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 were shaking 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 from 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 to get out of my parents’ house. I got a job at Henderson and Price Law Firm 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. He talked about the future like it was already his, 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 401k, saving every spare dollar. My grandmother always said a woman should have her own money. Not secret money, she’d clarify—just her own. Something nobody could 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. So I became his unpaid everything: bookkeeper, office manager, client liaison, interior decorator for model homes, marketing coordinator, event planner. I did it all while raising Tyler, managing our household, and somehow keeping everyone fed and reasonably happy. My official title was wife. My unofficial title was everything else.
For eleven years, I poured myself into building Vincent’s dream. And for eleven years, he got the credit, the awards, the recognition. At every industry event, I was Vincent’s wife. At every celebration, he thanked his team, his mentors, his vision—but somehow never quite got around to thanking me.
Somewhere along the way, things shifted. He started making decisions without consulting me. Started staying late for work more and more often. Started criticizing little things—the way I dressed, the meals I cooked, my lack of ambition, lack of ambition. I was running his entire back office for free while raising his son and keeping his life organized, but sure—not ambitious enough.
Then three months ago, he dropped the bomb. He came home on a Tuesday evening. I was making dinner—his favorite, actually, because I’m apparently a glutton for unappreciated effort. He sat me down at the kitchen table with this look on his face. Not sad, not apologetic—just business-like.
“I want a divorce,” he said. “And then I want the house, the cars, the business, everything. You can keep Tyler.”
He said it like he was ordering from a menu. I’ll have the assets. Hold the child. Thanks. Keep Tyler—like our fifteen-year-old son was leftover pizza, like he was an inconvenience being graciously allowed to stay with me. I just stared at him. Fifteen years of marriage, and this was how it ended—at our kitchen table, between the salt shaker and the butter dish—like I was just another item he was discarding.
What I didn’t know in that moment—what I wouldn’t find out until later—was that Vincent had been planning this for months. He already had a lawyer, Harold Whitfield. Expensive and experienced. He’d been building his exit strategy while I was meal prepping and scheduling his dentist appointments. I’d been blindsided by a man I’d trusted with everything.
The next day, his mother showed up. Lorraine Mercer—a woman who had treated me like the help for fifteen years—arrived with her perfectly styled hair and her perfectly practiced sympathy face. She patted my hand and told me I should have tried harder to keep him happy.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page to discover the rest 🔎👇
