Chapter 3

For a month after the birthday party, everything looked calm on the surface.

Lauren still went to the office as usual, still handled her administrative work, and still spoke gently and appropriately when she came home.

Brandon stopped showing up in front of me as often. He kept the same “assistant” distance, and if anything, he was even more cautious than before.

Emily was the same. She stayed efficient, attentive, and busy at my side.

All of them were quiet—quiet as if nothing had happened that night.

I knew it wasn’t over. They were waiting for a better stage, one with enough eyes on it, a place where I couldn’t quietly press the issue down behind closed doors.

So I stayed quiet too.

I kept pushing work forward as if I knew nothing, kept attending meetings, kept negotiating with investors.

To the outside world, my life was stable, the company was stable, and the CEO transition was moving steadily ahead.

Then came the celebration banquet.

It was a company event to celebrate one of our business lines landing a key contract. The scale was bigger, the crowd larger. It wasn’t just internal leadership—there were partners, investor representatives, and even a few friendly media outlets.

The ballroom lights were bright. The stage and sound system were tuned. The entire program had been rehearsed.

I was on stage. Halfway through my speech, a sudden commotion rose from the back of the room.

At first, people thought it was staff making a mistake, or someone wandering into the wrong section. But the noise kept moving closer, mixed with a few muffled sobs.

I spotted Emily immediately in the aisle—pale-faced, eyes red, clutching a document envelope as if she’d forced herself to walk all the way in.

She didn’t wait for the host to speak. She lifted her head toward the stage and said in a trembling voice, “Nolan, you can’t do this to me.”

The room fell silent.

Every head turned toward her—first confusion, then the instinctive excitement people always have for scandal.

The host looked flustered and tried to stop her. “Ma’am, are you sure you’re in the right—”

Emily shook off the host’s hand, took two steps forward, and raised her voice. “I’m not in the wrong place. I’m here for him.”

She pointed straight at me.

Whispers started immediately. Several board members’ faces darkened. The investor reps exchanged looks, clearly judging whether this was turning into a public-relations disaster.

I didn’t rush to speak, and I didn’t signal security to drag her out.

I stayed on stage and let her talk. If she dared to come this far, she had prepared exactly what she wanted to say. Cutting her off would only make her look more like a victim—and it would give Lauren a chance to frame it as, “He’s silencing her because he’s afraid.”

Emily took a breath, as if bracing herself, then lifted the envelope. “We’ve been together this long, and you dump me with one word—‘break up’—and tell me to get lost?”

The room grew louder with murmurs.

Some people were already glancing toward Lauren. Everyone knew she was my wife. She was seated near the front in a tasteful dress, holding a champagne flute, her expression still composed.

She didn’t leap up to accuse me. She simply looked at me, as if waiting for my explanation.

Emily opened the envelope, pulled out a stack of photos, and held them up for everyone to see. “You’ve all been fooled. You think he’s a good man—he’s not. He used his position to force me into a relationship. Now he’s tired of me and wants to toss me aside.”

As she spoke, she flung the photos outward. They quickly circulated through the front rows.

I glanced at the pictures scattered on the floor—shots from a café, outside a hotel, near a car.

I knew exactly where they came from. The café photo was from when Emily and I were reviewing schedules. The hotel entrance photo was from a client visit—Emily had been with me. The elevator lobby photo was from when we’d just walked out of a meeting and she was confirming documents.

Most of the shots were taken from a distance, but whoever took them knew angles. They made normal work moments look suggestive.

Looking at them, I felt more certain of one thing: they had started preparing earlier than I’d expected.

More eyes turned toward me. Some people were already studying me with complicated expressions.

For them, the truth didn’t matter yet. What mattered was the damage of the scandal—especially with my CEO appointment approaching.

That was when Lauren finally stood up.

She didn’t rush the stage. She didn’t cry or scream. She simply walked slowly to the side of the aisle, lifted her eyes to me, and asked in a voice low enough to sound restrained but loud enough for people nearby to hear, “Nolan… is this true?”

From the stage, I looked at her. My tone stayed steady. “No.”

Two words. Clear enough.

Emily immediately shrieked, cutting in. “Of course you won’t admit it! You’re afraid it’ll ruin your reputation!”

I didn’t bother responding to her emotions. “You claim we’ve been together for a long time, so let me ask you something simple—if we were really together, why is everything you brought just candid photos? Not a single selfie of you and me. Not one.”

The room went quiet for a beat.

The question was too direct, too grounded in common sense.

Any real “intimate relationship” leaves closer proof.

But everything she had was long-distance, staged-looking shots.

Emily hesitated for a fraction of a second, then forced the words out quickly. “Because you’re careful! You wouldn’t let me take pictures. You said your position was sensitive and you couldn’t leave evidence like that!”

