The Trophy Husband’s Final Strike

After my attempts to negotiate a divorce with my wife over her very public affair went nowhere, I started aggressively swiping her black card, trying to force her hand.

I was at the jeweler, signing the receipt for my fifth luxury watch of the day, when my phone buzzed. It was her lover, calling to reprimand me.

"Do you have any idea how to be a husband? At a time like this, you're out buying Patek Philippes?"

"The company's cash flow is incredibly tight right now. Victoria is losing sleep over this every single night."

"You're her husband, for God's sake. Don't you have a single ounce of empathy for her?"

In the background, I could hear Victorias voice, low and soothing, murmuring something to calm him down.

This was the fifty-ninth time he had called to lecture me about my spending.

He was her companys Chief Financial Officer. He was also the affair she refused to end.

And for three years, we had been locked in a bitter, suffocating stalemate over a divorce she wouldn't grant.

I didn't scream. I didn't justify myself. I simply pressed the red button and cut him off.

Then, I walked out of the boutique, drove straight to a high-end interior design showroom, and swiped the card for another 0-0.5 million on custom furniture and imported appliances.

Moments later, Victoria called. I answered, and she let out a heavy, exhausted sighthe kind reserved for a disobedient child.

"From now on, Cameron is managing your accounts," she announced, her tone clipped and authoritative. "If you need money, you submit a request to him. Hes the CFO. Maybe having to ask him will cure you of this absurd spending addiction."

I listened in silence. The quiet stretched, and my lack of a reaction began to irritate her.

"What are you even trying to prove with all that garbage you bought? Can't we just live our lives in peace?"

"I'm just reminding you of our deal," I said, my voice perfectly level. "Didn't you say that the second I found someone else who actually wanted me, you'd let me go? You'd sign the papers?"

I paused, looking at my reflection in the glass doors of the showroom. "Every dollar I spent today was to buy a dowry for my next wife."

"Honey, I found my true love."

There was a beat of silence on the other end of the line, followed by a soft, incredulous scoff.

"Is this the only trick you have left?" Victoria asked, her voice dripping with disdain.

"I really don't have the energy for your tantrums today, Carter. We're dealing with a crisis at the firm. I don't expect you to understand the pressure, let alone help, but the least you can do is stay out of the way. Stop trying to get my attention by maxing out the Amex."

She sighed again, a calculated mix of exasperation and barely suppressed anger. "I've told you a thousand times. Your position as my husband is completely secure. Stop acting out. Please."

She was always like this. So suffocatingly certain of her own reality.

She had been exactly like this three years ago, and she hadn't changed a bit.

In the background, I heard Camerons voice, laced with a mocking smirk. "You don't think he actually found someone to step out on you with, do you?"

"Please," Victoria laughed, a sound full of supreme, unshakeable confidence. "Who else would have him? With his temper, Im the only woman on earth who could tolerate him."

She always loved to tell people I had a bad temper.

She never stopped to consider that it was her who had taken a mild-mannered, patient man and driven him to the edge of insanity.

Years ago, when she spoke to me like this, I would lose my mind. I would scream until my throat bled. I had even stormed into the corporate headquarters, causing a massive scene, intent on humiliating both her and Cameron in front of the board.

But now? Now, looking into the void of my own heart, I felt absolutely nothing.

From the day I discovered her infidelity, I washed my hands of her company. I stopped caring if it thrived or burned to the ground.

I stopped caring about her.

For three years, she and Cameron paraded around town. Galas, charity dinners, industry events where I, as her husband, should have been standing by her sideshe took him instead. She even brought him to family holidays, introducing him to her relatives while I was left at home.

I became the ultimate punchline among the city's elite.

Yet, even when I was fighting tooth and nail, bleeding myself dry to force a divorce, she refused. She clung to the marriage, insisting I was the most important thing in her life.

She had been so smug the day she laid down her challenge.

I know Im the only one in your heart, Carter. You dont have room for anyone else. If you really want a divorce, go find someone else first. Then well talk.

She vastly overestimated her worth. And she tragically underestimated mine.

The woman I had found was lightyears beyond herin grace, in character, in everything that mattered.

The line went dead.

Still feeling a lingering itch of irritation, I walked into a luxury jeweler and asked to see a diamond tennis necklace.

I handed over the card. The associate swiped it, frowned, and looked up with an apologetic wince. "Sir, I'm so sorry. It appears a limit has been placed on this account. It will only authorize transactions under fifty dollars."

My phone vibrated in my pocket. A text from Cameron.

I hope you understand. Victoria is under an immense amount of stress right now. Once the company weathers this storm, I'll see about raising your daily allowance above fifty bucks. Carter, please. Show some compassion for your wife and stop causing trouble for her.

I stared at the screen and actually let out a laugh.

A kept man, a home-wrecker, lecturing the lawful husband about showing compassion to his wife.

He was playing the saint while actively rolling in the mud. And the worst part was, the rest of the world bought it. In high society, I was the useless, emasculated husband, while the entire extended family had tacitly accepted Cameron, even praising his business acumen.

To her family, I was nothing but a discarded pawnthe son of a ruined dynasty whose parents were facing federal indictment, stripped of all my social and financial value.

