The Empire I Built Without You

After ten years together, my husband fell in love with someone else.

He took her on the private yacht in Cabo San Lucas I had always dreamed of, and bought her the Manhattan penthouse I had craved for years.

On the day of my surgery, a torrential downpour stranded her on the highway. He told me to wait.

He said he would be right there. "Are you terrified of losing me," I asked, "or just terrified of leaving her out there alone?" He said nothing.

Chapter 1 In our tenth year together, Silas found someone else. The phone left on the coffee table buzzed and flashed.

It was a text from her. [Your wife's taste in ties is so boring. Next time, wear the shirt I bought you. You looked incredibly sexy in it yesterday.] I bought him that tie.

I bought him that suit. For our anniversary, Silas had worn every single gift I'd ever given him all at once. He was a big shot in this city now.

Mashing it all together looked ridiculous. But he had just laughed and said, "Anyone who says it looks bad is just jealous that I have such a great wife." Was that right?

Was she jealous, too? Another message popped up. [By the way, do I look pretty today? Do you like it?] Beneath the text was a photo.

In the picture, she was wearing Silas's favorite white buttondown. The collar was wide open, deliberately showing off a glaring hickey on her collarbone.

Meanwhile, from inside the bathroom, Silas yelled, "Margot, can you grab me a towel?" For a second, the air left my lungs.

It wasn't until a cold drop of moisture tracked down my cheek that I registered what I was looking at. My trembling fingers swiped up on the screen. I saw him calling her his baby.

Calling her his sweet girl. I thought he had outgrown those sickeningly sweet pet names. Turns out, he still loved them. He just didn't use them on me anymore.

Silas grumbled as he stepped out of the bathroom dripping wet. "Why are you ignoring me? I'm freezing to death out here.

Where else are you gonna find a husband like—" His eyes locked onto my pale face. The words died in his throat. The muscle in his jaw jumped. "Margot, it's not what you think.

Lexi is just an intern looking for a shortcut." I always knew this day was coming. I stood up without a word, dropping the phone, and walked into the bedroom.

The truth was, the red flags had been waving for years. I knew. I knew everything. A few years ago, his secretary brought him home dead drunk.

He kept slurring my name, asking for his wife.

The secretary expertly slipped her hands inside his suit jacket to untie his tie, even deliberately brushing her heavy breasts against his arm.

She called me "Margot," making zero effort to hide the predatory gleam in her eyes. I poured her a glass of water and politely showed her the door.

That night, I sat by the window until dawn. My mind spun in chaotic circles. I couldn't sleep. I knew they hadn't crossed the final line yet. It was just flirting.

Just pushing boundaries. As the sun came up, Silas woke. He was a smart man. Reading the stiff tension in my posture, he buried his face in the crook of my neck. "Margot, trust me.

After all our years together, I know where the line is. I know exactly what I shouldn't do." Did I trust him? I wanted to.

But paranoia and suspicion were like black mold festering in a damp, dark corner. I couldn't stop it from spreading. I turned into a lunatic.

I tracked his schedule, scrolled through his phone, and interrogated him over the slightest inconsistencies. Finally, one day, he snapped. "I already fired her!

What more do you want from me?" His eyes were hollow with exhaustion and disappointment. The words slapped me across the face. I stared at my reflection in the hallway mirror.

Was that really me? Was this bitter, paranoid woman the same badass who used to get knocked down by life and fight her way back up? My hair was a messy rat's nest.

My facial muscles were locked in a perpetual scowl. I buried my face in my hands, my shoulders shaking as a sob tore from my throat.

Silas pulled me into his chest. "Margot," he whispered softly. "Just trust me, okay?" After that, it seemed like he really did change. He hired a male assistant.

He proactively updated me on his schedule and left his unlocked phone on the kitchen counter. He even turned a blind eye when I planted my own people in his office. He really did.

Chapter 2 Have you ever tried splitting half your life with another person? I had. Silas and I had known each other for thirteen years.

