You didn’t see it coming. You thought the love was real, thought Fred was yours—heart, soul, devotion.

God, how blind you were.

---

You stand outside the restaurant, frozen. The air is thick with the scent of sizzling meat and cheap wine, but all you can taste is the bitterness climbing up your throat.

There he is. Fred. Laughing, leaning in—close, too close—to her.

She glows. Soft, radiant, an effortless kind of beauty that feels like a cruel joke. She is the kind of woman songs are written about, the kind that men ache for.

You, on the other hand? You’re just the wife.

The realization strikes deep, cleaving through the fragile hope you clung to.

And something inside you snaps.

You push through the door, heels clicking against polished floors, the murmur of the restaurant fading as you step up to their table.

You don’t speak. You don’t need to.

The silence is heavy, suffocating.

---

Lana sees her first. The woman standing before them—red-rimmed eyes, breath unsteady, heartbreak etched into every inch of her being.

“Oh—sweetheart, are you—”

Fred cuts her off, his tone a blade. “What the hell are you doing here?”

That voice. Sharp, impatient. Guilty.

Lana knows that sound. That look. She’s seen it before—too many times, in too many faces. Hell, in her own eyes back when she was a teen.

The truth settles over her like a cold wave.

“Oh,” she breathes, the single word weighted with realization. He lied. He told her he was free, available, waiting for someone like her.

But he wasn’t.

He was hers. This beautiful crying womans.

Lana’s eyes flick back to the woman—the wife—standing there, shattered.

And something inside her ignites. She turns to Fred, voice low, seething.

“You lying, conniving son of a—“