Hidden Wife: Rising From The Ashes

Hidden Marriage for Two Years, I Hid Our Marriage Certificate and Was Content to Be Nothing but My Husband's Legal Assistant.

Even with severe second- and third-degree burns across my body, I charged into a raging fire to save Gia Delaney, his childhood sweetheart.

Yet Gia felt no gratitude. Instead, she publicly accused me of setting the fire and of coming between them.

I begged my husband Brighton to tell the truth. Instead, he gently held Gia in his arms:

"I tolerated your obsession because I felt sorry for your difficult family background. I never imagined you'd actually delude yourself into thinking I'd marry you. Let me make this clear-Gia is the only woman I've ever loved."

I was on the verge of collapse, desperate for an explanation, when I accidentally bumped into Gia. Brighton shoved me so hard I crashed to the floor.

When I woke up, a nurse handed me a miscarriage report and told me I would never be able to bear children again.

I wanted to run away and disappear. But Brighton, to protect Gia, forged medical records and had me locked away in an illegal psychiatric institution, where guards tortured me with electric shock batons.

I barely escaped that living hell.

This time, what I wanted was more than a divorce. I would bring all my evidence and watch their lives burn to ash.

Chapter 1

Eleanor's POV

For two whole years, I folded our marriage certificate and tucked it into the lining of my wallet, while my husband introduced me to colleagues as nothing more than his legal assistant.

Brighton Donovan was Sterling & Vance Law Firm's youngest junior partner. For one year and five months straight, I had to watch his childhood sweetheart Gia Delaney lounge insolently on his desk, draped in his cashmere coat, sneering at me in front of everyone as a scheming social climber who was delusional enough to think she could steal another woman's man.

Brighton had told me that Gia lost her parents in a house fire five years ago and developed severe PTSD. To keep her stable, I swallowed every grievance and humiliation.

But he never told the firm that the fire started because Gia had passed out drunk with a lit cigarette in her mouth. He never mentioned that I was the one who'd risked my life to drag her out of the burning living room, spending three full months in a burn ward.

Even now, on damp rainy days, the thick hypertrophic scarring on my right forearm still throbbed.

On a rainy Tuesday afternoon, the skin graft on my right wrist suddenly became badly infected, throbbing like a stab wound. Before heading to my afternoon shift at the Metropolitan Art Restoration Lab, I stopped by St. Jude Memorial Hospital to get an antibiotic prescription.

I was walking through the lobby toward the outpatient pharmacy when a hand suddenly clamped down hard on my arm.

Gia stepped in front of me, wearing the cream wool coat Brighton had bought on his last business trip to Chicago, her delicate face twisted with rage.

"You've been following me," Gia spat, her nails digging into the tender, sensitive skin over my burn scar. "You saw Brighton drop me off for therapy, so you tailed me in here, didn't you?"

"Let go of me, Gia," I said, struggling to pull my arm free. "I'm here to pick up my own prescription."

"Don't play dumb, you shameless homewrecker!" Gia shrieked, her shrill voice echoing off the lobby tiles, drawing stares from nurses and waiting patients. "It's not enough that you hang around Brighton at the office all day-now you're stalking his private life? You think running errands for him means you can claim him?"

Her sharply manicured nails dug deep into my swollen, raised scar tissue.

A searing pain shot straight up my arm to my shoulder, making me gag. The inflamed skin tore open under her nails, pus and blood instantly seeping through my thin sleeve.

"Stop it!" I cried out, yanking her hand away. "Gia, I am Brighton's legal wife! We've been married for two whole years! And you know perfectly well how I got these scars-you got drunk and set the fire, and I risked my life to drag you out!"

The noisy lobby went dead silent. The security guard a few meters away stopped in his tracks.

Gia stared at me, eyes wide with disbelief and fury. Instead of backing down, she grabbed the collar of my trench coat and dragged me toward the revolving door.

"You call yourself his wife, huh?" Gia ground out through clenched teeth, spittle flying. "Fine. His office is only three blocks away. Let's go there right now. I'd love to see how Brighton handles a delusional lunatic like you in front of the whole litigation department."

This time, I didn't struggle. I let her drag me through the cold, rain-slicked streets.

For two years, Brighton had begged me again and again to be patient. He said Gia was emotionally fragile and couldn't handle the shock that he belonged to someone else. He promised me that once Gia's insurance settlement came through and her psychological evaluation stabilized, he would throw me a proper, lavish wedding in Manhattan.

I believed his lies. For two years, I quietly cleaned his apartment, ironed his custom shirts. Even when Gia showed up uninvited in the middle of the night, I had to meekly hide in the bedroom.

We arrived on the twenty-fourth floor of the Sterling & Vance building. Gia shoved open the double glass doors of the litigation department and hauled me inside like a stolen object she'd just recovered.

Lawyers, senior paralegals, and administrative staff in the cubicles all looked up.

"Brighton!" Gia wailed, and the moment he stepped out of the corner conference room holding a stack of depositions, tears streamed down her face. "Brighton, look what she's doing to me! She attacked me in the hospital lobby, and now she's going around telling everyone she's your legal wife!"

Brighton stopped dead. His eyes darted rapidly between Gia's tear-streaked face and my blood-soaked sleeve.

I stared straight into his eyes.

"Brighton, tell them," I said, my voice trembling with the anger I'd suppressed for two years. "In front of Gia, in front of everyone in this office, tell them clearly-exactly what am I to you?"

Gia stumbled forward two steps and threw herself bonelessly into his arms, clutching his suit lapels. "Brighton, please... my heart's racing so fast... she was yelling at me about that fire... she told everyone I killed my parents..."