I nodded as if acknowledging the excuse, then pressed on. “Then where did candid photos come from? Who took them? Did you arrange someone to follow you and follow me from the start, just to take pictures of us? Or did someone push you toward me in the first place, and prepare these images ahead of time—so you could throw them out today?”

Emily’s lips moved. She tried to argue, but there was no way to explain it cleanly.

The murmurs in the room shifted. They sounded different now.

A crack finally appeared in Lauren’s expression. She clearly hadn’t expected me to grab the weak point so quickly.

Emily realized the photo angle wasn’t going to hold. She clenched her jaw, as if making a decision, pulled out another document, and raised it high. “Fine. You can deny the pictures, but you can’t deny the baby.”

The room exploded.

“A baby?”  

“What does she mean?”  

“She’s pregnant?”

Emily held up the pregnancy test report. Faces changed across the room.

Partners and investors frowned deeper. The board side had already started talking under their breath, clearly calculating the fallout.

Standing on stage, I almost found it funny—not because of the farce, but because of how confident she was.

I said, “My baby? When did we ever sleep together?”

Emily looked up, almost without hesitation. “On Mrs. Beck’s birthday. In the suite upstairs. That night.”

Every gaze in the ballroom swung toward Lauren.

A lot of people there had attended that birthday party, or at least heard about it.

Some faces turned openly contemptuous, as if they’d already completed the story in their heads: a husband cheating with his secretary on his wife’s birthday.

Lauren’s eyes reddened quickly. She raised a hand to cover her mouth as if she’d been hit too hard to speak, then walked to the edge of the stage, her voice shaking. “Nolan… how could you? That night… how could you do this to me?”

The next second, she lifted her hand and slapped me hard.

The room erupted. Someone gasped. Someone stood up. More people fixed their eyes on me, waiting.

Lauren was waiting for me to lose control—to start explaining.

I didn’t move.

I touched the side of my face where she’d struck me. My tone didn’t change. “That night I was handling work the entire time. I never met Emily, and I didn’t sleep with her.”

The room went quiet again.

Lauren’s expression froze.

She stared for half a second, as if she couldn’t process what she’d just heard.

She had expected the words “her birthday night” to shake me, to make me hesitate, to make me look guilty—maybe even force me into a compromise to protect my image.

Because in her plan, I was supposed to wake up the next morning after the birthday party, disheveled, having “done it” with someone.

But she didn’t know her plan had already been hijacked that night—cut off at the root.

Emily froze too, then shouted even more frantically, “You’re lying! You were in the room with me! You—”

That was when Brandon stepped out of the crowd.

He had been there all along, dressed formally, his expression steadier than either Emily or Lauren.

He walked into the aisle, nodded to Lauren first, then gave a small bow toward a couple of directors, presenting himself like a rational third party trying to keep the company from being damaged.

“Everyone,” Brandon said, keeping his voice controlled, “this is too serious to settle by arguing here. The hotel’s security cameras will have records—especially the hallway cameras in the suite area that night. If we pull the footage and verify it, that’s best for everyone.”

He sounded fair, even carrying the posture of “thinking about the company.”

Lauren grabbed the opening instantly. “Yes. Check the cameras.”

Her voice rose a little. “If you say you never met her, then pull the footage. Let’s look at it in front of everyone and see the truth.”

When she said it, there was even a faint, hard-to-notice satisfaction in her eyes.

She thought the cameras would nail me.

Because she believed her plan had no holes—and after Emily had told her it had “worked,” she had never bothered to check the footage afterward.

My voice stayed calm. “Fine. Check it now. Which room, and what time?”

Emily answered immediately. “Room 176. Around ten.”

Lauren’s smile was almost slipping through. She signaled to someone beside her to contact the hotel, as if she were presiding over a “fair trial.”

Brandon stood nearby, still outwardly composed, but there was a hint of unease in his eyes.

It was slight, but it was enough for me to confirm one thing: he was starting to sense that something wasn’t right.

I didn’t say anything more. I simply stood on the stage and waited.

Less than twenty minutes later, our people reached the hotel, and the hotel staff pulled up the hallway footage outside Room 176 and sent it directly to the ballroom.

Brandon put on a concerned look and said, “Maybe we should watch it privately.”

Lauren rejected him immediately. “No. We’ll watch it here.”

Once the staff confirmed it, the projection screen behind me lit up. The timestamp in the top-right corner was clear.

Onscreen was the hallway of the hotel’s suite floor. The lighting was dim, doors aligned neatly along both sides.

A staff member was supporting a man as they came out of the elevator. The man’s steps were unsteady, head hanging, looking drunk.

Lauren couldn’t help raising her hand toward the screen, ready to hammer the “evidence” into me on the spot.

“Still going to say it wasn’t you?”

I didn’t answer. I just watched.

The two figures moved closer and closer on the screen.

And the instant the man’s face became clear, Lauren’s expression locked in place.