When I finally drove back to the sprawling estate I had called home for seven years, it felt like walking into a meat locker.

Victoria and Cameron were sitting on the living room sofa, waiting for me. They were pressed together, thigh to thigh. Camerons hand rested casually on Victorias leg, his thumb lazily stroking her skin.

It was a sight I had grown so numb to that it barely registered on my pulse.

Seeing me walk in empty-handed, Cameron chuckled, patting Victorias leg as if hed won a bet. "You called it. He was just throwing another tantrum."

Victoria let out a soft sigh, playing the role of the endlessly forgiving, exhausted wife. She stood up, Cameron rising with her, and took two steps toward me.

I didn't want to breathe the same air as them. I bypassed them, heading for the stairs.

"Carter," Victoria called out, her tone sharpening. "We need to talk."

I paused on the first step and looked back, a faint smile touching my lips. "About the divorce? Give me a second, let me conference in my attorney."

I threw it out just to shut her up. It was the only way to ensure our conversations ended before they began.

Instantly, the color drained from Victorias face, a flicker of genuine, wounded panic flashing in her dark eyes.

"Oh, stop with the dramatics," she snapped, her expression hardening back into contempt. She grabbed a manila folder from the coffee table and shoved it toward me. "We need to cut costs at home. Cameron put together a budget plan for you. From now on, any personal expenses need to be submitted to him. If he approves the expense, hell transfer the funds."

I caught the fleeting, bitter shadow that crossed Cameron's eyes. Every time I brought up divorce and Victoria vehemently shot it down, I could see the jealous rage practically eating him alive.

But on the surface, he played the perfect, reasonable gentleman.

"Carter," Cameron said softly, "you don't run the business, so you don't understand the realities of keeping this empire afloat. Yes, there's money, but liquidity is tight right now. Every dollar counts. We just need you to be a team player."

I gave a dry, dismissive scoff, ignoring Cameron entirely. I looked straight at Victoria.

"Clear your schedule," I said. "It's time you met my fiance."

Since she refused to believe me, I would just have to put it right in front of her face.

Victoria sneered, her expression twisting as if shed tasted something vile. "Did you skip the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf when you were a kid? Is this fun for you? Do you feel seen?"

It was true. In the early days, when I was desperate to hurt her the way she had hurt me, I had faked having an affair to force a reaction. I used that childish tactic three times. By the fourth, she realized it was a bluff.

So now, when I was dead serious, she still thought it was a desperate ploy for her attention.

Cameron smoothly interjected. "Carter, did you find out Victoria is pregnant with my child? Is that why you're lashing out? Just to hurt her?"

A cold shock rippled through my chest. She was pregnant.

Four years ago, Victoria's desperate promise still echoed in my ears: "Carter, I swear to you, I will never carry another man's child. You are the only man who will ever be the father of my children. Even if it happened by accident, Id take care of it immediately. Please, believe me."

And yet, here she stood, looking at me with a weary exasperation.

"Carter, reign in your temper," she ordered. "I am pregnant. I can't afford the stress, so don't push me right now."

I forced the muscles in my face to relax into a smooth, unbothered smile.

"What a coincidence. My girlfriend is pregnant, too. I really don't have the free time to worry about your stress levels."

Both of them let out incredulous laughs. Neither of them believed a single word.

Victoria's phone rang. She glanced at the screen and walked out toward the terrace to take the call.

The moment the glass door slid shut, the polite smile vanished from Cameron's face. He stepped into my space, dropping his voice to a venomous whisper.

"She refuses to divorce you because she pities you, Carter. Youre an orphan. A washed-up loser. Her family keeping you around is no different than taking in a stray dog."

He leaned closer. "You want to know where a woman's heart is? Look at where her money is. She has entrusted every dime of her personal fortune to me. The company might be strapped for cash, but shes quietly funneled enough money into my offshore accounts to last me ten lifetimes."

He smirked, his eyes gleaming with malicious triumph. "I put you on an allowance because I don't think you deserve to spend her money. So don't get arrogant thinking she can't bear to lose you."

"A piece of paper means nothing to me. I have her money. I have her heart. And my child is going to inherit this entire empire."

His arrogance was suffocating, practically radiating off him. "Oh, by the way. I almost forgot. Victoria promised me that after she delivers this baby, she's getting her tubes tied. So you can give up that pathetic fantasy of her ever giving you a child."

I listened to him, utterly unfazed. My lack of reaction only made him push harder, a sneer twisting his features.

"Even if she didn't get the surgery, it's not like she'd ever let a monk like you touch her anyway."

His smugness was almost comical.

It wasn't that Victoria wouldn't touch me.

It was that I refused to touch her.

It had been a point of massive contention between us. She had thrown violent fits over it, smashing the house to pieces, making her mother believe I was physically abusing her. The police had even been called.

Since that day, whenever she tried to initiate anything, she would tentatively ask, "Can we?"

One dead, freezing look from me was all it took for her to back off.

It had been three years since her affair began. Three years without so much as our fingers brushing.

"Sure," I said, a faint, careless smile playing on my lips. "She only loves you."

