My Perfect Marriage, His Deadly Secret

For three months, I was the perfect wife to tech billionaire Axel Delacruz. I thought our marriage was a fairy tale, and the welcome dinner for my new internship at his company was supposed to be a celebration of our perfect life.

That illusion shattered when his beautiful, unhinged ex, Diana, crashed the party and stabbed him in the arm with a steak knife.

But the real horror wasn't the blood. It was the look in my husband's eyes. He cradled his attacker, whispering a single, tender word meant only for her:

"Always."

He stood by as she held a knife to my face to carve off a beauty mark she claimed I'd copied from her. He watched as she threw me into a kennel with starving dogs, knowing it was my deepest fear. He let her have me beaten, let her shove gravel down my throat to ruin my voice, and let her men break my hand in a door.

When I called him one last time, begging for help as a group of men closed in, he hung up on me.

Trapped and left for dead, I threw myself out of a second-story window. As I ran, bleeding and broken, I made a call I hadn't made in years.

"Uncle Francisco," I sobbed into the phone. "I want a divorce. And I want you to help me destroy him."

They thought they married a nobody. They had no idea they'd just declared war on the Wallace family.

Chapter 1

Keira Ellis POV:

The first time I saw my husband look at another woman with an emotion that wasn't polite indifference, she had just stabbed him in the arm with a steak knife.

It happened during my welcome dinner at Apex Innovations. Three months into my marriage with Axel Delacruz, the tech world' s golden boy, I' d finally convinced him to let me intern at his company. I wanted to feel like more than just a beautiful accessory on his arm, a student wife he kept tucked away in our sprawling Austin villa. He' d finally agreed, and this dinner was supposed to be a celebration.

It felt more like walking into a war zone.

Diana Buckley crashed the party. Heiress to the Buckley tech empire, Apex's lifelong rival, and the most volatile woman I had ever seen. She stormed into the private dining room, her red dress a slash of color against the restaurant's muted tones. Her eyes, burning with a furious, almost manic energy, were locked on Axel.

"You actually married her?" Diana's voice was a low snarl, laced with disbelief and contempt. She reeked of expensive whiskey. "This pathetic little copy?"

A ripple of nervous whispers went through the table of executives. I felt my cheeks heat up, my hand instinctively tightening around Axel's under the table. He gave my hand a reassuring squeeze, but his eyes never left Diana.

"Diana, you're drunk," he said, his voice dangerously calm. "Go home."

"Home?" She laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. "My home is wherever you are, Axel, you know that. And you choose to be here, with... her." Her gaze flickered to me, dismissing me in an instant.

She lunged for him, grabbing the collar of his tailored suit. "You did this to provoke me, didn't you? You found some bland, wide-eyed girl who looks a little like me and put a ring on her finger just to get my attention."

My breath hitched. A little like her? I saw the resemblance, of course. The same dark hair, the same sharp jawline. But her features were hard, jagged, where mine were soft. Her eyes were storms; mine were just... brown.

"You're making a scene," Axel said, his voice tight as he tried to pry her hands off him.

That's when I saw the shift. The deep, almost painful connection that crackled between them. It was a toxic energy that sucked all the air from the room. He wasn't looking at a drunken business rival; he was looking at... something else. Something complicated and raw.

"You promised me," she hissed, her voice dropping to a venomous whisper only he and I could hear. "You promised you'd wait. You said no one else would ever matter."

My heart stopped. Axel had said those exact words to me on our wedding night. He' d held my face in his hands, his eyes sincere, and told me that I was the only one who would ever matter. The memory, once so precious, now felt like a shard of glass in my gut.

Diana finally let him go, but only to grab the steak knife from the table. "I'll kill you," she slurred, stumbling slightly.

Axel didn't flinch. He just watched her, a strange, unreadable expression on his face. It wasn't fear. It was... fascination.

She lunged. The knife sliced through the sleeve of his suit and into the flesh of his forearm. Blood bloomed, a dark crimson against the crisp white of his shirt.

A collective gasp went through the room. I jumped to my feet, my chair scraping loudly against the floor. "Axel!"

But he wasn't looking at his bleeding arm. He wasn't looking at me. His eyes were locked on Diana, and in them, I saw it. A flicker of something dark and possessive. A deep, aching concern that had never, not once, been directed at me.

"Always," he murmured, a single word meant only for her. It was an answer to a question I hadn't heard, a confirmation of a promise I never knew existed.

Diana's rage seemed to shatter. Her face crumpled, and the knife clattered to the floor. Tears streamed down her face, mixing with her smeared mascara. She threw herself at him, sobbing into his chest, heedless of the blood now staining her expensive dress.

And Axel... Axel wrapped his uninjured arm around her, holding her tight. His hand stroked her hair, his chin resting on top of her head. The cold, ruthless CEO I knew vanished, replaced by a man consumed with a repressed, agonizing tenderness.

The room was silent except for Diana's choked sobs. The executives stared, their faces a mixture of shock and awkward pity. Their eyes darted from the bleeding man holding his attacker to me, the forgotten wife standing frozen by the table.

"They're at it again," someone whispered from a nearby table. "She always does this."

"Poor Mrs. Delacruz," another voice murmured. "She really does look like a younger Diana Buckley. I guess we all know why he married her."

The whispers were like slaps to the face. A copy. A substitute. A pawn in a game I didn't even know I was playing. My stomach churned, and a wave of nausea washed over me. My body felt cold, then hot, a physical manifestation of the humiliation burning through me.

