Anna got the fourth call just as the wall clock struck eleven.
Outside the window, New York was blurred by a fine mist of rain, streetlights stretching into smeared yellow streaks on the glass. In the penthouse on the forty-fifth floor, the kitchen still smelled of pasta she’d cooked earlier—her husband’s portion sat untouched on the table, long gone cold.
Her phone buzzed. Unknown number.
She had thought nothing could really surprise her anymore… until a young female voice on the other end said:
“Are you Mr. Ethan Cole’s wife? I… I’m pregnant with his child.”
Anna closed her eyes.
Four calls.
Four different women.
One identical story.
Only the way they cried was different.
1. Four phone calls, one repeating script
The first call came at 7 p.m., while Anna was sautéing garlic in butter.
“Mrs. Cole? I… I’m Lily. I work in Executive Assistant at ColeTech. I… I’m pregnant with Ethan’s baby.”
Anna put the pan down and turned the heat low.
“Could you explain that a bit more?” she asked, her voice strangely calm.
On the other end, the girl sobbed.
“Last week we flew to San Francisco on a business trip. That night… we had drinks after the contract signing. He and I… I know it was wrong. But now my period is a week late. I took a test—two lines. I don’t want to terminate it. I just… I want this handled quietly.”
“Handled quietly” wasn’t hard to interpret.
“One million dollars,” Lily finally said after circling around for a bit. “I’ll do a DNA test later if you want, but… if you don’t agree, I’ll send photos, videos to the press. I have everything.”
Anna had heard enough.
“Okay,” she said, still even. “Give me your email.”
She wrote it down, thanked her, hung up.
Less than an hour later, while Anna still hadn’t touched her own plate of pasta, the second call came.
“Mrs. Cole? I’m Jenna. I’m… I’m pregnant with Ethan’s baby.”
Same story. The recent business trip. Drinks after the signing. A hotel room.
Same number: one million dollars.
If not, the press, a scandal, stock in free fall.
The third call came at 9:30—this time a woman with razor-sharp English and a harder tone:
“I’ll be blunt. I know he’s rich. One million is what you blow on a rare Hermès bag. I’m pregnant with his second child. Do you want to keep this quiet or do you want to go to war?”
Finally, the fourth call at eleven.
Anna listened to the whole thing. She didn’t interrupt, didn’t defend her husband, didn’t rush to deny anything.
She only asked two questions:
“Do you have an employee contract with ColeTech?”
And:
“Do you have a private email not tied to the company?”
All four said yes.
Anna wrote down every address.
When the last call ended, the apartment was unnaturally still. Just the ticking of the clock and the steady hiss of rain against the glass.
Ethan still wasn’t home. The “critical business trip”—described as “saving the biggest M&A of the year”—had stretched by a day, then another. He texted that his flight was delayed, that the client kept him late.
Anna had stopped having the energy to pretend she believed him a long time ago.
2. Ethan Cole – the man in perfect photographs
The first time Anna saw Ethan Cole was on a magazine cover, when she was twenty-four.
“ColeTech’s Youngest CEO,” “Silicon Alley’s Golden Boy,” “Wall Street’s Favorite Tech Visionary”—she read those lines in her law school dorm, laughing and shaking her head.
No article mentioned he made coffee so good it was addictive, that he always forgot his keys, or that he instinctively took off his shoes at the front door… until the night he stood outside her tiny rental apartment, drenched to the bone, holding a bunch of white tulips.
“I got lost,” he’d said, smiling crookedly. “First time on the New York subway. Got off four stops too late.”
They fell in love like it was scripted: late nights eating pizza at his office, half-asleep texts of “I’m starving, are you?”, trips where Ethan dragged her along on “business just so you won’t have to stay up waiting.”
When he proposed, he did it in her cramped kitchen, on one knee, hands shaking.
“I already signed this,” he said, showing her a document: a prenup. “You don’t have to sign anything. What’s mine is yours. If I ever do something stupid… you won’t have to worry about money.”
Anna laughed, tears falling on the paper.
“You think I’m marrying you for your money?” she nudged his shoulder.
“I think future-me is going to make a lot of stupid mistakes,” he joked. “I just want if that happens… you’re still okay.”
