The Fake Wife's Spectacular Genius Comeback

After hanging up the phone, she heard the people in the private room start playing a drinking game again.

Isabelle lost.

Julian's friends immediately jeered, "Since you lost, you have to accept the punishment! A French kiss with one of the men in the room!"

Through the crack in the door, Chloe watched with cold eyes as Isabelle looked up at Julian shyly.

The next second, Julian pulled Isabelle into his arms without hesitation and kissed her hard on the lips. The two were intimately entwined, kissing passionately as if they couldn't bear to part.

Watching their lips lock, Chloe thought her heart would break. But surprisingly, all she felt was a violent, physical wave of nausea. The filter of "love" that had blinded her for so long completely shattered in that instant. She watched them with the cold, detached scrutiny of someone witnessing a pathetic, cheap comedy.

She suddenly remembered the countless times Julian had sworn that she was the only woman he would ever love, that he would never touch anyone else.

Now, his promises seemed so cheap it was almost laughable.

Chloe didn't spare them another glance and turned away resolutely. Her steps were steady and devoid of any panic. Stepping out of the club, she hailed a cab and headed straight for the City Clerk's Office.

After repeatedly confirming with the staff, her last shred of illusion was shattered: she and Julian Sterling had absolutely no legal marital ties.

Five years ago, right before they were supposed to get their marriage license, Julian used a sudden corporate crisis as an excuse, claiming he couldn't get away. He said he could find a "trusted insider" to handle the paperwork for them.

She had trusted him completely, without the slightest bit of suspicion.

She never imagined that the marriage certificate he handed her was nothing but a forged piece of scrap paper.

Five years of marriage—all fake.

His promises and his love for her—all fake.

Memories flooded her mind. After graduating from college, Chloe had applied for a drug R&D position at Sterling Industries. Julian fell in love with her at first sight and launched a frantic pursuit.

As an advocate of non-marriage, she politely declined. But Julian refused to give up and relentlessly badgered her.

On every important holiday, he would gift her a necklace he claimed to have designed himself. When she suffered from agonizing menstrual cramps, the dignified CEO would personally cook brown sugar and ginger tea for her. The bios of all his social media accounts were changed to the initials of her name.

His dominance and tenderness gradually dismantled the hard walls around her heart, but she still wouldn't easily admit her feelings.

Until later, when the two went skiing in the Swiss Alps and encountered an avalanche. In a matter of life and death, he used his own body to shield her. She remained unscathed, but he ended up in the ICU, in a coma for a whole month.

From then on, she was completely devoted to him, and began to love him with all her might, just as he loved her.

Because she struggled to conceive for a long time, her mother-in-law made things incredibly difficult for her. To keep him from being caught in the middle, she resolutely quit her promising R&D job and focused entirely on preparing for pregnancy. Taking handfuls of pills and getting injections every day, even when the injection sites developed red, swollen, and hard lumps, even when the hormones completely disrupted her endocrine system and subjected her to endless torment, she never once thought of giving up.

When she finally got her wish and conceived a child, full of joy and wanting to share this miracle with him, he repaid her with such a massive "surprise."

She returned to the hospital. The doctor looked at her medical chart, then raised her head to look at her: "Ms. Hayes, are you absolutely sure you don't want the child in your womb?"

"I'm certain," her voice was as cold as ice, devoid of any warmth. "Terminate the pregnancy."