The Secret Wife Across The Hall

Asher always insisted on boundaries. Pathological ones, if I’m being honest. When we married five years ago, he bought both units on the top floor—a classic two-unit landing. He lives in the penthouse. I live in the condo across the hall.

Except for our scheduled, once-a-week encounters, he absolutely forbade me from setting foot in his apartment.

Tonight, after the obligatory performance, I was exhausted. I reached for a glass on his nightstand, not thinking, and drank from it.

He watched me, his expression hardening with a visceral disgust I’d only ever seen reserved for me. He didn’t just toss the cup; he used a paper towel to handle the glass, then dropped the expensive crystal tumbler into the trash like it was biohazard waste.

The slam of the door.

He didn’t just close it; he detonated the sound, shutting me out and sealing me in the cold hallway.

The accumulated sting of years rushed up, hot and fast. I found myself unlocking my phone and posting a rant on a popular forum, venting about my husband’s almost clinical need for distance.

I never expected the post to go viral.

[Oh my god, isn’t this the famous ‘Penthouse King’ from the city’s old gossip threads? Asher Wilde.]

[The one who chased Willow Avery? He’d buy any apartment she rented and then offer her free rent just to get her to live near him.]

[LOL, he was absolutely obsessed. Total simp.]

[I used to see them at the university night market. She’d take one bite of something and drop the rest in his bowl. He’d just eat it, grinning like a fool. He didn’t even care if it was gross.]

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[Wait—the poster isn’t Willow Avery! Holy hell, the OTP broke up?]

[Goes to show, for a guy like that, if he can’t have the one he truly wants, everyone else is just a consolation prize.]

[Asher was so publicly devoted to Willow, and now he’s married to the poster and acting like this? The irony is incredible.]

[Y’all are really dragging the OP through the mud here! She’s the one married to him!]

Six thousand eight hundred comments. They didn’t just piece together a man; they constructed an Asher Wilde I had never met. Not the cold, distant husband who always walked into Hawthorne Corp. ten minutes ahead of me to ensure we never crossed paths. They described a boyfriend who was earnest, dramatic, and intensely public with his love.

He had once leased the largest digital billboard in Midtown for an entire week, broadcasting only her photo and the caption: Willow Avery, I love you.

It was never about boundaries. It was about me. The truth was brutal: I had never, for a single moment, been inside his heart. The only boundary he needed was the one separating me from the woman he loved.

So why had he married me?

I moved my suddenly leaden legs. I broke his cardinal rule—never approach him at Hawthorne Corp.—and pressed the button for the executive floor. I desperately needed an answer.

The elevator doors opened onto a hub of excited chatter.

“Ten years at Thorne, and I’ve never seen Mr. Wilde look so panicked.”

“I know! He never cancels for personal stuff. Liu the driver said he was speeding home.”

“I think I heard him whisper ‘Will’ as he was leaving…”

“His ex must be back. Looks like Hawthorne might finally get a real First Lady.”

Five years of marriage. Five years of my cajoling, crying, and silent treatments, and Asher never once agreed to make our relationship public.

Willow Avery achieved it with a single phone call.

Was he avoiding the trouble of a public marriage, or was he afraid his ex would be upset, jeopardizing their reunion?

I managed to steady my hands, drove home, and started knocking. He wasn’t answering his phone.

Every time we slept together, he changed the lock code before I woke up. I lived in the separate unit, isolated and alone.

I used to tell myself he simply had a quirk, an inability to share his space twenty-four/seven.

Now, I realized I was just the woman he summoned and dismissed. His temporary placeholder. His…

The word was too humiliating to even form in my head.

I stopped knocking and started pounding. “Asher! Open this door!”

The door finally opened. But it wasn’t Asher, and it wasn’t Willow.

It was a haggard, middle-aged woman with stark white hair. She turned, her voice hoarse, and called toward the kitchen, “Ash, a friend is here for you.”

Asher emerged, carrying a bowl of steaming broth. He gave me a cold, dismissive look. “I did not authorize your entry.”

I gripped my fists tightly and pointed at the woman. “Who is she?”

“It’s none of your concern.”

“And Willow Avery?”

Asher flinched. He clearly hadn’t anticipated me knowing her name, much less confronting him so directly. The older woman answered first.

“You know my daughter?” She was suddenly seized by a violent, hacking cough.

Asher rushed to her side, gently patting her back. He shot me a look of pure impatience. “Willow’s mother is sick. My place is close to the hospital, so they’re staying a few days.”

I watched Asher fuss—adjusting the pillow, pouring warm water, covering her with a soft blanket, his voice low and solicitous, asking if she was comfortable.

It ripped a memory out of me. The day my own mother arrived in the city for chemotherapy, having hidden her stomach cancer diagnosis from me and taken a seven-hour bus ride to save money. She was sitting, exhausted, with all her bags, on the stoop of the building.

I was stuck in traffic and called Asher, begging him to let her rest in his apartment for a little while.

His cold refusal was immediate.

“Sienna, for God’s sake, maintain some boundaries. I am not running a hospice here. I’ll have a driver take your mother to a hotel.”

I hadn’t understood his rigid prejudice then, or why he wouldn’t feel any compassion for my sick, road-weary mother. I could only compromise.

Now, I finally understood.

He didn’t love me. He didn’t care about my family.

Perhaps sensing my thoughts, Asher cleared his throat and changed the subject.

“Sienna, why don’t you go back to your place and relax? Once I get Mrs. Avery settled, I’ll take you to see The Quiet Hours tonight.”

I had begged Asher multiple times to see that movie, and he’d always coldly refused.

No matter how I pleaded, he wouldn’t even look up from his phone. “That kind of sentimental indie flick is beneath us, Sienna.”

Now, he was offering a bone, a quick bribe to keep me from pressing the issue of Willow’s mother living here. Everything, it seemed, was negotiable when it came to Willow.

I dug my nails into my palms, ready to refuse, when the door to the primary suite was pulled open.

A woman stepped out. She was wearing a soft, oversized cotton shirt—definitely Asher’s, and definitely not meant to be seen. Her fair skin was dewy, and her long, dark hair was still wet, water spotting the polished hardwood as she walked.

It felt like a punch to my chest.