Married To My Ex-Fiancé's Silent Uncle

Twenty minutes before the "Wedding of the Century" at The Plaza, I stood outside the Presidential Suite in a fifty-thousand-dollar Vera Wang gown. I was the girl from a West Virginia trailer park about to marry Hugh Maxwell, the golden heir to a billion-dollar defense empire. I pushed the door open only to find Hugh pinned against the bed with my own stepsister, Floy. She was wearing my bridal diamond necklace, and the sounds of their laughter scraped against my eardrums like sandpaper. I didn't scream; I listened as Hugh grunted that once the wedding was over and the trust fund unlocked, he'd dump "that hillbilly trash" on a bus back to the mountains. They weren't just cheating; they were planning to steal my family's land deeds and leave me with nothing. When I set off the sprinklers and exposed their naked bodies to the paparazzi, the Maxwell family didn't apologize. They called me a "greedy peasant" and threatened to ruin my life unless I signed a new deal to save their crashing stock. I realized then that I was never a bride to them. I was a transaction, a rounding error in a ledger to be used and discarded. They thought my poverty made me weak and my silence made me a victim. "If we don't have a marriage certificate by midnight, the bank freezes thirty percent of our liquidity," their lawyer warned. So, I gave them exactly what they wanted. I used a loophole in their hundred-year-old family covenant and married the only other direct heir available. I didn't marry Hugh. I walked into the ICU and married his uncle, Fleet Maxwell-the legendary war hero who had been in a vegetative state for months. Now, I am the matriarch of the Maxwell dynasty. I've suspended Hugh's executive powers, exiled my mother-in-law to the Swiss Alps, and taken control of the family vault. They think I'm just a gold-digger waiting for a "corpse" to die so I can collect a fifty-million-dollar widow's payout. But last night, as I lay beside my comatose husband, the man they called a vegetable gripped my hand back.

Modern Scheming Contract marriage Billionaires

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I stared at myself in the mirror, rolling my eyes. I just couldn't believe that I would dress in such a revealing way, but I had no other choice.

Shane Hayes and I had been married for two years. Today was our wedding anniversary. He had been seldom in the mood to have sex. If I didn't take the initiative to seduce him, it worried me that I might lose him. Thus, I decided to go all out tonight.

Seconds later, I heard a noise outside the door.

I took off my coat and walked out of the room in a red slip dress.

"Honey, I really missed you!" I wrapped my arms around his neck and planted a kiss on his lips.

Shane pushed me away, eyeing me up and down. I noticed that he was in a trance for a moment.

Truthfully, I was happy, thinking that he might like seeing me in such an outfit.

"Why are you dressed like that?"

he asked, walking to the sofa to sit down.

"Do you remember what day it is today?" I asked, sitting next to him, hoping that he knew the answer.

For a few seconds, Shane contemplated before he said, "What day is it?"

Disappointment flashed through my heart, but I kept on smiling.

"Nothing special. I was just kidding." I threw myself into his arms, sliding my hand under his shirt and rubbing his chest. "Do you want to take a shower, honey? I'll prepare the water."

"That's not necessary. If you have nothing else to say, I'm going to head back to the study to get some rest."

He then pushed me away and walked towards his study.

As I sat on the sofa, I clenched my fists and felt my fingernails digging into my palms.

Ever since I got pregnant, he had moved into the study, because he said that he didn't want the baby to get hurt or something.

I was only twenty-six years old. I was married and pregnant, but I had to sleep by myself every single night. Nowadays, I had been living a lonely and miserable life.

I had once gone online to ask around in certain forums. One particular comment piqued my interest. Someone mentioned that my husband's lack of interest might stem from the fact that he had already seen lots of other women's bodies.

Shane was an obstetrician by profession, so this made sense.

But there was one tiny detail that kept nagging at the back of my mind.

Each time he stayed in his study, he would always lock the door. We were the only people in this house, so there was no need to lock the door. It made no damn sense! It made me wonder if he was hiding something.

I had been thinking long and hard about this for days, until it became my biggest concern. I was so troubled by it that it began to disrupt my daily life.

Not wanting to continue on guessing, I had installed a bug under his bed this afternoon.

As soon as I went back to my room, I put on earphones.

Once I had gained access to the bug, I heard the unmistakable sound of panting and moaning. I felt a lump in my throat, and my eyes welled up with tears.

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