He had been a part of almost half my existence on this earth. We had been together for ten years, holding each other up through the mud for a decade.

I had promised to give him a chance. But now, that chance was gone. We'd been married for five years.

He used to tell me that once his business took off, he would make it up to me with the grandest wedding imaginable.

He'd let the whole world know that I was his wife, his one and only. I remembered the fire in his eyes when he said those words.

He had looked forward to that day just as much as I had. But that day was never coming. My chest hollowed out, leaving nothing but a cold, empty draft.

Outside the bedroom door, Silas begged me to open up. "Margot, let's just talk about this. Margot, open the door, please?

Margot, say something to me." Outside, he slammed his fists against the door like a madman.

He threw his broad shoulders against the expensive solid wood, the deafening thuds echoing through the hallway.

I unlocked the door and pulled it open, my grip steady on the handle of my suitcase. We'd had our fair share of fights over the years.

Every single time, he was the one who walked out to cool off. This was the first time I was the one leaving. "Let's split up before this gets too ugly," I said, my voice dead flat.

He didn't say a word. He just snatched my Louis Vuitton suitcase from my hand, trailing behind me like a stubborn child.

In this massive house, there were only a few things I actually needed to take.

Since he refused to let go of the suitcase, I let out a cold laugh and yanked out a roll of giant black trash bags.

I started shoving my expensive clothes—along with his hypocritical promises—into the plastic like literal garbage.

A deep, boneaching exhaustion washed over me. "Silas," I said. "Bring her here. Let me meet her.

I need to see exactly what kind of girl was worth throwing away our entire decade for." Was it bitterness? Probably.

Silas froze, the muscles in his jaw ticking as he stared at the plastic bags. He probably didn't understand why I was so calm this time.

Maybe I'd just hit my quota for disappointment. Or maybe I'd subconsciously been waiting for the other shoe to drop all these years. "Don't do this, Margot.

Don't torture me like this." He reached for me. "Scream at me. Hit me. Just don't do this." Was I the one torturing him? No. No, I wasn't.

A person had to pay the tab for their own choices.

I flashed a razorthin smile. "Shouldn't she come admire the spoils of her victory?" His eyes were bloodshot. "Margot, you're the one I love. I don't even know what came over me.

Maybe it's because she reminds me of you.

When she gets stubborn… she acts exactly like you used to." "So," I murmured, "I'm not me anymore?" He stiffened, the words dying on his tongue. It was the middle of the night.

I walked toward the front door, dragging my trash bags across the hardwood floor. Silas blocked my path, the pathetic, pleading dog act vanishing in an instant.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "What the hell do you want from me? I admitted I was wrong! How long are you going to throw this tantrum?" How could he sound so righteous?

I stared at the man I had loved for ten years, the silence ringing in my ears. "You own half the shares in the company! You have a black card with no limit!

Everyone knows you're my partner!" He threw his hands up. "What more do you want?!" What more did I want? He knew damn well what I wanted.

He looked at me with an air of arrogant charity. "I'm just playing around with her. She's never going to threaten your position.

No matter what happens, you are my wife." I didn't have another word to spare for him. I sidestepped his towering frame and walked straight to the private elevator.

His voice dropped an octave, turning icecold. "Margot, if you walk out that door today, I'm driving straight over to pick her up and moving her in." Chapter 3 All those ruthless negotiation tactics he used in boardrooms, he was now using on me.

A bitter smile touched my lips. "Do whatever you want," I said, my voice dead flat. He froze.

Through the slowly closing elevator doors, I saw his jaw clench, his eyes screaming disappointment. He still thought I was just throwing a tantrum.

The second I checked into my hotel, a notification popped up on my phone. A friend request. [It's Lexi.] Of course it was. I accepted, but neither of us sent a message.

Her timing was impeccable. Did Silas tell her I had finally found out about her existence? Look at that. The moment my foot crossed the threshold, he ran straight to her.