Without a moment's hesitation, Brighton wrapped his arms tightly around her. He stroked her blonde hair and pressed her face to his shoulder.

"Don't be afraid, Gia. I'm right here. You're safe." He murmured soft comforts.

Then Brighton looked up at me, his expression instantly turning to ice.

"Eleanor, get this embarrassing spectacle under control immediately," Brighton's voice boomed across the open office floor. "Out of pity for your difficult family situation, I've tolerated your obsession with me all this time. But bringing your delusions into my workplace? This is completely unreasonable! I have never been married to you. In my life, Gia is the only woman who matters."

A shock went through my whole body, as if a hammer had struck my chest, and I couldn't breathe.

My legs went weak. I stared at the man before me-the man whose wedding ring, on a silver chain, I wore next to my skin under my collar every single day of my life.

The colleagues around me immediately started whispering.

"I knew it. The way she looks at Brighton these months was off."

"She's insane. To actually think she's the partner's wife?"

"Look at the blood on her sleeve. Probably self-harmed for attention."

With trembling hands, I reached into my bag, pulled out my phone, and quickly logged into the state public civil records database. I pulled up our officially certified marriage record and held the lit screen right up to Brighton's face.

"Open your eyes and look at the state seal, Brighton!" I hissed. "Look at the city hall registration number! This was signed in writing by both of us!"

The closest colleagues craned their necks. When they saw the official seal and our two handwritten signatures on the screen, the whispers stopped dead.

Gia caught the shift in everyone's expression. A flash of panic crossed her face, then curdled into hysterical rage.

She lunged forward and swatted my phone away, then raised her heavy leather heel and brought it crashing down on the screen, shattering it into pieces that skittered across the hardwood floor.

"This is forged!" Gia shrieked. "Brighton, she forged your signature! This woman is insane! Call the police and have her locked up in a madhouse!"

Brighton stepped forward expressionlessly, grinding his heel into the wreckage of my phone.

"Gia's right," Brighton said calmly, turning to his senior paralegal. "Call building security and notify the precinct. Ms. Forman used my personal identity information to forge a marriage. She has severe erotomania and now poses a direct physical threat to Ms. Delaney."

"Brighton, are you out of your mind?!" My throat tightened as I stepped forward in disbelief. "It's real! You know perfectly well we live together in the apartment on 84th Street!"

"Security, throw her out." Brighton gave the cold order and turned his back completely, escorting Gia into his private office.

Two burly security guards rushed over and clamped my arms, twisting my injured right wrist behind my back. Agony blurred my vision. As they hauled me through the elevator lobby past dozens of colleagues watching coldly, I bit down hard and refused to lower my head.

Ten minutes later, the police arrived. Based on a written statement from a law firm partner and Gia's fabricated assault complaint, I was arrested on charges of trespassing, identity fraud, and assault.

They locked me in a precinct holding cell. For the next seven days straight, Brighton used every connection he had in the legal world. The firm filed emergency motions with the court, repeatedly extending the mandatory seventy-two-hour psychiatric observation period.

In that cold, damp cell, no one cleaned my torn arm. The skin graft had become completely necrotic. Under filthy paper dressings thrown in through the bars, yellowish pus mixed with old blood. By the fifth day, I ran a high fever, drifting between nightmares of burning ceiling beams and Brighton's cold, rejecting eyes.

Not until the eighth morning did a municipal judge personally review the county database records, confirm the marriage certificate was fully valid in the state system, dismiss the identity fraud charges on the spot, order my unconditional release, and sternly warn us to settle our domestic dispute in civil court.

I stumbled out of the precinct and went straight to a free walk-in clinic on the street.

The on-duty doctor soaked the crusted blood off my forearm with saline. When he saw the tissue underneath, his face darkened.

"The infection has reached the deep fascia," the doctor said, pointing to the stiff, tight tissue around my wrist. "The scar contracture has fused with your flexor carpi radialis tendon. Ms. Forman, you've lost thirty to forty percent of the fine motor function in your right hand. Any delicate brushwork or precision instrument work will cause chronic spasms. This damage... is permanent."

I stood on the sidewalk outside the clinic, holding up my useless right hand. I was an art restorer. These hands were my entire life.

Brighton had destroyed my career, trampled my dignity, wasted my youth-crushing it all underfoot like he'd crushed my phone screen.

I hailed a cab and gave the address of our apartment on 84th Street.

When I turned the key in the lock, the familiar sandalwood cologne scent of Brighton was completely drowned out by a heavy, cloying vanilla perfume.

I walked down the hallway straight to the master bedroom.

Gia Delaney was sprawled insolently across our king-size bed, wearing my silk nightgown. Brighton lay on his side beside her, suit jacket draped over the chair at the headboard, reading a book of poetry aloud, his long fingers gently running through her hair-the exact habit he'd once used to lull me to sleep when burn scar pain kept me awake at night.

The bedroom door bumped the wall with a soft sound.

Brighton's head snapped up. The tenderness on his face vanished instantly, replaced by undisguised irritation and disgust.

"Why are you even back?!" Brighton demanded sharply, getting out of bed while still holding Gia's hand. "After making such a scene in my office, reducing Gia to a nervous wreck! Eleanor, do you have any compassion at all?!"

I walked expressionlessly to the nightstand, picked up the half-full glass of ice water next to his watch, and hurled it full in Brighton's face.

Cold water droplets slid down his eyelashes, soaking his expensive custom Italian shirt.

"Brighton Donovan," I said, looking at him, no tears left in my eyes. "We're getting a divorce."