The ringing of the phone shattered the quiet at 9:47 p.m.
In the bathroom, the gentle sound of running water drowned out the sounds of the house. I was meticulously folding each of Daniel’s shirts, packing them into his suitcase for his business trip to Toronto tomorrow morning. Ten years of marriage, and I felt like I belonged to every fold of his life. We weren’t perfect, but I always believed we were a solid unit.
I answered the phone.
“Hello?”
A hesitant silence followed, then a thin but sharp female voice from a shop:
“Excuse me… I suppose this is Daniel’s wife?”
A chill ran down my spine. “Yes, I’m listening.”
The woman took a deep breath, as if she herself were struggling to utter the next words:
“I don’t know where to begin, but you have a right to know the truth. I’m the HR manager at your husband’s company. Daniel isn’t going to Toronto tomorrow. In fact… he’s not going anywhere.”
I slowly sat down on the edge of the bed, my hands firmly gripping my white shirt on my knees. “What do you mean?”
“He’s been suspended immediately,” her voice lowered, full of gravity. “A formal investigation is underway. I can’t reveal the details, but it’s all about the secrets he’s been hiding from her for so long.”
Beep… beep… beep…
The call ended, leaving an eerie silence. A few minutes later, the bathroom door opened. Daniel emerged from the warm steam, his face radiant and relaxed.
“Who’s calling at this hour?” he asked, a smile still lingering on his lips.
I looked up at the man I’d shared a bed with for a decade, finding myself relieved but also terrified:
“Your company calling.”
Daniel’s smile froze, then vanished like a soap bubble. In the process, the mask of the perfect husband fell, revealing a deep problem I never expected.
The man I loved was, in fact, a stranger—and I was the final pawn in his second life.
Would you like me to elaborate on the next confrontation between the two of them, or focus on the female character secretly investigating what that “second life” really was?
THE ABYSMAL SECRET
Chapter 1: The Deadly Silence
The phone rang at 9:47 PM.
My husband was in the shower. I was folding clothes, preparing for his business trip the next morning—a conference in Toronto. We had been married for ten years. Life wasn’t perfect, but I believed we were solid.
I picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
A woman’s voice hesitated on the other end.
“I’m sorry… I believe this is Daniel’s wife.”
My hands went cold.
“Yes. This is she.”
She took a sharp breath.
“I don’t know how to say this, but you deserve to know. I am a Human Resources manager at your husband’s company. And he isn’t going on a business trip tomorrow.”
I sat down slowly on the edge of the bed.
“What do you mean?”
“He has been suspended,” she said softly. “And a formal investigation is about to take place. I can’t say much more—but it concerns things that have been hidden from you.”
The line went dead.
A few minutes later, my husband stepped out of the bathroom, smiling. The steam followed him, smelling of sandalwood and comfort.
“Who was that on the phone?”
I looked at him, my heart hammering against my ribs.
“Your company called.”
The smile vanished.
It was in that moment I realized something horrific: The man I married had been living a second life—and I was the last person to find out.
Chapter 2: The Cracks in the Mask
The room, once warm with the scent of laundry and steam, suddenly felt suffocating. Daniel stood there, a towel wrapped around his waist, water droplets still clinging to his shoulders. But his eyes—the windows I thought I knew by heart—suddenly shifted. The usual gentleness was gone, replaced by a cold, calculating sharpness that made me shiver.
“My company?” Daniel repeated, his voice thick. “Why would they call your phone?”
“Maybe because you weren’t answering yours,” I replied, my voice trembling but my gaze locked on his. “They said the Toronto trip is canceled. They said you’ve been suspended. Daniel, they mentioned an investigation.”
He didn’t react immediately. He walked slowly toward the closet, pulled out a t-shirt, and dressed with a deliberate, haunting calmness. It was the composure of a soldier who had already prepared a fallback plan for being compromised.
“You know how corporate environments are, honey,” he said, his back turned to me. “There was a bookkeeping error in my department. They suspended everyone involved to clear things up. I was going to tell you once it was settled so you wouldn’t worry.”
“Liar,” I whispered. “She said it was about things you’ve hidden from me. She didn’t mention bookkeeping, Daniel. She talked about a secret life.”
Daniel turned, stepping close to me. He placed his hands on my shoulders. His warmth used to be my sanctuary, but now it felt like shackles.
“Sweetheart, are you going to believe a stranger on the phone or your husband?”
I pushed his hands away. That night, we lay in the same bed, but an ocean of suspicion surged between us. Daniel fell asleep quickly—or at least he pretended to. I lay awake, listening to the ticking clock, each second feeling like a hammer blow to my crumbling world.
Chapter 3: The Hidden Pieces
The next morning, Daniel woke up early as if preparing for work, but he didn’t put on a suit. He claimed he needed to meet with “company lawyers” to resolve the misunderstanding. As soon as the sound of his car faded down the driveway, I began my search.
I had never been the kind of wife who checked phones or rifled through pockets. I had taken pride in our mutual trust. Now, that trust felt like a poison I had willingly swallowed.
I started in his home office. Everything was unnaturally tidy. I found a small key hidden at the bottom of a pen holder. It opened the bottom drawer of his desk—the one he always told me held “boring tax documents.”
There were no tax documents inside.
Instead, I found a folder for a real estate firm I had never heard of: Nova Horizon. Next to it lay a “burner” phone—a cheap, prepaid device.
I turned it on. It wasn’t password-protected. Perhaps he thought hiding it in a locked drawer was security enough. There was only one contact in the directory, saved simply as “M.”
The last message from “M” had arrived the night before, just minutes before my fateful phone call:
“They know. You have to get out now.”
My breath hitched. My hands shook so violently I almost dropped the phone. This wasn’t about a corporate “misunderstanding.” This was something deeper.
I began digging through the Nova Horizon folder. Inside were bank statements from an offshore account in the Cayman Islands. The balances were staggering—sums of money we shouldn’t have had. But the most devastating find was a photograph tucked in the back of the folder.
It was a photo of a house. Not our house. A modern, glass-walled villa in a suburb two hours away. And there, standing in the driveway, was Daniel. He was holding a young child I didn’t recognize, and a woman with her arm wrapped around his waist.
The date on the back of the photo was from last Christmas. The day he told me he had to work late for the “holiday rush.”
I wasn’t just his wife. I was his cover story.