She signed the line accepting financial protection without much thought. Back then, love was bigger than any clause.
Five years later, Anna found out she couldn’t have children.
That same year, Ethan started traveling more. The photos on magazines were still perfect. The interviews still talked about vision and changing the world.
Only the space between them changed.
3. The last shield
It was close to midnight when Ethan finally opened the door.
He looked exhausted: tie loosened, eyes bloodshot, shirt wrinkled. He carried the mixed scent of whiskey, someone else’s perfume, airplane, and cold rain.
“Hey,” he said, forcing a smile. “I’m… a bit late.”
“A bit?” Anna replied evenly. “You’re three days late, Ethan.”
He set his suitcase down, avoiding her gaze.
“Japanese client, you know how they are,” he mumbled. “They kept me in negotiations. Did you see the news? Stock’s up eight percent.”
Anna watched him for a long moment.
“I got four calls tonight,” she said.
Ethan froze.
“Four… calls?” He swallowed. “From who?”
“Four ‘assistants’ from your trip,” Anna said. “They all introduced themselves with different names. Lily. Jenna. Sophie. And one who didn’t give a name but spoke flawless English. Same story: they’re pregnant. It’s your baby. One million dollars each.”
His face shifted—shock, then anger, then a flicker of real fear.
“You believe them?” he snapped. “You think I slept with all four? You… you know I’m not that guy, Anna.”
“Good,” Anna nodded. “Because biologically, you can’t.”
He stared at her. His eyes widened.
“What are you talking about?” he stammered.
Anna rose and walked to the small home office. She opened a drawer, took out a thin file, and laid it on the dining table.
“Remember three years ago, when you had ‘stomach surgery’ and stayed in the hospital overnight?” she asked. “I sat next to your bed the whole time.”
Ethan said nothing.
Anna nudged the file toward him.
“I found this two months ago while cleaning out your office drawers,” she said. “Lab results, surgical consent, your signature. After that procedure… your ability to father a child is exactly zero. I kept quiet. I thought maybe… you didn’t want to hurt me more. But tonight, when four women call to demand money for ‘your baby’… it clicked.”
He flipped through the documents. The word was right there in the doctor’s neat handwriting: vasectomy.
No mistaking it.
Ethan drew a long breath and let the file fall.
“I… I didn’t want you to go through another diagnosis,” he said, voice rough. “You were already so devastated after the fertility tests. I thought… if I said it was my surgery, you’d blame yourself less. I wanted you to feel free to leave if you wanted.”
Anna’s laugh was thin and humorless.
“And you thought hiding it would be better?” she asked. “You let me live three years thinking I was the only reason you didn’t have a child, while you quietly burned every bridge to that possibility?”
He was silent.
Outside, the rain thickened.
Anna leaned back in her chair, fingers interlaced.
“Whatever you did or didn’t do on that trip,” she said slowly, “one thing is clear: anything they claim to be carrying is not your child. Which means someone very much wants the world to think they are.”
“Who do you think is behind this?” Ethan asked, brows furrowed.
Anna shrugged.
“Maybe Cardinal,” she said. “Or any rival who hates you enough to blow you up with a sex scandal. Four secretaries, one trip, four calls in one night, each demanding exactly one million, all threatening ‘the press and the stock price.’ That’s not infidelity. That’s a campaign.”
Ethan sank into a chair.
“Jesus…” he muttered. “If this gets out, the board will crucify me. CEO knocked up four assistants at once? The stock will dive. The M&A we just signed will be questioned. The whole company… What are you going to do?”
Anna’s brown eyes were clear, cool.
“I’m going to save you one last time,” she said. “Just once more.”
4. Anna – lawyer of her own life
Before she became “Mrs. Cole,” Anna had been a sharp corporate attorney. She’d left a big firm after marriage, partly because Ethan didn’t want “two people working until midnight,” partly because he needed someone he fully trusted to handle the labyrinth of funds, subsidiaries, and investments.
Ethan called her his “second brain.”
The board called her “the quiet power.”
That night, Anna opened her laptop and logged into an email account tied to the addresses the women had given her. She drafted a single email, CC’ing all four:
Subject: Re: Your calls about “pregnancy”
Dear Lily, Jenna, Sophie, and Ms. X,
This is Anna Cole.