Ten years of history, shattering like cheap glass. Her Instagram profile was public. I casually scrolled through her grid. She had put in the work.

Every single photo was drenched in a showoff filter, and every single one featured half of Silas's shoulder or his luxury watch.

He always told me he was swamped with meetings in Silicon Valley, but he took her to Vegas for VIP shows and booked out private villas in Malibu for her.

It was a silent, meticulously curated exhibition of their happiness. In those photos, Silas was smiling.

He wasn't young anymore, but he was grinning like a dumb kid, loving her with this raw, blazing sincerity. My chest tightened, a heavy, suffocating pressure crushing my lungs.

Sharp spikes of pain radiated through my ribs. I used to believe that even if the world flipped upside down, he would keep loving me. Did he still love me? I honestly couldn't tell.

If he did, why look for someone else? If he didn't, why go through the exhausting charade of hiding it? Maybe it was just nostalgia.

Maybe he just hated the inconvenience of a messy divorce. Lexi broke the silence first, asking to meet up and talk. I agreed.

Inside the upscale café, Lexi wouldn't shut up, vomiting out the entire timeline of how they met and fell in love. It was incredibly cliché.

The classic tale of the naive young girl and the rich older man. She leaned forward, her face the picture of earnest innocence. "Margot, I really love him.

Please, just step aside and let us be together." She raised her chin, acting as if I was the villain trying to break up a starcrossed romance.

How was I supposed to explain to her that compared to the bloody trenches Silas and I had crawled through to build our empire, her little love story meant nothing?

If she had seen what Silas looked like when he was young, she wouldn't have looked twice at him. I was the one who molded him, step by step, into the man sitting across from her.

The Silas of today—gentle, wealthy, exuding a polished charm—was perfectly calibrated to manipulate naive little girls.

I slowly stirred my coffee, the silver spoon clinking against the porcelain. "If you met the twentyyearold Silas—bankrupt, drowning in debt, forced to dig through dumpsters behind the grocery store for moldy bread, sleeping in a leaky, rustedout RV—would you still love him?" She froze.

A flicker of hesitation crossed her meticulously contoured face, but she quickly recovered. "I don't care.

I love the man he is right now." I chuckled, shaking my head. "Honey, once you sit in my chair, there will be an endless line of girls exactly like you ready to take your place." "No," she said, her voice dripping with certainty. "Silas will love me forever." God, she was so naive.

She put on a show of patronizing concern. "Silas doesn't love you anymore. Stop acting like a stagefive clinger and let him go.

If you keep this up, you're just going to make all three of us miserable." I met her eyes dead on. "Did he tell you to say that?" Her gaze darted away.

A cold smile touched my lips. "Ditching the wife who built you the second you get rich… that's a nasty PR nightmare.

And Silas is terrified of looking bad in public." I picked up my purse and stood. "Little girl, I've known him for over a decade.

I know the ugly mechanics of his brain far better than you ever will." Chapter 4 Lexi went silent for a beat, then asked, "You drove here, right? Could you give me a ride back?

I live in the Manhattan penthouse." Oh.

So that was where Silas had tucked her away. "Silas told me you used to be obsessed with that place," she added, flashing a triumphant, gloating smile. She had scored a point.

That was six or seven years ago. We had a client who lived in that exact building. After dropping him off, I caught a glimpse out of his living room window.

The city skyline was breathtaking.

The glittering city lights reflecting off the water, the massive Ferris wheel across the river turning in slow, agonizing circles… I was utterly mesmerized.

The client, flushed with expensive whiskey, had zero filter. "Nice view, huh? Love it? It's ten grand a square foot." "God knows how many decades you two will have to hustle for it.

You probably won't even be able to afford it in this lifetime." I was just a young girl back then. The raw condescension in his voice stung so badly my eyes immediately burned.

On the elevator ride down, Silas gripped my hand so tight it hurt. He swore, with a burning intensity, that one day he would buy me a place exactly like this.

