The Uninvited Witness

The System dropped me onto my husband's bed. While he was in it. With his mistress.
I watched, in stunning clarity, as their frantic, bare-skinned movements ground to a halt. Three of us, just staring at each other, wide-eyed in the dim light of the hotel room.
With a calmness I didn't feel, I answered the buzzing phone in my hand. "Yeah, my husband's cheating."
"Proof? I'm sitting on their bed, watching them."
Without another word, I flipped the camera and recorded. The video captured their shocked, half-naked forms, a portrait of betrayal.
"Ava, you send that out, and you can forget about ever being Mrs. Cole again!" Ethan roared.
I calmly forwarded the video to the Cole family group chat, then pulled the divorce papers I’d prepared from my purse.
"Sign it."
"Without me, you won't even be able to afford your next meal!" he sneered, scrawling his name with a defiant, mocking flourish.
He and his little tramp were still radiating smug confidence until they saw me step into a waiting Rolls-Royce. The looks on their faces were priceless.

1.
The family group chat notifications exploded, hitting 99+ in seconds. Most were condemnations aimed squarely at me.
"Every man strays, Ava. It's natural. It's your own fault for not being able to keep his interest." That was his aunt.
"A little fling? Honey, listen to someone who's been around. As a woman, you need to be more forgiving." That, from his cousin.
"Is that all? I thought it was something serious. You're making a mountain out of a molehill."
The Cole family vultures had always known how to pick at me. No matter what Ethan did, the fault would always be spun back to me.
I let out a bitter laugh, staring at the screen. "Runs in the family, I guess. A whole clan of hypocrites."
For years, I'd swallowed their condescension because of my humble beginnings. I endured it all. But when the System unlocked a few days ago, showing me the full, sordid extent of Ethan’s betrayal, my heart finally froze over. The System gave me the courage to finally shatter the illusion.
Watching Ethan sign those papers, a profound sense of peace washed over the storm that had raged inside me for so long.
A genuine smile touched my lips, feeling like the first ray of sunshine after a long winter.
"If I were you, Ava," Lily, the mistress, said, her voice dripping with false pity, "I'd be on my knees, begging him for a second chance."
I tucked the signed agreement neatly into my purse. "Oh." I paused. "I didn't realize you were into that sort of thing. If you want to kneel for someone, find a mirror."
"You—!" Veins bulged on his clenched fist.
"You've played Mrs. Cole for a few years and you really think your little Cinderella story was permanent?" he spat. "Without me, you're nothing."
Seeing that I was officially on my way out, Lily’s face lit up with triumph. With Ethan’s fury as her stage, she began her performance.
"Oh, Ethan, darling, I'm so sorry," she simpered, sliding off the bed and onto her knees before me. "This is all my fault. I'm the one who drove a wedge between you and Ava."
She looked up at me, her eyes welling up with perfectly timed tears. "I shouldn't have fallen for him. But Ava… do you know what it's like to be sick with longing? It's a poison, worse than anything you could drink. I tried to stay away, I really did. But when I saw him again a few days ago, I knew… I could never fight it."
Her voice cracked, a masterpiece of contrived heartbreak. "I love him more than life itself. I couldn't torture myself any longer…"
Ethan looked genuinely stunned, as if he was trying to remember when their cheap affair had developed this level of profound, earth-shattering passion. As Lily’s monologue reached its crescendo, his confusion melted away, replaced by a glistening sympathy that caught the fading afternoon light.
"It was all me," she sobbed, "I pursued him relentlessly. I'm the one who wronged you, Ava. Hit me, scream at me, do whatever you need to do. I won't fight back. Just… please, I beg you, retract that video. Don't let my mistake ruin his reputation."
It had been well over two minutes. The video couldn't be retracted. This was all for show—a play to cement her image as a selfless, devoted victim. And, of course, to announce her arrival to the Cole family and pave her way to becoming the next Mrs. Cole.
I stared down at her impossibly sincere face, getting my first real lesson in high-level manipulation.
I crouched down, meeting her tear-filled gaze. "I remember you've only met Ethan twice. I'm curious. Where, exactly, did this all-consuming, unforgettable love come from in two meetings?"
My eyes flicked to the man on the bed, who now seemed to be deeply moved.
"Or," I continued, my voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "was this whole performance just bait to hook a much bigger fish?"
Ethan’s expression froze. The bedsheets crumpled in his tightening grip. His cool, detached eyes turned on Lily, now filled with a flicker of suspicion.
"Lily," he asked, his voice suddenly uncertain. "Do you really love me that much? Or are you after something else?"
She barely flinched before seamlessly weaving this into her narrative.
"Ethan, do you believe in love at first sight? I never did," she said, her voice soft and wounded. "Not until I met you."
She rose gracefully, picking up her coat and draping it over her shoulders with an air of tragic dignity. "Just knowing I could feel this way is enough for me. I won't bother you again."
And with that, she walked toward the door without a shred of hesitation.
The suspicion in his eyes melted into a puddle of misplaced tenderness. He snatched a shirt and scrambled after her. "Lily!"
I followed them out.
Just outside the motel entrance, Ethan was gently wiping the tears from her cheeks. He used to be so cold to everyone else in the world, reserving that specific, tender gaze only for me. I couldn’t pinpoint when it happened, when he started looking at me like a stranger, when all his warmth was redirected to her.
Seeing me emerge, he instinctively pulled Lily behind him, shielding her just as fiercely as he had once shielded me from his family's judgment.
"I know whether Lily's love is real or not," he snapped. "When did you become such a manipulative bitch, Ava? Trying to drive a wedge between us? I almost fell for it."
I just shook my head, a real smile playing on my lips. "You're a fool."
"You know how much I hate women who play games! And to think I loved you so much. I never knew you were this kind of person."
His own mother had divorced his father over a manipulative mistress—a woman who went on to become the new Mrs. Cole and gave him a half-brother to compete for the family fortune. His stepmother, the current matriarch, was always praising him, always taking his side. But Ethan knew it was all an act, a slow and patient campaign to ruin him with kindness, inflating his ego only to watch him pop.
I knew better than anyone how much he despised that kind of deception. The irony was suffocating. After being expertly manipulated by his stepmother for years, he couldn't even recognize it when it was staring him in the face.
Or maybe he was just like his father. Maybe he saw the trap clearly and walked into it anyway, willingly, for the sake of a little warmth.
"For the sake of what we once had," he said, puffing out his chest, "I'll give you one last chance. Tear up those papers, apologize for this mess, and I'll let you remain Mrs. Cole."
I walked past them, giving them both one last, cold glance. "One's a performer, the other's an idiot. You can keep the title. If Miss Mayfair here wants it so badly, she can have it."
"You'll regret this, Ava! You'll be begging on the streets!"

2.
A low purr grew into a powerful hum, and a black Rolls-Royce Ghost glided to a stop in front of the seedy motel.
The man in the driver's seat nodded at me. "Get in."
I slid into the plush leather seat without a backward glance.
In the rearview mirror, I saw Ethan’s face, a mask of pure shock. Lily stood beside him, her jaw so tight I thought her teeth might crack, her eyes burning holes into the back of my head.
The car was a hundred yards down the road before I heard the faint, furious echo of Ethan’s voice carried on the wind.
"Ava! You dare cheat on me with another man? You shameless whore!"
...
The tree shadows flickered past, never lingering, blurring into a stream of green and grey. My mind drifted back.
I was adopted. My foster mother raised me, poured everything she had into my education, into making me someone. Then fate played its cruelest joke. The summer the cicadas sang their loudest, she was diagnosed with cancer. Our savings were a drop in the bucket against the cost of her treatment.

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