Three seconds after I sent:
Who is that?
Chu Duy called.
I answered.
His voice was hoarse.
“Wife, where are you?”
“In the car.”
“Why did you turn off your phone?”
“I was sleeping.”
“You knew I was calling.”
“No. The phone was off.”
He took a breath.
Then his tone softened abruptly.
“The photos were a misunderstanding.”
I looked at the traffic outside the windshield.
“Which photos?”
Silence.
Apparently, there had been too many.
“Mina was only helping receive clients last night.”
Mina Luo.
His secretary.
The woman in the red dress.
The one wearing the necklace Chu Duy had apparently been able to afford during the same month he told me the company was “too tight on cash” to buy me a birthday gift.
I asked:
“Why were employees calling her the hostess?”
“They were joking.”
“Twenty-seven people joked together?”
His breathing became uneven.
“I already told HR to make everyone delete the posts.”
“Okay.”
My calmness frightened him more than anger.
Then he finally said the sentence that exposed the real reason for 137 calls.
“Wife, don’t do anything impulsive. The company shares are still in your name.”
I looked at the email that had arrived at 7:43 that morning.
Share transfer registration completed.
So I replied:
“Not anymore.”
The other end went completely silent.
Then:
“What did you say?”
“I sold them.”
“What?”
Chu Duy’s voice cracked.
I held the phone farther away.
“You heard me.”
“To whom?”
“Northlake Capital.”
For several seconds, he could not speak.
Then he shouted:
“You sold thirty-six percent of DuyTech without discussing it with me?”
“They were my shares.”
“But that company is mine!”
I laughed softly.
“No.”
“That company is the reason you spent ten years calling yourself President Chu.”
“There’s a difference.”
He seemed unable to breathe.
“Cancel it.”
“No.”
“I’ll buy the shares back.”
“The transaction is complete.”
“You can’t do this!”
“I already did.”
Then I hung up.
Eight years earlier, Chu Duy did not have a company.
He had a business plan.
Three employees.
A rented office.
And 470,000 yuan of debt.
I had just received the money from selling a small apartment my parents had left me.
I invested 2.4 million yuan.
Not as a gift.
Not as a loan.
As equity.
Thirty-six percent.
Chu Duy received forty-one percent.
The remaining twenty-three percent was divided among two early investors.
Later, after we married, Chu Duy began saying:
“Our company.”
Then slowly:
“My company.”
Eventually he spoke as if my shares were merely paperwork temporarily stored under my name.
I never corrected him.
For years, I signed his voting proxy.
Supported every financing round.
Agreed to use part of my dividends for expansion.
When banks asked about shareholder stability, I signed the letters.
Northlake Capital had approached me four months earlier.
They wanted my stake.
I refused.
Not because the price was low.
Because I thought selling would make Chu Duy feel betrayed.
Funny.
The night of the year-end party, after washing the final bowl, I emailed my lawyer:
Accept Northlake’s last offer. Execute the documents already prepared.
I did not sell cheaply.
I did not sell to a competitor.
I sold at the valuation independently negotiated months earlier to a legitimate institutional investor already familiar with the company.
At 7:43 the next morning, I stopped being DuyTech’s second-largest individual shareholder.
At 7:51, Chu Duy finally remembered I had ever been one.
He arrived home before noon.
The door opened so violently that Noan Noan’s framed school photograph shook.
I was sitting at the dining table.
My lawyer was beside me.
Chu Duy stopped.
His face darkened.
“You brought a lawyer into our house?”
I looked at him.
“You brought your secretary onto a stage and let everyone call her your wife.”
His mouth tightened.
“That was not my decision.”
“Did you correct anyone?”
Silence.
My lawyer placed a folder on the table.
Chu Duy stared at it.
“What is that?”
“Divorce documents.”
His face finally changed.
Not anger.
Fear.
“Stop.”
I opened the folder.
He stepped forward.
“An Nhi, listen to me.”
It had been years since he used my name like that.
“The party was business.”
“Then let’s talk business.”
I pushed several photographs toward him.
Mina beside him.
His hand at her waist.
Mina wearing the necklace.
Mina sitting in the seat reserved on the printed banquet chart for:
CHAIRMAN’S FAMILY
His expression stiffened.
I asked:
“Who placed her there?”
“The event team.”
“Who approved the seating?”
“My office.”
“Your office means your secretary.”
He stopped.
Exactly.
Mina had arranged the banquet herself.
She had placed herself in the family seat.
But Chu Duy had stepped onto that stage, pulled her beside him, and spent the entire evening smiling while employees called her Mrs. Chu.
He could have corrected them once.
He did not.
Then I placed a receipt on the table.
The necklace.
168,000 yuan.
Paid from Chu Duy’s personal account.
He stared at it.
“How did you get this?”
“I didn’t.”
“Northlake’s due diligence found a related transfer while reviewing your shareholder disclosures.”
His face darkened.
“It was a performance bonus.”
“Then why didn’t payroll process it?”
He had no answer.
I continued:
“Was she your lover?”
“No.”
The answer came immediately.
I believed there had been no physical affair.
But that did not make the situation clean.
“Do you love her?”
“No.”
“Then why did you let her occupy my place?”
He looked irritated now.
“You never attend company events.”
I laughed.
“Why?”
Silence.
Three years earlier, I had attended one.
An investor asked what I did.
Before I could answer, Chu Duy smiled and said:
“She takes care of the home.”
He did not mention my shares.
My investment.
The first two years when I handled payroll because we could not afford an accountant.
Or the six months when I sold my jewelry to keep salaries paid.
Afterward, he told me:
“Business dinners are boring for you. Just stay home with Noan Noan.”
So I did.
Then, eventually, another woman appeared in the empty chair.