Seeing that he couldn't break me, couldn't make me scream or throw a punch, Camerons face flushed with frustrated rage. As I turned back to the stairs, he stepped into my path, desperate to land a lethal blow.

"There's something else you don't know," he hissed. "Your parents bail? That eight-million-dollar bond to keep them out of federal lockup? Victoria could have easily paid it."

He paused, letting the words hang in the air. "She didn't. Instead, she took that exact amount and bought an entire private art collection for me in Europe. Just because I casually mentioned I liked the artist."

"Your parents' freedom was worth less to her than a passing comment I made about some paintings."

A sharp, jagged pain sliced through my chest.

Even though I had long since emotionally detached from her infidelity, this was different. The reality that she had willingly dropped eight million dollars to buy a smile from her toyboy, while watching me drown three years ago trying to save my parents from prison, felt like a knife twisting in my gut.

Four years ago, she had watched me beg the old-money families of this city, humiliating myself, getting doors slammed in my face. She watched me go gray in my twenties from the stress, staying awake for days on end, terrified of what was happening to them behind bars.

Back then, she had played the role of the devastated, helpless wife, claiming the company's assets were tied up and she simply couldn't liquidate the cash.

Even though it was my parents who had funded her first startup. It was my parents who had mentored her, pulling strings to elevate her above her siblings so she could take the throne of her family's empire.

She had sworn to me, on her life, that if my family ever needed anything, she would walk through fire for us.

And she had tossed us aside for a few canvases.

Thank God I had found my own way out. Three months ago, I had finally secured the leverage and the capital to clear their names and bring them home.

I looked at Cameron, my eyes turning to ice.

"She gave you the world, and yet she refuses to give you her name. What a fascinating way to love someone."

My sarcasm hit its mark. His face darkened furiously.

Just then, the front door swung open, and Victoria's mother, Beatrice, walked in. Seeing the tension, she immediately assumed the worst.

"Carter!" she barked, her voice echoing off the marble floors. "Are you out of your mind again? Cameron has been nothing but respectful to you. If you lay a hand on him, I swear to God I will make you regret it."

My relationship with my mother-in-law used to be warm. But the moment Cameron entered the picture, it turned into a war zone.

Cameron immediately shrank back, playing the victimized, gentle soul, validating Beatrice's assumption that I was bullying him.

Victoria slid the glass door open and walked back in. Without asking a single question, she defaulted to her usual routine.

"Carter. Apologize to Cameron right now."

I let out a sharp, bitter laugh.

Beatrice glared at me as if she wanted me dead. "What is an apology going to do? Hes a parasite! Victoria, youre pregnant with Camerons child now. He needs to move into the primary suite."

She paused, looking me up and down like I was trash on her shoe. "For the sake of peace, Carter, you're relocating to the Oakwood property."

Oakwood. A three-hundred-square-foot, dingy studio apartment in a bad part of town.

Beatrice had bought it specifically to humiliate me. She had threatened me with it countless times. "If you can't tolerate Cameron, I'll lock you in that dog cage at Oakwood."

To a family of billionaires, a place like that truly was a dog cage.

I looked at Victoria. In the past, she would have stepped in, telling her mother she was taking it too far.

But today, she looked at me and said, "Listen to my mother. You stay there for now. Once the baby is born, you can come back."

I felt absolutely nothing.

"Okay," I said quietly.

Victoria froze. Her eyes widened in sheer, unadulterated shock. She had expected a war.

Cameron looked equally stunned.

When I walked out of that house, Victoria truly believed I had gone to the Oakwood apartment. She allowed Cameron to freeze all my accounts, dropping my limit to twenty dollars a day. She really thought she had locked her disobedient dog in his cage to learn a lesson.

It wasn't until a month after she gave birth to a baby boy, when she finally drove out to the studio to retrieve me, that she realized I had never set foot in the place.

She called me, her voice tight with an unfamiliar anxiety.

"Carter, where are you?"

"Just get to the point," I answered coldly.

Suddenly, Camerons voice came through the speaker. "Carter. Victoria and I had our son. We're throwing a massive month-old celebration banquet. Wed love for you to come."

He was practically purring with malice. "We thought some of our good fortune might rub off on you."

I didn't decline. This was the exact day I had been waiting for.

"Absolutely. We'll be there to offer our congratulations."

I heard Victoria exhale a breath of relief in the background. "See? Sending him away was the right move. He's finally learning how to behave."

I just smiled to myself.

On the day of the baby shower, I walked into the grand ballroom of the Four Seasons, my hand intertwined with my heavily pregnant fiance.

Victoria, radiant and smiling as she held her newborn, looked up.

The moment her eyes locked onto us, all the blood drained from her face. She looked like she had been struck by lightning.

"Carter," Cameron stammered, his eyes darting between me and the woman at my side. "What... who is this?"

Every guest in the room fell dead silent, all eyes locked on me and Serena.

I smiled, smooth and completely at ease, and looked directly at Victoria.

"Wife," I said, my voice carrying clearly across the room. "Allow me to officially introduce you. This is the love of my life, my fiance, and the mother of my childSerena Kensington."