My Husband’s Affair, Mom Told Me Not To React

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The video of my husband and my sister having sex in a car went viral, and thats when I received two phone calls.

One was a torrent of abuse from my mother, the other a warning from my mother-in-law.

You worthless disappointment! Her mother stole my man, and now she's stolen yours too? Do you have any idea how much effort I put into raising you?

"If this affair damages the Davies family's reputation, you can forget about ever seeing your son, Leo, again!"

My phone buzzed again, a message from my sister, full of smugness.

In the photo, her face was radiant, the marks on her neck glaringly obvious.

"Ellie, Ethan was amazing, he took me over and over again."

"I told him I couldn't take any more, but he was so relentless."

I sat at the dining table, numbly swallowing my meal along with my antidepressants.

Beside me lay a crumpled, worn-out letter.

In childish handwriting, there was only one short sentence.

It was late when Ethan returned.

He roughly tore at my clothes.

Drowsy from the medication, I woke with a start, opening my eyes to see a drunken Ethan.

The smell of alcohol on him was thick and pungent, and his eyes held an inexplicable hatred.

I began to wonder what I had done wrong.

As soon as the malicious rumors hit trending topics, I contacted PR to suppress them.

The company quickly released a statement, claiming the images circulating online were AI-generated.

And I posted photos on my personal Ins account: me, linking arms with Ethan, smiling brightly, while he looked dotingly at me.

The rumors of marital discord stopped.

After all that, controlling public perception as much as possible, I had barely managed to appease my mother-in-law's anger.

As Mrs. Davies, everything I did was impeccable. I couldn't understand what Ethan was unhappy about?

He didn't give me time to think. He was here for one purpose: the task of conceiving a second child.

I lay on the bed like a breeding machine, letting Ethan have his way.

However, the position Ethan demanded today was exceptionally humiliating. He wanted me to beg him like an animal for sex.

He lit a cigarette, a smirk playing on his lips: "Don't want to?"

My nails dug into my palms. When I looked up, my face showed a rare anger.

Ethan didn't give me a chance to rage. He seemed to change completely.

He gently hugged me from behind, chuckling, "If my wife doesn't want to, then forget it."

"I was just teasing you. You're my wife, my partner. How could I make you do something so demeaning?"

Ethan tenderly kissed my cheek, as if the main character of today's trending scandal had nothing to do with him.

He was always like this, provoking my anger with harsh words.

Then he'd casually brush it aside, and my pain and grievances were dismissed as overreacting.

Just then, Ethan's phone rang.

From the other end of the line, Brooke's sobs could be heard.

"Ethan, it's thundering outside. I'm so scared."

"Ethan, will you come be with me?"

Brooke half-sobbed, half-pouted. Ethan's face was full of concern. He hung up, leaving a quick "Something came up at the office."

I grabbed his sleeve, using almost all my strength.

"It's my birthday today. Will you stay?"

Ethan paused for a second, then impatiently said, "I told you something came up at the office. Can you stop making a scene?"

He forcefully shook me off and left without looking back.

The room grew cold.

I refreshed Ins, and as expected, saw Brooke's new photo.

In the picture, Ethan was kissing her passionately, with the caption, "He braved the heavy rain to come to me."

I suddenly remembered, when I had just given birth to Leo, I had an argument with Ethan over a minor thing.

He left me in the pouring rain without a second thought.

I gave a bitter laugh.

Then I noticed a peach-colored thong on the bedroom carpet, covered in suspicious fluids. It must have fallen out when Ethan left in a hurry.

In an instant, my stomach churned.

I vomited in the bathroom until I was lightheaded, my heart aching uncontrollably.

I had tried to resign myself to my fate, but at that moment, I felt so dirty, so utterly defiled!

Closing my eyes, the scene of Ethan and Brooke engaged in passionate acts flashed through my mind.

So dirty, so disgusting!

As I stood up, an envelope fell from my coat pocket.

The letter inside was crumpled into a ball.

I slowly unfolded it, my fingers tracing the words.

My seventeen-year-old self, full of hope, had written this letter, wanting to ask my future self.

"Ellie, are you free?"

I gripped my phone tightly, finally sending the message.

"Ethan, let's get a divorce."

Ethan didn't reply.

The next morning, my mother stormed into my room.

She pointed at me and started yelling curses: "How can you be so useless? You can't even keep your man in line!"

"Ethan came to your room, and you still let him run off to that slut! How could I have given birth to such a worthless disappointment?"

Brooke was my father's illegitimate daughter. My mother and her mother had been rivals their entire lives.

And I was born to marry into a rich family.

My mother firmly believed that only if I married someone wealthy would my father change his mind, and her legitimate status would forever be secure.

When I was little, my mother's most frequent saying was:

"To ensure you'd be a lucky charm for your husband, I endured the pain and waited two whole hours, until the master had calculated the auspicious time to give birth to you!"

"If you can't marry into wealth, will you live up to my expectations?"

So, from childhood, I was groomed to be a wife for a wealthy family.

I couldn't eat too much, because I had to maintain my figure.

