The Unbroken Lotus

Adam’s executive assistant hinted that the new girl wasn’t playing by the rules.
I looked down at the résumé. Sophie Bell. A scholarship student from a program the Shaw Foundation had sponsored.
Four years ago, clutching her university acceptance letter, she’d shown up at our door with a small gift basket to express her gratitude. Adam had turned her away with a cold shoulder.
The timid girl with the neat bangs had blossomed into a poised young woman.
No wonder he’d been coming home later and later from "client dinners."
But she wasn't the only one with a hidden agenda.
Just when my search for proof had hit a dead end, Sophie came to me in private, her voice choked with tears.
"Mrs. Shaw, please… you have to help me. I can’t be used like this anymore…"

1
The girl in the résumé photo was pretty, with quiet, clear eyes that made you want to like her.
What a waste it would be if she were really shameless enough to be the other woman.
A message from Adam popped up on my screen.
[Honey, got a client dinner tonight. I'll be late. Get some rest, and don't you dare stay up late.]
Before I could reply, a new friend request appeared.
The note read: [Mrs. Shaw, this is Sophie Bell, Mr. Shaw’s assistant.]
So it begins.
I accepted the request.
[Good evening, Mrs. Shaw. So sorry to bother you. Mr. Shaw asked me to add you. He said I should let you know when he’s on his way, in case he’s had too much to drink.]
[Thank you, Sophie. I appreciate you looking after him.]
[Not at all, it’s my job.]
Eleven o'clock. My usual bedtime, but tonight my phone felt welded to my hand.
I was waiting.
And right on cue, a message arrived.
[Mrs. Shaw, are you still awake? Mr. Shaw is quite drunk. The driver and I are bringing him home now.]
[I’m up. Thank you for your trouble. I'll be waiting.]
I watched from the doorway as Sophie and our driver helped a stumbling, barely coherent Adam into the house. Her brow was furrowed in a tight line, her slight frame straining under his weight.
The moment she saw me, her eyes lit up with relief.
“Mrs. Shaw… Mr. Shaw’s had a bit too much.”
I moved to take her place, feeling her exhale as I slid my arm around my husband’s waist.
“If there’s nothing else, I’ll be heading out,” she said, her voice small.
I nodded.
“Wait,” I called out just as she reached the door.
She paused, turning back with a questioning look.
“It’s late. It’s not safe for a young woman to go home alone. Let the driver take you.”
A pair of dimples appeared as she smiled. “Thank you, Mrs. Shaw.”
Adam clung to me, his words a drunken slur against my ear. “Clara, my love… I love you so much…”
“Why did you drink so much? You’re going to hate yourself in the morning,” I murmured, guiding him towards the stairs.
“Got you… so I’m not worried…”
I told my best friend, Mia, about it the next day.
“Have I lost my touch?” I wondered aloud. “I just don’t get a homewrecker vibe from this girl.”
Mia let out a short, cynical laugh. “Oh, honey. You’ve been living the good life for so long you’ve forgotten what you’re capable of. This is textbook. Men are all the same. Just you wait. Before you know it, she’ll be posting passive-aggressive digs at you on Instagram.”
I sighed, a heavy weight settling in my chest. Mia’s own husband, Leo, had been getting a little too friendly with his own assistant lately. She hadn’t found any concrete proof, but the cold war between them had been raging for weeks.
Would Adam be the same?
The man who pursued me for three years in college, the man who knelt at my dying mother’s bedside and swore to love and protect me for the rest of his life… was he just another cliché?
I steadied myself. Wallowing wouldn’t solve anything.
But a week passed, and Sophie’s social media remained disappointingly normal. Sunsets at the waterfront, brunch with college friends. Nothing. Aside from being Adam’s shadow at work, there was nothing, at least on the surface, to raise an alarm.
This only made Mia more pessimistic.
“You’ve got an advanced model on your hands,” she said grimly. “These new-generation mistresses have evolved. They’re not the type to shove the evidence in your face anymore.”
I checked everything. The GPS logs in Adam’s car, his credit card statements. Nothing. Not a single anomaly.
Had he really become that meticulous?

