated. I almost wish he had. At least that would have been a choice he made with his whole body, not this slow, quiet disappearance of me from his life, piece by piece. It was Elodie’s opinion on the new marketing campaign. It was his mother’s “suggestions” for our apartment. It was missing my father’s birthday dinner for a “can’t-miss” meeting with Elodie.
I was always the problem. Too sensitive. Misunderstanding the pressure he was under. Why couldn’t I see that Elodie was just part of the team? That his family only wanted to help?
The day I left, the portrait was framed on his desk. He didn’t notice me packing. He was on the phone with her, laughing at a joke I hadn’t heard. I looked at that perfect, smiling group. A family. His family. And I realized I had never been in it.
I left the keys on the glass tabletop. The click of the latch was the quietest sound in the world. Would he even notice I was gone? And if he did, would the man I married finally fight for me, or was he already lost to the image they had created for him?
There is no cheating in this book.