Later, when he finally made it, when the money started pouring in, he asked if I still wanted that penthouse. I did. God, I did.

But it was an hour away from the office in heavy traffic. I couldn't bear the thought of him losing an hour of sleep every morning just to commute.

So I shook my head and lied. "I'm good with where we are. I'm getting older, I prefer something practical.

It's just more convenient here." I didn't want to live there, so naturally, someone else moved in.

All the unfulfilled dreams of my youth—he had scooped them up and handed them to another woman on a silver platter. It was laughable. Was I bitter? Probably.

I had spent ten years tending a vineyard in our backyard. Every single day, I stood guard over it, watering it, fertilizing the soil.

I worried the sun wouldn't be enough and the grapes would wither. I worried the sun would be too harsh and scorch the leaves. I obsessed over that damn vine for ten straight years.

But just as the fruit ripened, someone else waltzed in and harvested the whole lot. All I was left with was a handful of dead, twisted twigs. How pathetic.

Over the years, I had navigated enough corporate bloodbaths to lock my emotions in an iron vault.

But the suffocating injustice of it all wrapped a giant, invisible hand around my throat. My lungs seized. I couldn't breathe. I kept my expression blank. "Call your own Uber.

It's out of my way." I practically fled the scene. Halfway down the road, my stomach lurched. I slammed the brakes, swerved onto the shoulder, and threw up until my ribs ached.

Samuel delivered the news an hour later. I was pregnant. The buzzing in my ears drowned out his next words. "Congratulations, Margot," he said.

Silas and I had waged war to have this child. The doctors had warned me about my stress levels, so I slowly relinquished control of the company.

I took up reading, signed up for floral arrangement classes, trying to force myself to relax.

I tried countless expensive fertility remedies, enduring endless rounds of egg retrieval injections and hormone therapies.

Those medications made my body swell with painful bloating, leaving me awake every single night, dryheaving from the agonizing side effects.

And Silas would stay awake with me, rubbing circles into my back all night long to soothe my nausea. Later, we turned to IVF. I came out of the procedure looking like a corpse.

But in the end, it failed anyway. I sat on the edge of the bed, staring blankly out the window. Silas's eyes were bloodshot.

I knew the grief was tearing him apart just as much as it was me. But he still pulled me into his chest, his voice impossibly gentle. "Margot, we don't need a baby.

Having you is enough for me." How sick and twisted could the universe be? I had finally given up. And now, the baby was here. Chapter 5 Samuel had been our doctor for years.

He was genuinely thrilled for us. "Call Silas right now and tell him the good news.

After everything you guys have been through, you finally got your miracle." My fingers gripped the edge of the medical report so hard my knuckles turned white.

I couldn't force my facial muscles into a smile. I sat in my car for a long time, listening to the engine idle, before finally deciding to tell Silas about the baby.

We agreed to meet at a diner downtown. It had been there forever.

The surrounding storefronts had flipped dozens of times, and the street had completely gentrified into something unrecognizable. But this rundown diner remained untouched.

I remembered when we first moved to this city. We were dead broke. Pockets completely empty. We would order the cheapest combo on the menu and split it.

Silas treated me like gold back then; he would literally push every single piece of meat onto my side of the plate. We were so in love. We shared every bite.

Of course, it was never enough food. But this place offered unlimited refills, and that was exactly why we chose it. We were young, and we were always starving.

I don't know how many times we had asked for free refills on the cheap black coffee and complimentary bread rolls before the waitress finally rolled her eyes.

She slammed our plates down on the table with a loud clatter. "If you can't even afford to leave a tip, stop asking for free handouts." Silas's hand trembled around his mug.

His entire face flushed a dark, burning red. Yet, he still shifted his chair, shielding me with his broad shoulders. He didn't want their disgusted glares to touch me.

Just as he was stammering, trying to swallow his pride and find his voice, the diner owner noticed our predicament.

