The Wife He Never Knew I Became novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Forty Floors
Lena is arranging the flowers in her husband's boardroom when her ex-husband walks in to beg him for $210 million, and her cousin treats her like the help, until Holden tells them Ms. Chen stays.
My ex-husband walked into my husband's boardroom at 7:40 on a Monday morning to beg for two hundred and ten million dollars.
I was on my knees under the table, wiping up water I'd spilled from a bucket of cherry branches.
I heard his laugh before I saw his shoes.
Three years, and I still knew that laugh.
"We're early," Daniel said. "Good. Let him see we're hungry."
"Let him see we're organized," Vanessa said. "Plug in the laptop, babe."
I stood up with a wet rag in my hand.
Daniel Zhang stopped in the doorway of the glass room.
My cousin Vanessa came in behind him in a cream coat, a pink diamond on her finger the size of a cough drop.
She saw me, and her whole face lit up.
"Oh my God," she said. "Lena?"
I folded the rag and set it on my cart.
"Good morning," I said.
"You're the florist." Vanessa pressed her hand to her chest. "Daniel, look. She's the florist."
"I can see that," Daniel said quietly.
My apron said SMALL HOURS FLOWERS across the front in white thread.
Under my shirt, a plain platinum ring lay against my breastbone on a thin chain.
"I'm so happy for you," Vanessa said. "Really. After everything, you landed on your feet."
She pulled a cherry branch out of the tall vase I'd just finished.
"Well. On your knees, with a bucket. But still."
She tossed the branch onto the table, and pink petals scattered across the white wood.
"Make sure nothing drops near Mr. Rutherford's chair," she said. "I hear he's particular."
I picked up the branch and put it back in the vase, exactly where it had been.
Daniel reached into his jacket.
He came around the table and held out a folded hundred-dollar bill and a business card.
"Take it," he said. "Please. And call me. Whatever you need."
"I don't need anything from you."
"Len."
Nobody had called me that in three years.
The last time he'd said it, he was standing in my father's kitchen two days after the funeral, holding divorce papers.
My father had dropped dead in his boatyard office on a Tuesday.
On the Monday after we buried him, Daniel moved in with my cousin.
That same week his mother told the whole city I'd emptied a hundred and eighty thousand dollars out of his account.
I never touched a cent of it.
I signed the papers anyway, asked for nothing, and left.
"Daniel, tip her and let's go," Vanessa said. "She's making it weird."
Then the receptionist opened the glass door, and Holden walked in.
He had his jacket over one arm and his sleeves pushed up, and he'd cut himself shaving on the left side of his jaw.
Daniel straightened so fast his card fell on the floor.
"Mr. Rutherford. Daniel Zhang. Thank you for seeing us. This is Vanessa Lin, our head of marketing."
"Mr. Rutherford," Vanessa said, and her voice went soft as butter.
Holden shook their hands without looking at either of them.
He was looking at the petals on the table, and then at me.
"Mr. Rutherford, I'm sorry," Vanessa said. "Could the florist finish outside? This is confidential."
Holden put his jacket on the back of his chair.
"Ms. Chen stays," he said.
Vanessa laughed a little. "Sorry?"
"Ms. Chen sits in on anything she likes." He pulled out the chair at his right hand. "Lena."
I could have walked out.
I could have taken my cart down the elevator and gone back to my shop and never seen either of them again.
I untied my apron, folded it, and sat down in my husband's boardroom.
Vanessa's smile stayed on her face, but nothing behind it moved.
I took a blank florist's card from my pocket and wrote on it under the table.
"Judge it straight. Not for me. Not against them."
I slid it across to Holden.
He read it, put it in his shirt pocket, and nodded at Daniel. "Go ahead."
Daniel clicked to his first slide.
ZHANG RIVERSIDE. Thirty-eight storeys on the Fraser River.
Beside the drawing of the tower was a "before" photo of the site.
A blue steel gate. A rusted crane. White letters across the gate.
CHEN MARINE WORKS.
My grandfather had painted those letters in 1971.
Daniel talked for twenty minutes about presales, lenders, and a deadline at the end of May.
When he finished, Holden turned to me. "Ms. Chen. Any questions?"
"One," I said. "Who did you buy the land from?"
Daniel held my eyes for a second too long.
"A bankruptcy sale," he said. "Nobody else bid."
"Some families just can't hold on to things," Vanessa said, smiling at me.
Holden closed the folder in front of him very gently.
"My team will be in touch," he said.
I walked out with them, because my cart was by the elevators.
Daniel picked his card up off the boardroom floor and pressed it into my hand again. "I'm going to fix this. All of it."
I dropped his card into my bucket of water.
The elevator opened. Daniel stepped in.
Vanessa stopped beside me and leaned close enough that I could smell her perfume.
"Florist to his right hand in a year," she whispered. "You always could find the bed with the money in it."
She stepped in after Daniel and held the door with one manicured finger.
"Men like Rutherford have wives, cuz," she said. "And Aunt Margaret is going to make very sure his hears all about you."
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