His lawyer leaned in and whispered five words—just five—and Vincent’s face, that smug, self-satisfied face I’d stared at across the breakfast table for fifteen years, went completely white.
His hands started trembling. The papers he’d been so eager to sign shook like leaves in a storm.
And me?
For the first time in three years, I smiled.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Let me start at the beginning, because you need to understand how we got here—how a woman everyone thought had lost her mind actually played the longest, most patient game of her life.
My name is Alexis Dunst. I’m thirty-four years old, and until three months ago I was married to Vincent Mercer. Fifteen years of marriage. That’s longer than most Hollywood relationships, longer than some small countries have existed, and definitely longer than my patience should have lasted.
But I’m a stubborn woman. I get it from my grandmother.
I met Vincent when I was seventeen. I’d graduated high school early—not because I was some genius, but because I was practical and motivated and really, really wanted out of my parents’ house. I took a job at Henderson & Price, a law firm downtown, as a file clerk.
Minimum wage. Maximum paper cuts. But it was mine.
By eighteen, I’d worked my way up to legal assistant. I was good with details, good with numbers, good with keeping my mouth shut and my eyes open.
Vincent was twenty-four when we met at a client event. Charming. Ambitious. Full of dreams about building a real estate empire in America like it was already his birthright. He talked about the future like success was just waiting for him to show up and claim it.
He said he was going to build something incredible.
I said I’d help him file the paperwork.
Romance, right?
We got married when I was nineteen.
Tyler came along when I was twenty.
I kept working at the law firm part-time while raising our son, building up my 401(k), saving every spare dollar. My grandmother always said a woman should have her own money.
“Not secret money,” she’d clarify. “Just your own. Something nobody can take.”
At twenty-three, Vincent’s business finally took off. He asked me to quit the law firm and help him full-time. He needed someone to manage the books, handle clients, coordinate with contractors—someone he could trust completely.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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