I never told my fiancé about my monthly $37,000 salary. He always saw me living simply. He invited me to dinner with his parents.
I wanted to see how they treated a poor person by pretending to be a ruined, naive girl. But as soon as I walked through the door—the moment I stepped through that mahogany door—I knew I had made either the best decision of my life or the worst mistake imaginable. Patricia Whitmore’s face twisted into something between a smile and a grimace, like she’d just bitten into a lemon while trying to pose for a photograph.
Her eyes traveled down my simple navy dress, my modest flats, my drugstore earrings, and I watched her mentally calculate my net worth and find me worthless. She leaned toward her son—my fiancé, Marcus—and whispered something she thought I couldn’t hear. But I heard every word.
She said, “I looked like the help who had wandered in through the wrong entrance.”
And that’s when I knew this dinner was going to be very, very interesting. My name is Ella Graham. I’m 32 years old, and I have a confession to make.
For the past 14 months, I’ve been keeping a secret from the man I was supposed to marry. Not a small secret, like eating the last slice of pizza and blaming it on the dog. Not a medium secret, like the fact that I still sleep with a stuffed animal from childhood.
No. My secret was that I make $37,000 a month. Before taxes, it’s even more obscene.
After taxes, it’s still the kind of number that makes accountants do a double take and ask if there’s been a mistake. I’m a senior software architect at one of the largest tech companies in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve been writing code since I was 15, sold my first app at 22, and have been climbing the corporate ladder ever since.
I hold three patents. I’ve spoken at international conferences. I have stock options that would make your eyes water.
And Marcus thought I was an administrative assistant who could barely afford her rent. I never actually lied to him. When we met at a coffee shop 14 months ago, he asked what I did, and I said I worked in tech.
He nodded like he understood, then asked if I handled the scheduling for the executives. I smiled and said something vague about supporting the team. He filled in the blanks himself, and I just never corrected him.
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