Chapter 1 || His Cheating Wife.

“This is your last chance. Get lost, or we'll open fire,” the head of security for the Sinclair estate threatened. “Your kind are not even allowed in this part of the city, so how can you possibly live here?” Examining Phil's ragged waste management uniform, she asked.

“I do live here… Sometimes… Gosh, this argument isn't going anywhere. Just let me in, so I can retrieve my wife from that event. She's not in the condition to be at such a rowdy place,” Phil humbly implored the female guard.

She exchanged an amused glance with her colleagues, and together, they erupted into laughter.

“You really expect us to believe that you are married to Mrs. Eve?” She scrutinized him harshly with a disgust-twisted face and continued, “I know what you really want to do here. You just want to enter the party, pick as many pockets as you can lay your fingers on, and leave. Countless people like you have tried, but we stopped them all. So…” Drawing out her pistol, she pointed it at Phil.

“Leave,” she ordered, and the other guards joined in, pointing their cocked pistols at him.

Recognizing the now unwavering seriousness in their expressions, Phil knew he needed to explore an alternative method to enter the Sinclair estate. Although he spoke the truth about his relationship with Eve, convincing them seemed an insurmountable task, as only a select few were privy to their connection.

However, time was of the essence, and he was determined to attend the extravagant joint birthday party that Lily Sinclair was hosting for her and her daughter, Eve.

Yesterday, Phil had fervently besought Eve not to partake in the celebration. Nonetheless, everyone knew that Eve Sinclair was a pampered heiress who would sooner defy her pauper husband's wishes than concede.

She and her mother had even conspired to keep Phil as far from the city as possible, so he wouldn't ruin the party with his presence. But he managed to piece together their plan and returned intending to extricate Eve from the event, even if it required force.

Withdrawing from the front gates, Phil quietly made his way to the back gates of the estate. He heaved himself up the golden-tinted gates and sneaked into some well-trimmed bushes, deftly avoiding incoming guards.

Phil noticed he was suddenly bleeding from his arms and looked back at the gate to see pieces of his clothes hanging in the gate's barbed wire. He had injured himself trying to enter. But he bore the pain and continued with his retrieval plan. His safety didn't matter to him; the woman he loved and his unborn child's safety were most important.

Observing that there were no guards in the immediate vicinity, he cautiously proceeded toward the mansion's kitchen and, subsequently, inside the grand abode. Although no uniformed security personnel were in sight, there were men donned in impeccably tailored military suits dispersed throughout the lively party. Phil discreetly scoured the premises for any sign of Eve.

He sashayed past the prestigious guests of some of the city's most prominent families, some worth billions, and made sure to ignore their gazes whenever they rested on him.

The contrast between their appearance and his was stark, and it didn't take long for someone to notice and call him out for his ragged, bloodstained, smelly clothes. Sadly, that person ended up being Eve's snobbish cousin, Ethan, who had made it his sole purpose to either beat or ridicule Phil at any time he saw him.

“Hey, who the hell let this smelly street dog in here?” Ethan yelled with his deep baritone voice, making the entire guest at the party, despite the music playing, shift their attention to him and then to the person he was talking to.

He snickered. “I guess street dogs will always find a way to come back to the place they are being fed.”

The entire event immediately echoed with laughter after Ethan was done talking. The guests, the rich and influential, always love when commoners like Phil are put in their place, and witnessing this unfold before them brings joy to their souls.

Ethan, whose smugness was now radiating from every part of his being, parted his lips to insult Phil even more but was stopped by his twin brother—not to reprimand him for insulting the no-good pauper, but to add his salt to the wound.

“I think he must be starving. Look how unkempt he is. He mustn't have eaten anything for days. Please, somebody give this beggar-looking man something to eat before he attacks one of us here.” Aiden Sinclair chimed in, and the entire event reverberated with more laughter. Out of mockery, the guests started throwing little bits of their food on the floor, so he could eat it, while making condescending puppy noises.

Phil could only watch with almost tear-filled eyes as prominent families mocked and ridiculed him. He however tuned out their mockery and made his way to the foot of the mansion's spiral stairs, in the hopes of finding his wife on higher ground. As he scoured the guest, he noticed there was a peculiar lady staring up at him, not out of pity, but strangely out of hope.

He didn't dwell on why she was staring at him in such a manner.

After not spotting Eve, he proceeded to go upstairs but was stopped by a voice — the voice of his mother-in-law, the one woman who had single-handedly tried whatever it took to get him out of the family after the passing of Eve's father a month back.

The one woman who hated him more than the devil was Lily, because when he became the lawful husband to her daughter, those who knew about the marriage mocked the Sinclairs.

Apart from the mockery she endured, Lily's hatred for Phil ran deep. She loathed him primarily because, by marrying Eve, he singlehandedly thwarted her chances of gaining complete power over Labyrinth City. As she had always envisioned Eve marrying a man who would prioritize the family. But that dream was momentarily shattered when Eve's father married her off to the kind-hearted pauper.

“Shouldn't you be at Oases City picking trash? What the hell are you doing here?” Lily asked as she cat-walked over to where he was. Making her way from the crowd of laughing guests, her aged beauty radiated, complementing the elegant black skimpy dress she donned. One would doubt she was in her 50s.

“I came to take Eve out of this party. You are her mother, right? Why did you let her attend such an event when you know she is heavily pregnant?” Phil asked indignantly, but Lily, doing what she does best, shunned and yelled at him.

“You street dog! How dare you question my duty as a mother? You were and still are a poor garbage picker when my timid husband married you to my beloved daughter. So, don't you ever question me. We ain't of the same class for you to question the decisions my daughter and I make.” Darting her eyes warily upstairs and back at Phil while she spoke. It was evident that she was hiding something, and Phil took the hint.

“Eve is upstairs, isn't she?” Squirming around, Phil proceeded to make his way to the top floor, but was swiftly held back by Lily.

“No matter how hard I try to get rid of you, you always crawl your way back into our lives. I've picked you out of the company, the house, and tried to file for a divorce, but still you don't leave. No more!” Looking Phil dead in the eyes, Lily spluttered. Phil tried to shrug her hands away from his, but her grip was firm.

“Security! Security! Come and take this smelly street dog out of my house.” Lily yelled hysterically. Seeing that his chance at getting his wife might be thwarted, Phil forcefully pulled Lily's hands away and sprinted his way to the top floor.

Lily skidded back from Phil's pull but balanced herself before she could stumble. The prestigious guests who were watching all this while, laughed at her predicament. She seethed and stalked behind Phil.

The guests craved more of the drama, and they all followed Lily—to the dismay of Ethan and Aiden.

Getting to the floor corridor, Phil heard girlish groans, but as he proceeded down the floor, the groans sounded more like intense moaning from a lady who was getting intimate. The sounds were coming from his supposed matrimonial bedroom.

With shaking hands, Phil twisted the doorknob to see his pregnant wife engaged in an intimate act on their matrimonial bed. His heart sank at the sight.