Welcome To Hell, Dear Wife-Chapter 61: Headlines

Chapter 61: Headlines
Pain
.
That was the first thing that registered in Mira’s brain when she finally came to consciousness.
Her head felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to her skull and then just for fun decided to keep hammering.
She groaned as she pressed her palms to her eyes like that was a foolproof way to get the pounding to stop.
The night before came to her mind as a disaster of fragmented images.
Colored lights spinning, the taste of champagne that tasted so good at the time, and the music pouring through her body.
Alex... Alex Vance! His face being so close to hers and then—
Nothing.
She remembered nothing else. Again. Just like the day before. Twice in a row.
Ugh! Am I really losing memories now?
But that was not the problem because she could not also help the feeling like she was being watched, because the hairs on her neck stood up as every instinct screamed that she so wasn’t alone.
Her eyes flew open instantly.
And she was right because, sitting directly across from her bed fully dressed in a perfectly pressed charcoal suit, was Lucas.
His tie was knotted with what looked like military precision while his hair was styled like he had been awake for hours.
His posture was relaxed too, with one leg crossed over the other and hands resting on the armrests with the confidence of someone who owned everything in sight.
But his eyes were what got to her the most. He was watching her with an expression so unreadable that it almost made her skin crawl.
Not cold, not angry even. Just unreadable. More like a predator studying wounded prey and trying to decide where it could bite first.
How long has he been sitting there? Has he been watching me sleep?
Mira jolted upright so fast that her head spun. Her eyes darted around the room, taking in details. She could see her heels scattered on the floor.
And that’s when she noticed the tablet on her bedside table too.
The screen was lit up with the brightness turned up all the way like he had wanted to make sure she couldn’t miss it even if she tried to.
A news article flowered on it accusingly in the sun room, and the headline made her stomach drop straight to the floor.
CANCELED LORENA SANDERS’ NIGHT OUT: Clinging to ex while hubby works.
Her mouth went dry immediately.
Below the headline was a photo so clear that it could have been professionally shot. Her and Alex on the dance floor with bodies pressed so close. Her hands were splayed across his chest while his arm wrapped around her waist in a possessive and intimate way.
Both of them were laughing like they were the only two people in the world.
The photo was very much clear that there was no room for any other kind of interpretation, no way to even claim that it was taken out of context.
With shaking fingers, Mira grabbed the tablet and scrolled down.
Another photo immediately loaded and this one was even worse than the first.
Her head was thrown back in laughter exposing the long line of her throat while leaning into Alex like he was holding her upright. His face was so close, close enough to call it a kiss from the angle it had been taken.
The timestamp showed it was posted barely four hours ago and yet it already had hundreds of thousands of views.
She scrolled to the comments section against her very own judgement and the words immediately hit her like a punch.
She really has no shame does she?
Poor Lucas Atkins married to this trash.
Once a home wrecker, always a home wrecker, now she’s even wrecking her own home.
Can we just permanently cancel her and call it a day? She literally ruins lives for fun now.
Lucas should divorce her and make sure not to give her a dime.
Why is she even still breathing tbh.
The comments were just getting worse the last. Thousands of strangers uniting in their hatred for her, not even one in Alex’s name criticized, not once.
Mira felt physically sick. It took a lot of restraint for her not to empty her stomach all over the expensive sheets she was on.
Lucas hadn’t moved yet, he just sat there in that chair as if letting the images sink in like a slow-acting poison, letting her fully comprehend the depth of the disaster that she had caused.
The silence was too much that it felt like it would break her until he finally spoke.
"Good morning, I’m sure you had such a great sleep, seeing that you’re waking up at—"
He paused to check his wristwatch, "12pm?"
His voice was unusually calm, the kind of calm that came before explosions or violence.
The kind that meant someone was holding onto their control with desperation.
Mira’s mouth felt like she had been chewing cotton but she knew she had to talk. "Lucas, I—"
He cut her off immediately even without raising his voice even slightly. "If you have a tendency to act like a crazed animal whenever you’re drunk, why do you bother drinking at all?"
The insult was so calm yet cutting. It even made her flinch, like actually flinch as if he had physically hit her.
"It... it wasn’t like that I promise," she whispered even though it sounded like a pathetic defense even to her own ears.
"No?" He picked up the tablet with one hand as he scrolled through what must have been dozens more photos with infuriating calm.
His finger swiped across the screen with each swipe revealing yet another damn image, "this looks exactly like that to me though."
Her dancing with Alex. Her laughing with Alex. Her hand on his face, his lips near her ear.
He stood up swiftly and the room suddenly felt so much smaller and dangerous.
He tossed the tablet down beside her and it landed with a soft thud.
"Explain it to me then." His voice was still calm and controlled but she could hear the rage underneath. "Enlighten me."
Mira’s mind scrambled to piece together a coherent defense through whatever fragmented memories that kept slipping away like trying to grab water with her bare hands.
"Uh... Callis took me to the party..." she stumbled over her own words. "I never knew that this Alex Vance would be there, I just had too much to drink and we just tal—"
"Ah, yes." A mocking smile took his lips. "Blame Callis, blame the ex, blame the champagne, blame the universe. But never yourself, right?"
Each word came with contempt.
He took a step closer to the bed that she now had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes and the position made her feel so small and vulnerable like she was at his mercy.
"Callis said that you begged to go to that party. That you were even very much ecstatic to see him."
The way he said the word ecstatic was like he was drawing out each syllable and injecting it with so much venom in her.
"You made a spectacle of yourself." His jaw clenched. "You made even
me
a spectacle. Do you have an idea what my board is saying right now? How you are affecting my reputation?"
Each word kept hitting her to realize how badly she might have destroyed things.
"You forced me to leave an important business meeting to come and retrieve you like a lost puppy who couldn’t find its way home."
Mira’s shame suddenly morphed into something else as defiance sparked in her chest. "But I didn’t even ask you to come!" The words burst out of her before she could stop them.
His eyes flashed red.
"You were seconds from being your ex’s headline for this year, you absolute fool." He snarled the last word as his calm was now cracking. "Do you have any idea what Alex was about to do to you in that parking garage? You might as well open an
OnlyFans
."
The memory finally flashed through her mind like lightning striking.
Alex’s hand on her face, his body pressing her against the car and his lips getting closer.
Then Lucas appearing like an angel. Or better still
, a demon
. She couldn’t decide which one.
His fist hitting Alex’s jaw.
Her eyes dropped to Lucas’s hands at that exact moment and she saw just how clearly his knuckles were bruised.
"And then," Lucas continued, his voice going even softer, more dangerous.
His gaze dropped to her lips for a second before snapping back to her eyes. "The performance in the car."