I received your calls tonight. Each of you claims to be pregnant with my husband’s child and is asking for $1,000,000 in exchange for silence.
I will not negotiate this over the phone. If you are serious, please meet me tomorrow at 10 a.m. at the address below. A lawyer will be present to protect everyone’s rights.
If you do not show up, I will consider this extortion attempt closed and forward your phone numbers and recordings of our calls to law enforcement and ColeTech’s internal security team.
Regards,
Anna Cole
She added the address of a private conference room at her old law firm—where she still had friends.
Click. Send.
“You recorded everything?” Ethan asked, still dazed.
Anna nodded.
“Occupational habit,” she said. “Also, I checked HR. No Lily or Jenna in Executive Assistant. Sophie resigned three months ago. There’s only one real assistant who traveled with you… and she’s a lesbian who’s been living with her girlfriend for seven years.”
He stared at her like he’d never truly seen her before—not just as his wife, but as an opponent he’d hate to face in court.
“So… who’s going to show up?” he asked.
Anna gave a small, cold smile.
“Whoever thinks they’re smart enough to shake down ‘the dumb CEO’s wife,’” she said. “We’ll see.”
5. Four “secretaries” unmasked
At 10 a.m. the next day, the glass-walled conference room at Harris & Bloom had its blinds drawn.
Anna sat at the head of the table in a black suit, hair in a neat bun, a laptop and a stack of papers in front of her. Beside her sat Mark Bloom, senior partner, her former mentor.
“Never thought I’d be here helping you divorce a client,” Mark murmured.
“I haven’t asked you for that yet,” Anna replied with a small smile. “Right now, this is just extortion clean-up.”
The door opened.
The first woman stepped in—blonde, pencil skirt, high heels, expensive bag. Two more followed: a girl-next-door brunette, and a very pretty Asian woman dressed simply. The fourth wore oversized sunglasses despite being indoors.
They looked around, unsettled by the professional setting.
“Please sit,” Anna said politely. “Thank you for coming. As mentioned, we’re going to keep everything on the record.”
Mark introduced himself.
“I’m counsel for Mrs. Cole,” he said. “This conversation is being recorded and may be used in court. If any of you want your own lawyer, we can arrange another time.”
They exchanged uneasy glances. Clearly, the original plan had been to corner a panicked wife alone, not to face a lawyer in a conference room.
Anna opened her laptop.
“To save time,” she said, “I’ll call you by the names you used on the phone, even though I doubt they’re real. Lily?”
The blonde’s chin tipped slightly.
“That’s me,” she said.
Anna hit play. Lily’s voice spilled out from the laptop speakers: “One million dollars. If not, I’ll send photos and videos to the press.”
“Jenna?”
Sobbing threats about “handling things quietly.”
“Sophie?”
The tight, hard voice: “One million is just the price of a rare Hermès bag for you.”
Finally, the woman in sunglasses. Anna played the last recording.
For ten minutes, the only sound in the room was the echo of their own words.
When the last clip ended, Anna shut the laptop.
“As you can hear,” she said gently, “we’re standing on very thin ice between ‘civil negotiation’ and ‘felony extortion.’ If I forward these to the DA’s office, we will not be having this conversation in such a comfortable setting.”
Lily’s face went pale.
“What do you want?” she asked.
Anna leaned back in her chair.
“I’m offering you a chance,” she said. “A chance to tell the truth. Who hired you? Who gave you the script? And why is my husband the target?”
The woman in sunglasses smirked.
“We’re just telling the truth,” she said coolly. “Your husband slept with us. Now we’re pregnant. Believe it or not, up to you. But the tabloids would love four matching stories about a billionaire CEO. Think about what the shareholders will do.”
Anna met her gaze.
“What’s your real name?” she asked quietly.
“You can call me whatever you like,” the woman shrugged.
Mark lifted a sheet of paper.
“We traced the phone numbers and emails,” he said. “It wouldn’t be hard to get your names. But before we go that route, we’re offering a deal: you sign statements admitting the allegations are false and give us everything you know about who hired you. In return, we won’t press criminal charges and will treat this as a smear campaign orchestrated by a third party.”
The Asian woman—silent until then—began to shake.