2
This intangible, suffocating uncertainty was worse than finding hard evidence. It felt like walking through a thick fog, blind and unnerved.
I replayed the past few weeks in my mind, searching for any detail I might have missed.
There was almost nothing. Adam was as attentive as ever, buying me things he thought I’d like without a second thought.
The only strange thing was the necklace he’d given me last week. It was identical to one he’d bought me years ago. Men aren’t always sentimental about such things; it was plausible he’d just forgotten.
But it had never happened before.
One afternoon, I decided to surprise him and drove to the headquarters of Shaw Corp. But Adam wasn’t there.
His executive assistant, Jenna—an old classmate of mine—pulled me aside, her voice a low whisper.
“He left with Sophie. Said he was going to Leo’s firm to discuss a partnership, but I don’t buy it. There’s no partnership in the works with them right now. God knows where they really went.”
Leo. Mia’s husband. If the two of them were in on this together, covering for each other, then a direct confrontation would only tip them off.
I pulled out my phone.
“Mia, I need you to do something for me.”
Waiting for her to call back, I tried to keep my breathing even, but Jenna must have seen the color drain from my face.
“Hey, don’t panic yet,” she said, her hand on my arm. “If it’s true, you’ve got more important things to focus on.”
She was right. I don’t tolerate betrayal. If I found proof, the grief and heartbreak would have to wait. The divorce would be non-negotiable, and dividing our assets would be a war.
Mia didn’t call back. She showed up in person.
“Clara… something’s not right,” she said, her brow creased with worry.
My stomach plummeted. What could be worse than confirming Adam was cheating?
“Your husband is definitely there,” she began. “But the new girl, Sophie? She’s not with him. She’s just waiting in the lobby’s seating area. Leo saw me and thought I was there to check up on him, made a few snide remarks. But…”
She trailed off, struggling to find the words.
“I never saw Adam.”
“What?”
“He went to Leo’s company. You saw Sophie, you saw Leo, but you didn’t see Adam?”
This wasn’t what I had expected. A powerful wave of unease washed over me. But didn’t this at least mean he wasn’t with Sophie, doing something sordid?
“I left before Leo got too suspicious,” Mia continued. “Clara, what the hell is Adam playing at?”
This was far more complex than I had imagined.
When Adam came home that evening, his smile was as warm and gentle as ever. It was the same smile he’d had in college. He, who had always been so composed and confident, had thrown all decorum to the wind to chase me for three years, doing all sorts of ridiculous things that were completely out of character.
Before him, we had both been the good kids, molded by our families, never having been in a real relationship. We were young when we married, growing together as he took over his family’s business and I opened my art gallery. After my mother passed, I’d drifted away from my father and his new family. In many ways, Adam had filled that void.
“Clara.”
He opened his arms and pulled me into a tight embrace, inhaling deeply at the crook of my neck.
“Just showered?” I asked.
“Mmmhmm.”
He smelled clean, fresh. Not a hint of perfume, not a single foreign scent. His shirt was crisp, without a wrinkle.
“I’ve been so busy lately, I feel bad I haven’t been home for dinner,” he murmured, his fingers gently tracing my jawline. “You’re not mad at me, are you?”
“Am I that unreasonable? You’re the one working hard to provide for us.”
While Adam was in the shower, I checked his phone.
Still nothing. His chats were all work-related. His conversations with Sophie were sparse and professional—brief instructions, followed by a simple “Received.”

3
He came out of the bathroom, saw me with his phone, and chuckled. “My feed is just boring business news. Not like yours, full of artists and culture.”
He sat beside me, draping an arm over my shoulder and planting a soft kiss on my cheek.
We hadn’t been intimate in a while, and with his affectionate words, I expected things to progress. I lowered my gaze, waiting for his next move.
Instead, he simply lay down and turned on his side.
Doubt, humiliation, and a gnawing anxiety washed over me all at once. I didn’t sleep a wink that night.
A few days later, Jenna messaged me. Adam had taken Sophie to Leo’s building again.
This time, I went straight there myself. I spotted Sophie in the lobby, looking bored out of her mind.
“Mrs. Shaw? What are you doing here?” she asked, her expression one of pure confusion.
“Sophie, shouldn’t you be with Mr. Shaw instead of slacking off down here?”
“No, no…” She waved her hands frantically, her face flushing with panic. “Mr. Shaw told me I didn’t need to go up, that he’d call me if he needed anything. I… I don’t really know what I’m supposed to be doing.”
She looked down, the picture of frustrated helplessness.
My tone softened. “How long has this been going on?”
Sophie hesitated, clearly unsure how much she was allowed to tell me about her boss’s affairs.
“It’s okay,” I reassured her. “I’m just worried about him. He’s been so stressed lately, and I don’t know what kind of big deal requires him to come here so often.”
She bit her lip. “It’s been about three months now. He doesn’t bring me every time. But when he does, I just sit here. I’d rather be at the office, at least I’d have work to do.”
Before I left, I turned back to her. “Sophie, if you ever run into any trouble, you can come to me.”
I asked Mia to keep a closer eye on things at Leo’s building.
Her call came an hour later, her voice tight with excitement. “Clara! I saw Adam get off on the 27th floor!”
“The 27th?”
“A few floors in the tower are set up as corporate apartments, usually for visiting clients. I just found out the entire 27th floor was taken off the market three months ago. It’s been leased long-term by a single client.”
All the seemingly unrelated details suddenly clicked into place, the weight of them pressing down on me, making it hard to breathe.
“Mia… can you get me the security footage?”
The footage from the elevator bank and the 27th-floor hallway was damning. Over the past three months, Adam had appeared there nearly thirty times during work hours.
Each time, he walked to the room at the end of the hall, entered a code, and went inside. The camera never saw who was in there.
I watched the clips over and over, zooming in, searching.
And then I saw it. In one video, just as the door was closing behind him.

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