Axel finally lifted his head. He gently pushed Diana back, holding her by the shoulders. His gaze was soft, his voice a low caress. "Go home, Diana. I'll take care of this."

He turned to his assistant. "Get her home safely."

Then, as if he' d just remembered I existed, his eyes found mine. The tenderness vanished, replaced by the cool, distant mask I was so familiar with. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, wrapping it clumsily around his bleeding arm.

"Keira, are you alright?" he asked, his tone polite, detached.

I couldn't speak. My throat felt like it was full of sand.

He pulled out his phone. A second later, my own phone buzzed on the table. A text from him.

I'm sorry you had to see that. Diana is... complicated. I'll handle it. Go home and get some rest. I'll be back late.

He didn't even look at me as he walked out, his arm still around a weeping Diana, guiding her gently toward the exit. He didn't see the way I was trembling, the way my world was fracturing around me.

I stood there, alone in a room full of strangers, the weight of their pity pressing down on me. I tried to call him. The first time, it rang until it went to voicemail. The second, third, and fourth times, the call was rejected.

My facade finally crumbled. I sank back into my chair, the unshed tears burning behind my eyes. I thought back to the whirlwind romance. The brilliant, charismatic tech mogul sweeping a simple university student off her feet. He had pursued me with a single-minded intensity that had left me breathless. He' d told me he loved my kindness, my quiet strength, the way my eyes lit up when I talked about my studies.

He' d even dropped a multi-billion dollar acquisition deal in another state just to be in Austin, just to be with me. He' d made me believe I was the center of his universe.

Now I saw the truth. It was all a lie. Every loving glance, every whispered promise, every grand gesture. It wasn't for me. It was a performance. A calculated move in his twisted, toxic game with Diana Buckley.

I was just the stage.

I finally managed to stumble out of the restaurant and get a cab back to our villa. The house, once a symbol of our new life together, now felt like a gilded cage. Every photo of us smiling together, every gift he' d ever given me, felt like a prop in a meticulously crafted play.

My mind replayed Diana's words. You promised me. You promised you' d wait. And Axel' s one-word reply. Always.

A cold dread seeped into my bones. Driven by a desperate need for answers, I started walking through the house, my footsteps echoing in the silence. I went to his office, a place I rarely entered. It was sleek and minimalist, just like him. But one door was always locked-his private study. He' d told me it was where he kept sensitive work documents and that he preferred his privacy.

Tonight, I didn't care about his privacy. I found a heavy letter opener on his desk and jammed it into the lock. I twisted and pushed, fueled by a rising tide of anger and betrayal, until I heard a click.

The door swung open.

The air inside was stale, heavy with the scent of a woman's perfume. Not my perfume. It was a rich, heady scent of tuberose and jasmine, the same scent that had clung to Diana Buckley.

The room wasn't an office. It was a shrine.

The walls were covered in photographs, not of me, but of Diana. Diana as a teenager, grinning cheekily at the camera. Diana on a yacht, her hair blowing in the wind. Diana and Axel, their faces close, their eyes alight with a fire I'd never seen in him. A massive oil painting of her hung over the fireplace, her painted eyes seeming to mock me.

A glass display case held mementos: a dried rose, a concert ticket, a silver locket. On the desk, a stack of letters tied with a red ribbon. I untied it with trembling fingers. The handwriting was Axel's.

My dearest Diana, even when we fight, even when I hate you, you are the only one I see.

I dropped the letters as if they were on fire. My legs gave out, and I slid to the floor, my whole body shaking. He had been coming in here. For the three months of our marriage, he had been coming into this secret room to think about her, to breathe in her scent, to look at her face.

I scrambled back to my feet, a wild, destructive urge surging through me. I wanted to tear the photos from the walls, to shatter the painting, to burn it all to the ground.

My phone rang, startling me. It was Axel.

"Keira? Are you home?" His voice was calm, controlled, as if nothing had happened.

"Where are you?" I asked, my own voice tight and strained.

"I'm still dealing with the fallout from tonight," he said evasively. "Listen, I'm sorry-"

"Come home, Axel," I cut him off, the words tasting like ash. "Please. I'm... I'm scared." It was a test. A final, desperate plea for him to choose me.

There was a pause on the other end. I could hear his hesitation. I could almost feel him weighing his options.

"I can't right now, Keira," he finally said, and his voice was flat, final. "Diana needs me."

"Axel, don't you dare-"

"I'll be home in the morning."

Before he hung up, I heard it. A faint, feminine sigh in the background. Diana's sigh.

The line went dead.

A guttural sob ripped from my throat. It wasn't just a sigh. It was the contented sound of a woman in her lover's arms.

The last vestige of hope inside me died. I looked around the shrine he had built for her, and a cold, hard resolve replaced the heartbreak. I grabbed the oil painting of Diana, its frame heavy in my hands. With a scream of pure rage, I smashed it against the corner of the desk. The canvas ripped, the gilded frame splintered.

I wouldn't just be a pawn in their game. I wouldn't be a substitute.

They wanted a war? They would get one.

I pulled out my phone, my hands shaking so badly I could barely type. I scrolled to a number I hadn't called in months, a number I' d kept hidden away for emergencies.

"Uncle Francisco," I said, my voice cracking, "it's Keira. I need you."

There was a moment of silence, and then his voice, sharp and concerned. "Keira? What's wrong? What did he do to you?"

"I want a divorce," I sobbed, the words finally breaking free. "And I want you to help me destroy him."

"Tell me everything," he said, and in his voice, I heard the promise of retribution. "We're coming to get you."

The Ellis family was coming. And Axel Delacruz had no idea what was about to hit him.

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