“We… we didn’t think it would be this big,” she blurted. “He… he told us we’d just make a few calls, take some money, and leave. He said Mrs. Cole would pay to keep quiet. He…”
Sunglasses shot her a lethal look.
“Shut up,” she hissed. “You trying to die?”
Anna tilted her head.
“Who is he?” she asked, looking at the Asian woman.
The girl bit her lip. Tears spilled onto the table.
“I… I work part-time at an agency,” she whispered. “My boss told us to act. He sent the script, told us exactly what to say, to demand one million, to threaten the media. He said if it worked, we’d get a hundred thousand each. If not… we pretend we know nothing.”
“What’s his name?” Mark asked gently.
“Thomas Green,” she whispered. “Green PR.”
Anna and Mark exchanged a look.
Thomas Green was not a stranger. He was a notorious “crisis PR” guy known for dirty tactics—staging scandals, selling fake stories to tabloids, taking money from competitors to torch reputations.
“Okay,” Anna said, her tone softening toward the Asian girl. “What’s your name?”
“Mia,” she said. “I… I really need the money. My mom’s doing chemo. I thought… a hundred thousand would pay her medical bills. I’m sorry.”
Anna was quiet for a long beat.
Then she turned to Lily, Jenna, and Sunglasses.
“And you three?” she asked. “No moms with cancer. No tears. Just three women who saw an easy payday from a wife you assumed would quietly choke on it.”
Lily’s hand tightened on her bag.
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” she insisted. “Your husband started it.”
Anna let out a short, humorless laugh.
“Unfortunately for you,” she said, “my husband had a vasectomy three years ago. Medically, he cannot get anyone pregnant. Ask any doctor you like. Or wait for DNA tests in court. Mark?”
Mark opened his laptop and projected a document onto the wall: medical records under Ethan Cole, clearly indicating a vasectomy and date.
“This is a copy of the hospital record provided by our client,” Mark said. “If you want to ‘go all the way,’ the DA is going to love this cast of characters.”
The air thickened.
Sunglasses finally removed her shades—ice-blue eyes blazing.
“I don’t buy this,” she sneered. “You can fake any document. You want to scare us, go ahead. Green isn’t going to let you walk all over him.”
Anna leaned forward slightly.
“Tell Mr. Green,” she said coolly, “that if he wanted to play dirty, he picked the wrong wife. I’m not stupid, and I’m not scared. I kept quiet for my husband, not for him.”
She turned to Mia.
“Do you want a lawyer for yourself, free of charge, if this goes to court?” she asked.
Mia blinked.
“… Yes,” she whispered.
“Then from now on, you talk to Mr. Bloom,” Anna said. “He’ll help you write a full statement about Green PR. As for the rest of you… if you sign statements admitting you took part in a smear campaign and give us everything on Green, I’ll recommend leniency. If not… I’ll treat you just like him.”
Lily looked at Jenna; Jenna at Sunglasses. Only Sunglasses smiled thinly.
“I’m not signing anything,” she said. “I’ve got nothing to lose.”
Anna rose.
“Mark, the rest is yours,” she said. “I have to get ready.”
“Ready for what?” Mark asked.
Anna’s smile sharpened.
“The press conference,” she said. “And… the divorce papers.”
6. Saving him once more—and only once
Two days later, ColeTech called an “urgent” press conference at a Midtown hotel.
Reporters from finance outlets, tech blogs, and tabloids packed into the hall. Rumors of “four pregnant secretaries” had already leaked—Anna guessed from Green’s side—but hadn’t yet blown up into a full scandal.
Onstage, the ColeTech logo glowed behind the podium.
It wasn’t Ethan who stepped out first.
It was Anna.
She wore a white suit, hair down, makeup understated. She looked more like a CEO than “the CEO’s wife.”
“Good morning,” she said, voice steady. “I’m Anna Cole.”
Camera shutters clicked in rapid bursts.
“I know there have been rumors recently,” she went on, “that my husband, CEO Ethan Cole, has ‘multiple mistresses pregnant with his children.’ As his wife, I was the first to be dragged into this. Two nights ago, I received four calls from four women pretending to be ColeTech assistants, each demanding one million dollars to keep quiet.”
A ripple of murmurs.
