The Man She Married After Me Chapter 1

The day they found out I wasn’t the real heir, my wife filed for divorce.

The real heir became her second husband.

Five years later, I saw them again. They were having dinner with my child at the bistro where I worked. As they were leaving, Eleanor slipped a card across the table to me.

“Frank,” she said, her voice low, “stop working here. You’re embarrassing our daughter.”

The little girl beside her piped up. “And don’t go around telling people you’re my dad.”

I gave them my best waiter’s smile. “Ma’am, if you’re ready to pay, you can do so at the counter.” Then I turned to the child, who was staring at me with pure disdain. “I don’t have a daughter. Who are you?”

Eleanor’s hand shot out, grabbing my arm. “Are you still blaming me? For not saving your birth mother back then?”

I said nothing. What was the point? Without the Ashworth name, I wasn’t even worthy of being her husband. What right did I have to demand anything?

…

I didn’t have time for this. I joined my coworkers, clearing the remnants of their meal from the table. I could feel their eyes boring into my back, but I didn’t turn around.

When my shift ended at ten, my manager pulled me aside. He told me the restaurant had a new owner: Eleanor Hawthorne.

He looked at me, his expression pained. “Frank, she wants me to let you go. But don’t worry, she’s giving you six months’ severance.”

As I stepped outside, Eleanor emerged from the shadows beside her car. She walked toward me, sighing softly. “Frank, I’m just looking out for you. This work is grueling, and you’re here so late.”

“Find a more respectable job,” she urged.

“There’s no such thing as a job without dignity,” I replied flatly. “And for the ‘respectable’ ones you’re talking about? You need credentials.”

She froze for a second, her lips pressed into a thin line.

She’d forgotten, hadn’t she? She was the one who said I’d stolen twenty-three years of Ethan’s life. That my education belonged to the Ashworths, and I had no right to it. Once my name was stripped away, I was just a man with knowledge but no degree to prove it.

The car window slid down, and the little girl’s head popped out. “Mommy, let’s go. Why are you talking to this old man?” she whined. “Daddy will get jealous if you keep talking to other men. Let’s go home.”

Ethan, from inside the car, offered a token reprimand. “Tilly, don’t be rude. Frank is only twenty-eight, that’s not old. Your dad is twenty-eight, too. Are you saying I’m old?”

Tilly immediately grabbed Ethan’s arm, her voice turning syrupy sweet. “Of course not, Daddy! You’re way more handsome than Chris Hemsworth!” She glanced back at me. “Look at him, he’s all sallow and pale. He probably can’t even make ends meet.”

Ethan tweaked her cheek playfully. “My little girl has such a sweet tongue. You’ll get ice cream when we get home.” He then looked at me, his face a mask of apology. “Frank, I’m so sorry about that. Please don’t take it to heart.”

“Seriously, though,” he continued, “if you can’t find a good job, you could come work at the estate as Tilly’s private chef. At least you wouldn’t have to deal with customers or work these insane hours. I didn’t even recognize you earlier. If I had, I would’ve insisted you sit down with us. Could have saved you a couple of hours on your feet.”

Eleanor shot him a sharp look. “Ethan, that’s enough.”

He mumbled, just loud enough for me to hear. “I was just worried you’d give him a hard time again. I’m not even mad that he stole my identity as the heir, but you just can’t let it go. Promise me you won’t bother him anymore.”

Just as he was about to close the window, I jammed my hand in the opening. The glass bit into my skin, but I ignored the searing pain.

Eleanor was instantly on alert, her hand clamping down on my shoulder. Her grip was as strong as ever, enough to take down a grown man. “Frank, what do you think you’re doing?”

I ignored her, my eyes locked on Ethan, my voice pleading. “It was a fire at the hospital. The babies were swapped by mistake. No one stole anything from anyone. Can you please stop saying that? People who don’t know the whole story are still tearing your adoptive mother apart online.”

“She’s so sick, Ethan. She really wants to see you, to apologize for messing up your life.”

In truth, the life that was messed up was my biological mother’s—Ethan’s adoptive mother. After I found her, the neighbors told me the story. She’d rushed into that fire to save her son, and her face was badly burned. Her husband left her. She lost her job as a television host. She worked three jobs just to raise Ethan.

But Ethan dropped out of school at sixteen to run with a rough crowd, wasting his nights in bars. Every time she got paid, he’d snatch the money to party with his friends.

Right before the Ashworths came for him, my mother found out his friends were threatening to expose him—for bar fights, for three stints in juvie, for catching a nasty disease. She was terrified it would ruin his chance. So she gave them the two hundred thousand dollars she had saved for her own medical treatments, just to buy their silence.

But as soon as the story of the switched heirs broke, everyone turned on her. Because she’d once been a minor celebrity, they accused her of orchestrating the whole thing. For five years, she was dragged through the mud online. Now she was so ill she couldn’t even get out of bed. All she wanted was to see Ethan one last time.

From inside the car, Ethan just shook his head. “I’m not seeing that crazy woman.”