He walked over and waved the waitress off. "You kids come back here anytime. Pay for one meal, I'll feed both of you." Silas never forgot a debt.

Once his company blew up, he straightup bought the rundown diner and hired the original owner as the manager.

His only condition was that the place had to remain exactly the way it was. On the surface, he claimed it was nostalgia. But I knew the truth.

He was forcing himself to remember the bitter, humiliating climb from the bottom. But now… the diner was exactly the same. The man had changed.

When I arrived, Silas had already ordered. It was the same familiar food.

But we were no longer the couple who had to split a single slice of meat. "Margot, you've lost weight." He placed a choice cut of steak on my plate. "Eat up." His voice was soft, as if the screaming matches and the crushing betrayal of the past few days had never happened.

This peaceful, domestic illusion was completely hollow. Lexi's arrival ripped it all to shreds. "Silas! You told me you didn't love her anymore!

Why are you sneaking behind my back to see her?!" Silas's face darkened instantly. He pointed at the door. "Leave." Lexi exploded. "Let me tell you the truth!

I'm already pregnant with your baby!" She pointed a manicured finger at my face. "Her womb is dried up and useless! She can't give you an heir, but I can!" Silas's jaw locked.

He snatched the heavy glass water pitcher from the table and hurled it at her feet.

It shattered with a deafening crash, splashing ice water and jagged glass shards all over her legs. "What the fuck are you spewing, you idiot?!

Apologize to Margot, right now!" He hadn't sworn like that in years. Lexi flinched, tears instantly flooding her eyes.

She glared at us with a toxic mix of stubborn defiance and pathetic victimhood. Then, she turned and bolted. Outside, the avenue was packed with heavy traffic. She didn't even look.

She just sprinted straight into the chaotic rush of cars. Horns blared in a deafening, terrifying chorus. A driver slammed on his brakes and yelled out his window, "Crazy bitch!

You got a death wish?!" Silas's hands, resting on the edge of the table, clenched into tight fists. The veins bulged against his skin.

His eyes tracked her every single movement, refusing to blink. He didn't look away until Lexi's figure completely disappeared into the crowded intersection.

Only then did he finally turn back to me. His chest heaved. "Margot, she's young and reckless.

I'm terrified she's going to do something stupid." I met his panicked gaze with deadpan precision. "Okay," I said. "Go check on her." He was out the door in seconds, his back disappearing into the crowd.

Chapter 6 I took a sip of the tea. The bitter liquid coated my throat, burning my eyes. I remembered back when we were younger. I got pregnant once before.

We were always careful with protection. We didn't want a baby. The timing was a complete disaster. Our business was just starting to take off.

I couldn't abandon Silas and leave him to fight the corporate bloodbath all by himself. But I also knew his weak spots. If I told him, he would hesitate. He would beg me to keep it.

So I kept my mouth shut and went to the clinic alone. I thought I was young. I thought there would be plenty of time for kids later.

I thought my young body would bounce back in a few days. But Silas still noticed. Back then, I was his entire world. The second something was off, he saw right through it.

I braced myself for the screaming. I thought he would explode, demanding to know why I didn't consult him. But he just cried. That was the first time I ever saw him shed a tear.

The very first time. That day, he dropped to his knees right in front of me. He swore he would give me a better life.

He swore that one day, I would never have to suffer like this ever again. His eyes were so bright back then. They held nothing but me. The memory settled cold and heavy in my chest.

He really did love me once. That was the truth. And now, he didn't love me anymore. That was also the truth. I drove myself to the hospital alone.

A torrential downpour hammered against the windshield. Sitting in the freezing waiting room outside the operating theater, my phone buzzed.

A text from Lexi. [Want to make a bet, Margot? Let's see if he wants the baby in my belly, or the one in yours.] A photo popped up on the screen.

It was a picture of her standing completely alone on the shoulder of the highway, drenched in the pouring rain