When Lily thinks her husband can’t do any worse, she is wrong.

“Are you the son of my husband, Richard Mason?” she asks the blue-eyed and blonde boy, standing in front of her. His cheeks are flushed and he is wearing the blue dress that hospitals usually give to their inpatients.

They are inside Richard’s hospital room. Next to the boy, Richard, Lily’s husband, lies unconsciously, wrapped in bandages and hooked by a transfusion line. The beeping sound of the ventilator is the only thing accompanying them in the room.

Lily doesn’t like the boy immediately. There is just this air of arrogance around the boy. The way he acts, with his chin raised and drooping his eyelashes slightly, would make everyone thinks the boy thinks so highly of herself. The way he talks is annoying too.

“Yes. I am the son of your husband in name only. You don’t really love him, don’t you?”

The boy opens his mouth and Lily already feels like wanting to smack him in the head. He is definitely Richard’s. No doubt that snobby attitude comes from that husband of hers.

The edges of her eyes twitch as she tries to reign in her emotion. She can’t cause a scene in a public hospital. Not even when she just found out that his husband had been hiding another woman and a child behind her on the day her husband got into a car accident.

Richard cheating on her is nothing new. Lily even knows his mistress, Kira Gladiola. Not only once did she have to send Kira a bouquet of flowers using the company’s fund. Richard even brought Kira to their home.

Just last night, after Lily had pulled almost an all-nighter to fix a financial discrepancy in their annual reports in the company–Richard is the CEO and Lily is a Chief Operating Officer–she came home to loud moaning noises. She was too tired to respond. But when she passed Richard’s room, she could also hear bouncing and the sound of the bed creaking loudly.

“Yes!!” Kira shouted that night. “Yes, faster! Yes! Yes!”

Lily also remembered the look of their butler, Koko, who went upstairs to greet Lily. His face was contorted. There was obvious pity in his eyes.

Koko’s face became even more twisted when they heard Kira crying out the words, “I am so much better than your good–for–nothing wife, right?”

“Of course you are, babe,” Richard answers, “That wife of mine can’t even satisfy me in bed. She sucks.”

Richard’s grunts intertwined with Kira’s moans. Their voices were starting to irritate Lily. But she could do nothing to them. Even if there was something she could do, it will only anger Richard and make their life living together as hell.

They can’t divorce yet.

Not until Lily has fulfilled her promise to Richard’s grandfather, Frederick Mason.

Though sometimes, Lily is tempted to just f everything and disappear. Except for Frederick, none of the Masons have ever accepted her kindly. Most are cold and distant toward her. Some even tried to bring her position in the company down, saying an orphan girl from nowhere shouldn’t have such high standing in a multinational company.

Sadly, Frederick died two years after her marriage to Richard. It has been very lonely for Lily, with no one to really support her other than herself, since then.

But Lily has been able to shut the Masons up with her work ethic and promising results to the company. Even when Richard keeps trying to make her work hard for her, she is always a few steps ahead of her husband and his annoying family. As someone who works in a search engine company, she is quite resourceful in gaining information.

Lily can always know when Richard is going out with Kira, when and what is he buying for her with the company money, and she even checks out Kira’s background first before deciding to allow Richard to continue his affair. Not like Richard would stop his woe with Kira if Lily told him not to. But Lily could have had her ways to eliminate Kira from Richard’s life if she wanted to.

Though she can’t really underestimate Kira too. In just under three months, Kira’s bubbly and friendly personality has been able to make the public and the Masons think that the problem in their relationship must

be Lily. Because Kira appears to be a good girl with a good reputation. There is a rumor spreading that Lily is cold and useless as a wife, too. So, the blame has been shifted to Lily.

And Lily didn’t even try to refute the rumor for some reason, which makes more people think the rumors are true.

Lily blinks to cast away all her memories. She focuses on the annoying boy in front of her. This boy is the first one that makes Lily think she is not too far ahead of Richard as she has been thinking all along.

How on earth did Richard manage to hide a woman and an eleven-year-old child? Her marriage to Richard is not even that long yet. They have only been married for six years. When she asked Hannah, Richard’s sister, she found out that the Masons didn’t have an inkling that Richard had been having a child. Even Kira, Richard’s lover, was shocked when Lily told her about the boy.

Kira didn’t even want to visit Richard in the hospital yet because she felt betrayed by Richard.

“Who is your mother?” Lily asked.

The boy crosses his arms. He puffs out his chest and starts tapping his finger on his elbow. Lily doesn’t like it, but he definitely acts like Richard when he is being defensive.

“Definitely not an ugly woman like you.” The boy huffs. His cheeks are getting even redder with his anger. Lily thinks that Richard must have been telling the boy bad things about her for the boy to act so hostile to Lily.

At least Lily thinks the boy looks cute when he is angry.

Lily crosses her arms and raises her chin, matching the boy’s power pose. She can play the game too.

“Do you even know who I am, boy?” She looks down to the boy, arching one eyebrow up.

The boy nods. “Richard has told me all about you,” he cries out, “I know all your dirty secrets.”

Lily smirks. So, Richard has been telling the boy that Lily is the evil one. That is so like Richard.

“Oh yeah?” Lily challenges the boy.

“Yeah!” The boy puffs out his chest more, “You are also a terrible wife to Richard. You keep getting in the way of him and Kira. You bully Kira and you act as though the Masons are the ones who have wronged you.”

Lily’s eyebrows knot together. That is what Richard has been telling the boy? Is that what Richard really thinks of her?

“And you’re also ugly!” The boy’s voice keeps on rising. Lily can tell that some people have stopped to look behind the door’s window to see what the noise is all about. “With your small eyes and small nose!”

The words surprise Lily. Because that is exactly what Richard used to say to her. He has expressed his dislike for Lily’s features a couple of times. But that’s not something Lily can change because it’s her genetics. Her ethnicity is South-East Asian. That is why Richard chose Kira, a brunette Caucasian with blue eyes, a prominent nose, and slightly tanned skin. A complete opposite of Lily.

Richard himself is a Caucasian with blonde hair and grey eyes. The boy in front of Lily also has the same exact feature.

Lily can’t change the way she looks, the way she is born. She has given up trying to please Richard’s eyes anyway. And if the boy is as close-minded as his father, Lily prefers not to deal with him anymore. She can only handle one Richard at a time.

“I see,” she says to the boy, “Well, let’s hope Kira will take you in. Because I won’t.”

“Who wants to live with you, anyway?” The boy blows his tongue out to Lily.

She peeks at the unconscious Richard next to the boy. Lily must admit, she wants to applause Richard for planting the seed of hatred in the boy.

Luckily, Lily won’t have to deal with both the boy and Richard for a while. The doctor said that it might be a while before Richard would gain his consciousness.

But fate, it seems, has always tried to test Lily’s patients.

Because when Lily calls Kira to pick up the boy, she shouts loudly from the other end of Lily’s phone, “Are you kidding me, bi.tch? You want me to take in Richard’s bas.tard son? Over my dead body! You take him. Or just leave him in the hospital with Richard!”

A/n: Hey guys, this is just a fun little project I am doing. I will be updating weekly on Sundays :)