And suddenly he wanted to blame me for not sitting there.
I looked at him.
“You didn’t want a wife beside you.”
“You wanted someone decorative beside President Chu.”
“Mina was willing.”
“So you chose her.”
His voice lowered.
“I never intended to divorce you.”
“That doesn’t comfort me.”
His eyes reddened.
“Then what do you want?”
“For years?”
I smiled.
“For you to notice.”
“But I stopped wanting that last night.”
The sale to Northlake did not destroy DuyTech.
It changed it.
That was all.
Thirty-six percent of the company now belonged to an institutional investor instead of the wife Chu Duy assumed would sign whatever he placed in front of her.
Northlake appointed a board representative.
The voting proxy I had given Chu Duy disappeared with the sale.
Major financing decisions now required actual board discussion.
Expense approvals became stricter.
Related-party transactions were reviewed.
Chu Duy remained CEO.
He remained wealthy.
He simply stopped being able to treat the company like an extension of his living room.
The first thing the new board reviewed was Mina’s compensation.
She had received several unusual discretionary bonuses.
The necklace was personal, so the company did not care about that.
But other benefits had been categorized as client-development expenses without sufficient documentation.
Mina was not fired immediately.
An internal review followed.
In the end, she lost her expanded authority over expenses and was transferred out of the CEO office.
She resigned two months later.
Before leaving, she called me.
“I didn’t sleep with your husband.”
“I know.”
She was silent.
Then:
“Do you hate me?”
“No.”
That seemed to bother her more than hatred would have.
She said:
“Everyone at the company assumed you and President Chu were basically separated.”
“Why?”
“He never mentioned you.”
That sentence hurt more than the photographs.
Mina continued:
“When people called me Mrs. Chu last night, I thought he would correct them.”
“And?”
“He smiled.”
I closed my eyes.
She whispered:
“I’m sorry.”
“You enjoyed it.”
Silence.
“Yes.”
At least she was honest.
Then I said:
“But he was the married one.”
“That responsibility is his.”
I ended the call.
Chu Duy refused to sign the divorce papers for two months.
He sent flowers.
Jewelry.
Even a necklace almost identical to Mina’s, only more expensive.
I returned it.
Finally, he came home one evening and found me repairing the water stain on the ceiling with a contractor.
He stood beneath it.
“You actually hired someone.”
“Yes.”
“I told you I would fix that.”
“You told me last year.”
His face tightened.
“I forgot.”
“I know.”
He looked around.
Half my belongings were already packed.
“Noan Noan knows?”
“She knows we may live separately.”
His expression became alarmed.
“You’re taking her?”
“We will work out parenting arrangements properly.”
I looked at him.
“She is not a weapon.”
“You are her father.”
“You should remain her father.”
Some of his anger disappeared.
Then he asked:
“Why can you be reasonable about everything except us?”
I stared at him.
“I was reasonable about us for eleven years.”
“That was the problem.”
The divorce was finalized four months later.
We divided our jointly owned assets.
The Northlake transaction remained mine because those shares had originated from my premarital investment and the ownership records were clear.
Chu Duy did not become poor.
I did not take his company.
I simply stopped owning part of a business where everyone knew the CEO’s secretary looked like the hostess, while almost nobody knew his actual wife had helped finance the first office.
Noan Noan spent regular time with both of us.
At first, she asked why Daddy did not sleep at our new apartment.
I told her simply:
“Mom and Dad are better living in different homes.”
She accepted it more easily than adults did.
Children often do, when no one asks them to carry the blame.
A year later, Northlake invited me to a shareholder dinner.
I almost laughed.
“I’m not a shareholder anymore.”
Their managing partner said:
“No.”
“But you built enough of the early company that we want your view on a new investment.”
That conversation became a job.
Not at DuyTech.
At Northlake.
I joined as an operating adviser, helping evaluate founder-led companies.
For the first time in years, someone introduced me by my own name.
Not Mrs. Chu.
Not President Chu’s wife.
Just me.
Two years after the divorce, I attended another year-end party.
Northlake’s.
Noan Noan was with Chu Duy that weekend.
Halfway through dinner, my phone vibrated.
A photograph.
Chu Duy and our daughter making dumplings.
His first dumpling looked like a crushed pillow.
Noan Noan’s message said:
Dad says he finally understands why you used to get angry when he said cooking was easy.
I laughed.
Then another message came.
From Chu Duy.
I’m sorry.
I knew he did not mean the dumplings.
Months earlier, he had already apologized properly.
No excuses.
No claims that Mina seduced him.
No complaints that employees misunderstood.
He simply said:
“I liked being admired.”
“I liked having someone beside me who made me look successful.”
“And I assumed you would always be home because you had always been home.”
That was the truth.
I accepted the apology.
Not the marriage.
There was a difference.
That night at Northlake’s party, someone took a group photograph.
Later, an employee posted it online.
Under my picture, someone commented:
Who is the woman in the center?
Another person answered:
An Nhi. Investment adviser. She helped build DuyTech in its early years.
I stared at the sentence for several seconds.
No hostess.
No wife of someone important.
My own name.
My own work.
My own place in the photograph.
The night Chu Duy let his secretary stand beside him while everyone called her the hostess, he probably thought the worst thing that could happen was that I would become jealous.
He was wrong.
Jealousy would have meant I was still fighting for the position.
Instead, I turned off the phone.
Washed the dishes.
Covered my daughter with a blanket.
And went to sleep.
By the time he realized silence was more dangerous than an argument, the shares he had spent years calling “ours” were no longer mine.
And neither was the marriage.
He had spent years treating me like the woman waiting at home behind his success.
It took one party for me to remember the truth:
I had never been standing behind him.
I had simply stepped out of my own place so many times that eventually another woman thought it was empty.
