His Trophy Wife, Her Secret Life

My wife, Sophia Hayes, was beautiful, poised, and utterly detached.

For five years, our marriage had been a bizarre, silent transaction: she'd disappear for days, even weeks, to "support" her childhood sweetheart and his failing tech startup.

Each time she returned, a lavish "guilt offering" would appear – a vintage Patek, a signed first edition, a priceless Ming vase.

Ninety-nine such gifts now filled our sterile mansion, each a screaming monument to her absence and my bitter complicity.

I was no longer the man who' d clung to hope, who' d screamed and shattered expensive crystal.