After His Affair with Her, I Planned My Revenge

Sunday morning sunlight filtered through the office blinds, casting stripes across the mahogany desk where Damian sat with his laptop open. I'd made his coffee exactly how he liked it—two sugars, splash of oat milk—and set it beside a stack of documents I'd prepared the night before. The property authorization was buried on page seventeen, exactly where I'd placed it.

The New York Times was spread between us, but neither of us was reading it. Damian was scrolling through a pitch deck for a vitamin water campaign, his brow furrowed in that way he did when he was performing concentration.

"What do you think?" he asked without looking up. "The client wants something 'disruptive.' Whatever that means."

I leaned over, studying the screen as if his opinion mattered. "The color palette feels off. Too clinical for something you're supposed to want to drink."

He nodded, already typing. "Exactly what I was thinking. God, you have such an eye."

I smiled, warm and appreciative, the way a wife should. "Speaking of eyes, I have something for yours. Just need your signature."

I slid the stack across the desk. Twenty-three pages in total. Agency letterhead on each one—the expansion I'd been planning for months, the new studio space in Brooklyn, the capital injection from the Japanese investors who'd been circling since last quarter. I'd made sure every page looked important. Every page looked like business.

Damian glanced up from his laptop. "Now? It's Sunday, Gabby. Can't this wait?"

"The investors are flying back to Tokyo tomorrow. If we don't lock this in, we lose them. And with the baby coming..." I let my voice trail off, my hand drifting to my still-flat stomach. The gesture had become automatic now, a reflex he couldn't help but respond to.

His expression softened immediately. "Of course. Whatever we need. I just want to finish this deck before—"

"I know. Just sign where I've marked. I've highlighted everything. Should only take a few minutes. Then you can get back to saving the vitamin water world."

He flipped to the first page, scanning the executive summary. I watched his eyes track the words—expansion, growth, family-friendly workspace, sustainable design. All true. All part of the studio plan I'd been developing. All completely beside the point.

He signed the first page without reading it. Then the second. The third.

On page seventeen, he paused. The Hamptons property authorization. He read the title—"Property Transfer Authorization for 12 Shore Drive, Southampton"—and for one breathless moment, I thought he might actually engage his brain.

But then his phone buzzed. The vitamin water client. "Can you hold on a sec? It's Marcus. About the campaign."

He answered, turning away from the desk. "Hey, yeah, I'm looking at it now. The whole concept feels—"

I waited until he was fully absorbed in the call before I slid the pen back to the signature line. He covered the phone's mouthpiece with his thumb, glanced down, saw the highlighted line, and signed it with a flourish.

"Yeah, totally. We'll pivot to something more lifestyle-focused, maybe a beach scene? Or something with, I don't know, wellness influencers? Yeah, exactly."

I collected the pages, careful not to disturb his creative flow. In my pocket, my phone vibrated with a text from Paige: *Notary here. Green light.*

"All set?" Damian asked, still typing one-handed.

"All set," I said, and meant it.

By Monday afternoon, the deed to our $20 million Hamptons estate was in Paige Adams's name, and neither of us had marked the occasion with so much as a glass of champagne.

Some gestures of trust require no ceremony.

* * *

The weekly grocery delivery arrived at eleven on Wednesday. I'd timed it perfectly—Damian was in back-to-back calls about the vitamin water campaign, and Eleanor was running errands for the household accounts.

Sabrina stood in the kitchen, checking items off a list I'd prepared myself. She wore a cropped sweater that showed her midriff and had her hair in the kind of messy bun that took twenty minutes to perfect. The TikTok influencer's uniform.

"Sabrina," I said warmly, setting down my coffee mug. "Just the person I wanted to see. How are you?"

She looked up, startled. We rarely spoke one-on-one anymore, not since the night she'd spent in my bed with my husband. "Good, Miss Gabby. Just checking the delivery against your list. Eleanor said you had some dietary restrictions now?"

The baby. Of course. "Just being careful," I said, smiling. "Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something. A business opportunity."

Her eyes lit up with that particular hunger I'd come to recognize—not ambition, exactly, but something more transactional. Status hunger.

"I'm launching a new creative venture," I continued, pulling a folder from my bag. "Small but growing. I need someone with a sharp, ambitious face for the company's public profile. Someone young, connected, who understands digital branding. I thought of you immediately."

She practically glowed. "Oh my God, Miss Gabby, I—I don't know what to say."

"Say yes. It's a paid position, of course. Five thousand for the first quarter, plus the title of CEO. The paperwork just needs your signature."

I opened the folder, revealing the incorporation documents. The company name—Castro Creative Consulting—was printed in bold at the top. Below it, in smaller type, were the terms I'd crafted with exquisite care: Sabrina Castro, sole legal representative, personally responsible for all corporate debts and liabilities, including the $500,000 in accumulated debt the shell company had been quietly amassing since last spring.

But Sabrina didn't read the fine print. She never did. Her eyes were fixed on the title—CEO—and the signature line where I'd placed a small red tab.

"CEO?" she breathed, touching the page. "But I don't have any experience running a company."

"That's what makes you perfect," I said, my voice warm with manufactured affection. "You're learning as you go. Just like I did. And I'll be right there to guide you. Think of it as mentorship with benefits."

She signed without hesitation, her signature looping and girlish. I watched the pen move across the page, feeling nothing but a cold satisfaction.

Within the hour, she was posting a selfie with the signed documents, captioned "CEO moves," her perfectly manicured fingers splayed across the contract that would bury her.

I took a screenshot and added it to the BISCUIT drive.

* * *

Three days later, Sabrina was filming herself in the guest suite of my Hamptons house—a space she had no legal right to occupy, but which Damian had clearly given her access to in my absence.

The video opened with her lounging on the white duvet, a Hermès Birkin bag prominently displayed beside her. The next shot showed her wrist, adorned with a Cartier Love bracelet that cost more than most people's monthly rent.

"When he treats you like the priority you are," read the caption. The video had 4,200 likes by the time I found it.

I screenshot every frame, noting the timestamp, the visible room details, the angle that showed my personal art collection in the background. I cross-referenced the Birkin and Cartier purchases against the joint marital account records I'd compiled—both bought within the last month, both charged to the AmEx Damian insisted was "just for special occasions."

Then I forwarded the file to my attorney with a single note: *Exhibit C.*

The trap was set. Now I just needed to spring it.