Anna raised a hand.
“As a lawyer,” she continued, “I recorded everything. I invited them to a meeting with independent legal counsel present. Result: none of them are employees of ColeTech. One is a struggling student coerced into this. The other three are freelance actresses hired by a PR agency called Green PR, run by Mr. Thomas Green.”
She clicked her remote. On the screen behind her, redacted emails and chat logs between Green PR and the “actresses” appeared—Mia’s identity carefully obscured.
“In these messages,” Anna said, “Mr. Green tells them exactly what to say, how to cry, how to threaten. The objective: damage my husband’s reputation, spook shareholders, crash ColeTech’s stock.”
A reporter raised his hand.
“But has your husband ever—”
Before he could finish, Anna smiled—and cut him off.
“Before you ask that,” she said, “let me say this: three years ago, my husband underwent a surgical procedure that left him unable to have children. This is extremely personal, and we never intended to make it public. But in light of the accusations, we’re forced to use even medical records to prove these so-called pregnancies cannot be his.”
Gasps swelled in the room.
Anna held up a document—authorized for limited disclosure by the hospital and their lawyers.
“We’ve turned over all evidence—recordings, emails, statements—to the DA and the police,” she said. “Green PR is under investigation for extortion, defamation, and fabricating market-moving misinformation. ColeTech is also filing civil suits for reputational damages.”
She paused a beat.
“And as a wife,” Anna added, eyes sweeping the room, “I want to clarify something: marriage isn’t a fairy tale. We have our own private conflicts. We’ve experienced loss, disappointment. But no matter how complicated our marriage is, no one has the right to exploit it for cash or to sabotage a company where thousands of people work.”
She bowed her head slightly.
“Thank you for listening,” she said. “If you’d like to ask about ColeTech’s business activities, Ethan will address those. If you want to ask about our marriage…” Her smile turned razor-thin. “…you’ll have to wait for another press release.”
Ethan stepped out from the wings, face taut. As he passed Anna, he squeezed her hand for a heartbeat longer than necessary. She pulled away first and left the stage.
That day, the board of directors exhaled in unison. Instead of tanking, the stock ticked up as analysts praised the “transparent, smart crisis management.”
On Twitter, #AnnaCole trended for hours. People called her “the steel-spined wife,” “Wall Street’s Nancy Drew,” “the queen of drama control.”
No one knew that somewhere else, another document had already arrived at Manhattan Family Court.
7. The final document
That evening, the penthouse was quiet again.
Ethan came home, loosened his tie, and stood silently by the door.
“Thank you,” he said softly. “Without you, I would have lost everything.”
Anna sat at the dining table, a stack of papers before her.
“You didn’t lose everything,” she replied, eyes on the page. “You still have the company. Your reputation. A second chance as CEO.”
She stopped writing and looked up at him.
“You just don’t have me.”
He flinched.
“What are you saying?” he whispered.
Anna turned the stack around and slid it toward him.
“Divorce papers,” she said. “I’ve signed. All that’s missing is your signature.”
Ethan stepped back as if struck.
“After everything you did today…” he choked out. “You’re leaving?”
“I saved you for two reasons,” Anna said quietly. “First, I refuse to let someone like Thomas Green torch what we built over ten years. Second, I loved you once. I won’t watch someone I loved get buried under a lie.”
She drew a breath.
“But saving you was between me and my conscience,” she said. “Divorcing you is between me and myself.”
He sat across from her, hands clenched.
“I know I was wrong to hide the surgery,” he said. “I know I traveled too much, left you alone too often. I… flirted, texted other women. But I never… I never did what they said, slept with four women in one trip. Can’t you give me another chance? I’ll—”
“You’ve had chances,” Anna cut in, eyes shining. “Chances to tell me the truth about the surgery. To stand up for me when your mother called me ‘broken.’ To come home on time and eat dinner without your phone in your hand. I never needed you to be perfect. I just needed you to show up.”
She gave a small, sad smile.
“I found out about the vasectomy two months ago,” she said. “Do you know my first reaction? Relief. I thought, ‘So it’s not all on me.’ My second reaction was: ‘The man I live with, have slept next to for five years… made a life-altering decision without telling me.’ That’s when I realized you’d quietly divorced me in your heart already. I’m just catching up.”