My academic performance had to be excellent, because rich families preferred well-educated wives.

If I failed, my mother would whip my legs with a thin cane, scolding me as she hit.

"If you don't marry into wealth, your life will be ruined!"

"Not only will your life be ruined, but I'll never be able to hold my head high!"

Now, with that illegitimate daughter parading around, my mother's face was contorted with rage.

A strange sense of satisfaction surged through me.

My mother paced anxiously: "Back in college, you and Ethan were so in love! He listened to your every word."

"Did you do something to upset him?"

Her voice turned shrill and grating.

Ethan was the one who cheated, yet everyone thought it was my fault.

A car pulled up downstairs. Ethan, who hadn't returned all night, was back.

Ethan handed me a gift box, as if nothing had happened.

He apologized to me in an affectionate tone: "This is your birthday gift. Last night was my fault."

"Don't be mad, honey. I shouldn't have left you to deal with office matters. It won't happen again."

I opened the gift box. It was a jewel necklace.

My mother, beaming, put it on me: "See? I told you Ethan cares about you."

"We have a family gathering tonight. Wear this necklace and really put that little slut in her place!"

Sitting in the car on the way to my parents' house, my long-held tension made me feel a bit spaced out.

Ethan and I weren't in a business arrangement.

Mrs. Davies never liked me as a daughter-in-law. Although my family was well-off, compared to the vast and influential Davies family, we were clearly insignificant.

Ethan had almost been disowned by his family to force them to accept me.

He gave me the grandest wedding in the city, vowing in a beautiful chapel to love only me forever.

He would even take me on a plane to Iceland the very next day, just because I said, "I want to see the Northern Lights."

But vows eventually fade, and all I was left with was the empty title of "Mrs. Davies."

As soon as I got out of the car, I saw Brooke.

My mother spat in disgust: "That little bitch still dares to show her face, shameless like her mother!"

But soon my mother was smug again: "She's destined to be a mistress her whole life. My Ellie is truly successful."

At the dinner table, my mother bragged about how well I was doing in the Davies family and how much Ethan doted on me.

She pointed to the necklace around my neck.

"This is a gift Ethan bought for Ellie. Some people shouldn't think they can marry up and become royalty!"

Brooke came over with a wine glass, her gaze swept over the necklace, and then she burst into laughter.

She pulled out a photo.

It was Brooke's birthday the day before, and gifts from Ethan piled her room.

And the gift box Ethan had given me was prominently displayed among them, only it had a "complimentary gift" tag on it.

"Just a freebie I didn't want. Only you, Ellie, would treat it like a treasure."

My mother shrieked and lunged at her.

She hurled every vile insult she could think of, venting her humiliating shame.

"You've utterly disgraced me!"

"How could I have given birth to such a useless thing? I should have choked you to death back then!"

I listened expressionlessly to my own mother's abuse.

My hand slipped into my pocket, clutching that letter from ten years ago.

The gathering ended on a sour note.

As we left my parents' house, a light rain began to fall.

Brooke stood beside me, dialing Ethan's number.

She said coyly, "Ethan, baby, it's raining outside."

Ethan's voice came through: "Where are you?"

"I'm at my parents' place. Ellie's here too."

"I'll come pick you up."

Brooke gave me a challenging smile. I ignored her, walking briskly in the opposite direction.

At the hospital entrance, I bought a bouquet of sunflowers.

I knocked on the familiar hospital room door, but a stranger opened it.

The word "Grandma" caught in my throat, my heart skipped a beat. I pulled a nurse aside and asked, "Has the elderly lady in room 301 been moved?"

The nurse shook her head: "You mean Grandma Rose? She passed away last month."

The wall clock ticked, but I couldn't hear any sound.

I felt a chill spread through me, my hand gripping my phone trembling uncontrollably.

I dialed my mother's number.

"Why?"

My mother's voice was still full of anger: "Why what? What fit are you throwing now?"

"Why... didn't you tell me Grandma Rose had passed away?"

My voice was hoarse, each word slow and deliberate.

Grandma Rose's health had always been poor. After she was hospitalized, I often visited her.

But my mother had told me Grandma Rose had a major surgery and needed quiet recovery, so I should visit less to avoid disturbing her.

My mental state had been poor recently, and I was afraid that visiting Grandma Rose would make her notice something amiss and worry unnecessarily.

I never imagined I wouldn't even get to say my last goodbye to Grandma Rose.

On the other end of the line, my mother was silent for a long time.

"Funerals are bad luck... unclean."

"I had a master calculate it for you. These two months are the best time to conceive, and the child born will bring good fortune to the family. The presence of death is believed to disturb the fetus, it's an old wives' tale."

"If you got pregnant, and this affected the baby's destiny, it would be an irreparable loss!"

"Your grandma loved you most when she was alive. If she's watching over us from heaven, she'd support my decision."

I collapsed in the hospital corridor, my vision blurring.

Tears streamed uncontrollably down my face.

My birth had to bring good fortune to my husband, and my child's birth had to bring good fortune to the family.

It was pathetic! Absolutely pathetic!