Chapter 2

Married to Alec for six years, I've always been the "career woman" in the eyes of others.

While he enjoys, as a matter of course, the greater "material" contributions I make to our relationship as the older sister.

I have no intention of letting Alec take away a single cent of the "marital assets" I've worked so hard to earn.

Getting concrete evidence of his infidelity becomes particularly crucial.

To my surprise, Alec's social circle is shockingly clean.

The only person he's entangled with is his childhood sweetheart, whom he's known for many years, Jade.

In the past, we've had arguments because of Jade.

Although I'm older than him and more mature, when it comes to matters of the heart, I can still be jealous and competitive.

Jade is young and beautiful, and she's known Alec for many years.

The two of them share a very deep bond.

Sometimes, there are actions that cross the line.

One particularly heated argument with Alec was because Jade accidentally twisted her ankle during a group outing.

Without a second thought, Alec picked her up on his back, leaving me, his girlfriend, far behind.

Afterward, Alec found it hard to understand my reaction.

He said, "Jade is no different from a sister to me.""She got hurt, I'm just giving my little sister a piggyback ride. There's absolutely no other meaning to it."

Even Jade came to apologize to me: "Sis, don't misunderstand. Alec and I are just buddies. If we were meant to be together, we would've been long ago. Why would we wait until now?"

In the end, it made me look like I was the one making a fuss over nothing.

I stopped engaging, and that argument became the longest cold war between Alec and me.

Finally, he camped out at the bottom of my office building for a day and night.

I pulled an all-nighter at work, and early the next morning, I ran into him downstairs with his eyes red from exhaustion.

He walked up to me, gently tugging at the hem of my shirt, and pleaded softly: "Don't be mad anymore, big sis."

"I promise, I'll keep my distance from Jade from now on."

"Okay?"

After that, I rarely saw Jade in my presence again.

Little did I know, they had been keeping in touch privately all along.

In fact, the girl he was duo queuing with last night...

Was Jade.

After two weeks of surveillance, I finally saw Alec and Jade's latest chat logs on the iPad.

They were meeting at a hotel in the neighboring city.

That day was Jade's birthday. I'm sitting in the rented Volkswagen, watching Jade and Alec not far away, arm in arm.

They're sharing the same ice cream cone.

Jade's face is full of triumph: "Would an old lady share an ice cream with you?"

Alec looks uncomfortable: "When we walk down the street, people think she's my mom."

"What grown man still shares ice cream with his mom!"

The two of them enter the hotel together.

The room number is 606.

I travel for work often, so I have gold status on the hotel app with VIP discounts.

But my assistant always books the rooms for me, I rarely log in myself.

So Alec felt safe using my account to book hotel rooms.

It wasn't until I called customer service and asked them to restore the deleted reservation records that I discovered Alec had booked rooms over ten times in the past year.

Each time, he claimed it was for a "business trip."

I sat in the Volkswagen for about twenty minutes, smoking two cigarettes.

Figuring enough time had passed, I finally dialed 911.

Following the steps I'd read online for catching cheaters, I calmly informed the operator:

"Hello, I'd like to make a report."

"There's prostitution happening at the XX Hotel, room 606."