Ethan turned away, tears catching the light.
“I was afraid,” he whispered. “Afraid that if I told you, you’d leave. Afraid of seeing you hurt again. I thought… keeping it secret was protecting you.”
“Protecting me by letting me hate myself?” Anna asked. “You’re a billion-dollar CEO, Ethan. You know what taking responsibility looks like. But with me… you always chose the easiest thing: silence, and hoping the storm passes on its own.”
She slid the pen toward him.
“I haven’t written anything into the prenup that strips you bare,” she said. “Everything you had before our marriage is still yours. From what we built together… I’m only taking what I truly need. I’m not here to ‘cash you out.’ I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror.”
“What do you need?” he asked hoarsely.
Anna met his gaze.
“This penthouse,” she said. “Not because it’s beautiful, but because I gave up my career to turn it into a home. I want the small law practice I’m starting—I’ll take your shares in the female-founder venture fund that was my idea. And…” she paused, “…one last thing: I want full discretion over whether your medical records ever see daylight again, if something else happens.”
His brows knit.
“Something else?” he echoed.
“If you remarry and have a family,” Anna said, “I’m not going to be the one to blow it up. I just want you to understand… I went public this time because it affected an entire company and opened us up to blackmail. Your private life, going forward, is none of my business.”
He was silent for a long time.
“You still care too much,” he said at last, smiling faintly. “Even when you’re walking away.”
“No,” Anna shook her head. “I care about the woman after me. I hope… you treat her differently.”
Tears splashed onto the papers. Ethan wiped them quickly, as if afraid of smudging the ink.
“I don’t deserve you,” he murmured.
“That’s the first thing you’ve said tonight that I fully agree with,” Anna replied, half joking, half not.
He picked up the pen.
“Can I… hug you once more?” he asked.
Anna studied him, then stood and wrapped her arms around him—not as a wife, but as someone saying goodbye to the person who had once been her whole world.
“Good luck, Ethan,” she whispered. “With the company. With your life. And with your choices.”
He signed.
8. After everything
A year later, Anna stood in front of another window, on the other side of the city.
Her small firm—Cole & Evans (she kept “Cole” in the brand for recognition; on legal documents, she was back to Anna Evans)—overlooked a pocket park where joggers passed in the morning and children played in the afternoon.
On her desk were files from women-led startups, contracts she’d negotiated, agreements she’d drafted. She’d gone back to practicing law, but this time, she was the one in charge.
Ethan’s name still appeared in the business pages. After the Green PR scandal, ColeTech had beefed up its legal department and became a case study in “how to handle a corporate hit job.” Ethan was praised for “staying silent when needed and letting his wife take the spotlight.”
No one knew that after that press conference, they’d quietly divorced.
Months later, the media had received a single short statement:
“Ethan and Anna Cole have amicably decided to part ways and continue to respect each other. They will not be commenting further on their private lives.”
One afternoon, as Anna checked through a contract for a client, a new email landed.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Just wanted to say hiAnna,
Today I signed off on a new program at ColeTech—free legal support for female employees who face harassment or blackmail. It made me think of you.
Mark Bloom says you’re doing great with Cole & Evans. I’m not surprised.
I just wanted to say thank you again for saving me—not just at that press conference, but ten years ago when you believed in a broke kid with a money-losing startup. You deserve a life where you are never just “the shield” or “the woman behind.”
If you ever need me as a witness that you’re the smartest person I’ve ever known, say the word.
Wishing you peace.
Ethan.
Anna smiled as she finished reading, then closed the email.
Outside, the sky was sliding into sunset. Light pooled warm and gold on the office floor.
She made herself a cup of tea, sat down, and opened a fresh file.
Some women spend their whole lives only being seen when standing behind a man.
Others, like Anna, choose to be the lawyer of their own lives:
to know when to defend, and when to let go.
She had saved Ethan one last time, not to keep him, but to protect what they had built together.
The rest of her life, she kept for herself—for the clients who came through her door, and for the women standing on their own thin line between silence and speaking up.
Anna picked up her pen and signed her name at the bottom of a contract.
This time, the line didn’t say “wife of the CEO.”
It read:
Anna Evans – Managing Partner.
