What He Forgot About Sterling

For five years, my genius husband saw me as an empty-headed trophy wife.

He publicly humiliated me for his brilliant protégée—a woman my family's charity put through college.

But when he dragged me, nine months pregnant, up the stairs and risked our child's life to defend her honor, he made a fatal mistake.

He forgot my name is Sterling, and the Sterling empire doesn't just get even. It gets biblical.


1


Five years of marriage, and I knew one thing for certain: my husband despised me. To him, I was nothing more than a "trophy wife," a decorative piece from an old-money Manhattan family.

He was Dr. Adam Cole, one of the country's leading astronomers, a man who conversed with the cosmos. I was Charlotte Sterling, a woman who played Chopin and arranged peonies.

He and the brilliant young student my family sponsored would lose themselves in conversations about nebulae and wormholes. I would be tracking the fall couture collections.

While he stood at a podium at an international symposium with his protégée, I was making headlines for winning a bidding war at Christie's over a diamond necklace—a bauble I needed for a single charity gala.

When I once begged him to celebrate our anniversary, his voice was laced with ice.

"I prefer not to engage too deeply with the world of finance and power."

"My work is sacred."

Then he turned around and spent the evening patiently teaching his student how to calibrate a new telescope.

The breaking point came when he, in a fit of rage to defend that same student's honor, dragged me—nine months pregnant—up the stairs, inducing a dangerous premature labor.

That was when I finally signed the divorce papers. It was time to give us both back our freedom.

Without him, I was still Charlotte Sterling, the most sought-after heiress on the Upper East Side.

Without me… well, he was about to find out.

…

I dialed Adam’s number.

“What is it?”

His voice on the other end was cold, clipped, the impatience radiating through the phone. I rested a hand on my swollen belly, the skin stretched taut over the life inside. I’d called to tell him my due date was just a week away, to ask him to clear his schedule.

Before I could speak, a chirpy, saccharine-sweet female voice cut through the background.

“Professor, is that your wife calling to bother you at work again?”

“Honestly, back where I’m from, pregnant women were still out working in the fields. She’s so delicate, acting like being pregnant gives her a right to call and pester you all day.”

“She’s slowing down our research! Ugh.”

It was his student, Maya Rivera.

Adam’s tone softened into something warm and indulgent, a complete reversal of the frost he reserved for me. “Your ‘Mrs. Cole’ was spoiled from the day she was born, Maya. She isn’t like you—an independent, modern intellectual.”

“Her days are empty. It’s just a cycle of spending money and then spending more money. How could she possibly understand the sacrifices we make for our research? She calls whenever the whim strikes her.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll handle her. I won’t let her disrupt our progress.”

He made no effort to lower his voice. He’d never bothered to hide his contempt for me. He conveniently forgot that his own parents had practically begged my family for this marriage, that the line of suitors for my hand had stretched from Park Avenue to Paris.

I was about to fire back a retort, but he cut me off.

“Charlotte, you heard that. This project is at a critical stage. I need you to stop calling me over every little thing.”

“I don’t expect you to grasp the importance of this work—you’re a pampered socialite who has never worked a day in her life. But at least try not to drag me down with you.”

And then, he hung up.

The father of my child hadn't asked a single question about him.

I sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, the silence of our cold, cavernous apartment pressing in on me. I wondered if there was anything left of this marriage to save.

That evening, I waited up for him, as was my custom. It wasn't about love anymore; it was about maintaining the facade, the basic respect a wife of my station was expected to show her husband, even if it was never returned in kind. And I needed to ask him one last time if he would be at the hospital when I gave birth. Not for me, but for my parents. I couldn't bear for them to see the full, brutal extent of his neglect.

But midnight came and went. Adam never came home.

Just as I was about to turn in, a notification lit up my phone. A new post on his Instagram.

The caption read: Celebrating my most brilliant student's birthday with a view of the blood moon!

The photo was a gut punch. Maya, her sun-kissed skin glowing in the moonlight, had her head resting on my husband’s shoulder. They sat close, gazing up at the crimson-stained moon like a pair of lovers.

A comment from a mutual friend in our circle appeared almost instantly:

Adam, Charlotte is over nine months pregnant. Don't you think you should be home with her instead of watching the moon with your student? This doesn’t look right.

Adam’s reply was as cold and arrogant as I’d come to expect:

She is a perfectly adequate society wife, but she is not the wife of my heart.

Our marriage was an arrangement. My parents valued the Sterling family's influence and resources. I married her to secure an alliance, to stabilize my family’s position. It was a transaction.

But Maya is the only one who speaks my language. Discussing the universe with her—that’s when I feel alive, when I know my worth. Maya is the kind of brilliant, intellectual woman I’ve always admired.

My knuckles turned white as I gripped my phone. It wasn’t sadness that I felt, but the pure, unadulterated rage of public humiliation.

I had tried, for the first six months, to build a real marriage with him. When I realized it was hopeless, I gave up. With a ten-billion-dollar dowry, a loveless marriage was an inconvenience, not a tragedy. But this… this public shaming was a declaration of war.

As if on cue, Maya’s comment popped up right below his.

Thank you for believing in me, Professor. <3

And please don’t be hard on your wife. A woman like her, who’s never known a single day of hardship, could never understand the passion that drives people like us!

Heart.JPG

The two of them, performing this little play for the world to see, stoked the fire in my gut. I opened my chat with Adam. The log was nearly empty. Our last exchange was six months ago.

I hit the call button. He answered.

“Delete the post,” I said, my voice dangerously calm.

“I don’t give a damn what’s going on between you and your protégée, but the Sterling family name will not be dragged through the mud. I don’t want my parents to see this and worry.”

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