The Video Called Me His Mistress, But I Was His Wife novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Lobby
The office video goes viral, a crowd tears at Hazel, and Gavin tells the police she is only his secretary. She leaves her ring on the sergeant's desk and learns the complaint was filed before the video posted.
By nine that Monday morning, forty thousand people had watched my husband pin me against his office desk.
I found out in the lobby of the company tower, with my badge in my hand.
Every phone in the room was pointed at me.
A man from accounting held his up so I could see my own face on it.
It was our video. The one from Thursday night, shot from above the bookshelf.
His hands were on my waist. His voice was rough on the speaker.
"Keep moaning, baby. I love hearing you."
Somebody had dubbed another woman's name into the line, over mine, and the rest was true.
"Hazel?"
Lydia Crane came across the marble toward me with her arms already open.
She ran communications for the company. She had brought me soup when I had the flu in March.
"Oh, honey. Come with me. Give me your phone, it's at four percent, I'll charge it at my desk."
I handed it over.
"Gavin's in the board room with his phone off," she said, touching the lanyard at her neck. "He told me to keep you away from the windows. Stay right here and let me handle it."
It was the kindest voice anyone had used to me all morning.
Then the lobby doors swung open and a crowd came in off the street.
Two women in the front wore cream coats and had the engagement announcement open on their screens.
The announcement said Gavin Prescott was marrying Lydia Crane in June.
"That's her," one of them said. "That's the homewrecker."
I had a hundred answers ready. I had practiced none of them.
"I'm not," I said. "I'm his wife."
Somebody laughed. Somebody else hit me.
It was an open hand across my left cheek, hard enough that I tasted blood.
Then there were hands in my hair and hands at my collar.
My blouse tore down the front and the cold of the lobby went across my skin.
I got an arm up. I got my bag against my chest, where my black notebook was.
Gavin calls it my grocery list. I write in it every night.
"Mistress!" a woman screamed. "Look at the bruises on her! She's been at it for years!"
The bruises were from Thursday. Gavin had put them there, and I had asked him to.
Nobody in that lobby needed that explained.
The security guards didn't pull anyone off me. They pulled me out.
Two officers took me down the front steps with my blouse held shut in one fist.
Phones followed me to the curb.
At the precinct they sat me in a plastic chair under a light that buzzed.
One side of my face had gone tight and hot. There was a cut in my lip.
The sergeant slid a form across the desk and didn't look up.
"Name?"
"Hazel Brennan."
"Employer?"
"Prescott Holdings."
"Public indecency and disturbing the peace, filed by your employer. Do you have someone we can call?"
I did.
I had one number I knew by heart.
"Gavin Prescott," I said.
The sergeant looked up at that.
Twenty minutes later the doors banged open and my husband came through them.
He had his dark suit on and a scar through his left eyebrow I had kissed a thousand times.
Lydia was at his side, holding his arm.
Behind them stood a tall man in a gray coat with his phone held out in front of him. He was recording.
Gavin looked at my face. His jaw moved once.
Then he looked at the sergeant.
"This is my assistant," he said. "She works for me. That's all she is."
The room was very quiet.
"Mr. Prescott," the sergeant said slowly, "this woman called you by name."
"She has a crush on me. It happens."
I waited for him to look at me again.
He didn't.
Lydia's hand stayed on his sleeve.
I thought about five years of Tuesday dinners at the back of a closed restaurant.
I thought about the ring I wore on a chain under my shirt, which was the only thing the crowd had missed.
I took it off over my head.
It was a plain gold band. I set it on the sergeant's desk.
"Then I'll stop bothering him," I said.
I stood up with my torn blouse held shut and my bag against my chest, and I walked out past all of them.
Nobody stopped me.
The sergeant caught up with me at the door. He held my phone, which an officer had brought from Lydia's desk.
He looked embarrassed.
"Ma'am. I shouldn't tell you this."
"Tell me."
"The complaint against you was filed with us at 7:12 this morning," he said. "The video didn't go up until eight."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend