Updated Sep 23, 2025 • ~11 min read
Chapter 11: The Other Woman’s Shock
Angel Martinez sat in her downtown condo at 2 AM, staring at the court documents Cole had thrown on her coffee table three hours earlier when he’d stormed in demanding she help him pay his legal fees. The papers were scattered across her glass surface like evidence of a crime—which, she was beginning to realize, they essentially were.
Plaintiff Harper Elodie Marlowe vs. Defendant Cole Damian Sloane. Divorce granted on grounds of adultery. $47,000 in marital funds spent on extramarital activities. Supervised visitation only.
Angel had read the documents seventeen times, each pass revealing another layer of the catastrophe Cole’s lies had created. Not just for Harper and Ava, but for Angel herself. Because as she pieced together the timeline of Cole’s financial support, cross-referenced it with the gifts he’d given her, the apartment deposit he’d helped with, the vacation they’d taken to Napa last spring, a horrifying picture was emerging.
Cole hadn’t been supporting her out of love or generosity. He’d been using his wife’s money to buy Angel’s compliance in his deception.
Every dinner at expensive restaurants—paid for with Harper’s money. Every weekend getaway—funded by assets that legally belonged to Cole’s wife. Every piece of jewelry, every romantic gesture, every financial safety net Cole had provided had been stolen from the woman he’d promised to forsake all others for.
Angel had been an accessory to theft. Worse than that—she’d been the beneficiary of it.
Her phone buzzed with another call from Cole, the fourteenth since he’d left her apartment in a rage. Angel declined it and immediately blocked his number. She couldn’t bear to hear his voice again, couldn’t listen to him rationalize and deflect and blame everyone but himself for the destruction he’d caused.
Because that’s what Cole had been doing for the past three hours—blaming. Harper was vindictive. The judge was biased. Victor Bellamy was unethical. The system was rigged against men. According to Cole, he was the victim in all of this, a good man who’d fallen in love and was being punished for following his heart.
At no point had Cole acknowledged that he’d lied to two women for twenty-six months. At no point had he expressed remorse for the financial theft, the emotional manipulation, or the systematic destruction of his daughter’s family. At no point had he seemed to grasp that his choices had consequences that extended far beyond his own comfort.
Angel walked to her kitchen and opened a bottle of wine—a $200 Bordeaux that Cole had given her for her birthday, purchased with money that had belonged to Harper. Everything in her apartment was contaminated by Cole’s lies. The silk scarves draped over her bedroom chair. The expensive coffee machine on her counter. The monthly payments he’d been making toward her car loan.
She’d been living a life subsidized by a betrayed wife’s money, and she’d been too infatuated to question where Cole’s generosity was coming from.
Angel’s phone rang again—not Cole this time, but her best friend Dahlia Moreau, who’d been calling all evening after Angel’s cryptic text about needing to talk.
“Finally,” Dahlia said when Angel answered. “I’ve been worried sick. What’s going on? Your message sounded—”
“I’m the other woman, Dahlia.”
The silence that followed was so complete Angel wondered if the call had dropped.
“What do you mean?” Dahlia asked carefully.
“Cole. The man I’ve been in love with for over two years. He’s married. Has a six-year-old daughter. His wife had no idea about me until two weeks ago.” Angel’s voice was surprisingly steady considering she felt like she was having an out-of-body experience. “I helped destroy a family, and I didn’t even realize I was doing it.”
“Angel, honey, slow down. Start from the beginning.”
So Angel told her everything. How she’d met Cole at a conference, how he’d charmed her with his intelligence and apparent vulnerability. How he’d told her he was divorced but still living with his ex-wife for their daughter’s sake. How convinced she’d been that she was helping him transition out of an unhappy situation.
“But he wasn’t divorced,” Angel continued, her voice cracking. “He wasn’t even separated. He was just a married man having an affair, and I was stupid enough to believe his lies.”
“Angel,” Dahlia’s voice was gentle but firm, “you can’t blame yourself for believing someone you trusted. He lied to you too.”
“But I should have known,” Angel said, tears streaming down her face. “There were so many red flags, Dahlia. He could only see me on certain days. He never spent the night at my place. He paid for everything in cash. His phone was always face-down when we were together.”
Angel walked to her bedroom window and stared out at the city lights, each one representing lives and relationships and secrets she couldn’t begin to imagine. “I wanted to believe him so badly that I ignored every instinct that told me something was wrong.”
“What changed? How did you find out?”
“His wife filed for divorce. Today was the court hearing, and Cole came here afterwards completely destroyed. That’s when I learned that he’d been using his wife’s money to pay for our relationship. Dinners, trips, gifts, even helping with my rent—all of it came from their joint accounts.”
Angel heard Dahlia’s sharp intake of breath. “Oh, honey.”
“I’ve been living off stolen money, Dahlia. For over a year, I’ve been accepting financial support that was taken from a woman who had no idea her husband was betraying her. I’m not just the other woman—I’m an accessory to financial abuse.”
Angel sank onto her bed, still wearing the dress she’d put on that morning when the world made sense and Cole was her devoted boyfriend instead of a stranger who’d manipulated two women for his own selfish ends.
“What are you going to do?” Dahlia asked.
“I don’t know.” Angel stared at the jewelry box on her dresser, filled with gifts that now felt like evidence of her complicity. “Cole called me tonight demanding that I help him pay his legal fees and support obligations. He actually had the audacity to suggest that since I benefited from his ‘generosity,’ I owed him financial support now that he’s facing consequences.”
“Please tell me you said no.”
“I told him to go to hell and blocked his number.” Angel wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “But Dahlia, I don’t know how to live with this. I helped destroy a marriage. I participated in financial theft. There’s a six-year-old girl whose family is broken partly because of me.”
“Angel, listen to me,” Dahlia’s voice was firm. “You were lied to and manipulated by someone you trusted. Yes, you made some choices you might regret now, but you can’t take responsibility for Cole’s deception. He’s the one who made vows to another woman. He’s the one who chose to steal from his family. He’s the one who destroyed his daughter’s sense of security.”
Angel knew Dahlia was right intellectually, but emotionally she felt like she was drowning in complicity. Every memory of the past twenty-six months was contaminated now. Every romantic gesture from Cole had been funded by theft. Every ‘I love you’ had been built on lies told to his wife.
“I called Harper tonight,” Angel said quietly.
“You what?”
“I called his wife. Harper. I needed to apologize, to explain that I didn’t know he was married when we first got involved.”
“Angel, that was incredibly brave. What did she say?”
“She was… not what I expected. Cold, obviously. But also surprisingly composed. She told me that if I really wanted to help their daughter, I should stay away from Cole completely.” Angel laughed bitterly. “As if that would be difficult. I don’t even know who Cole really is anymore.”
Angel walked back to her living room and stared at the court documents still spread across her coffee table. The financial breakdown was devastating—Cole now owed Harper $4,000 a month in alimony, $2,500 in child support, plus reimbursement for the money he’d stolen from their marriage to fund his affair.
“He can’t afford all of this,” Angel said. “His salary is good, but not good enough to cover these obligations and maintain his current lifestyle. He’s going to have to move to a smaller apartment, get rid of his car, probably take a second job.”
“And that’s supposed to be your problem how?” Dahlia’s voice was sharp.
“It’s not,” Angel said quickly. “I know it’s not. But I keep thinking about how this happened. Cole wasn’t some master manipulator who targeted me specifically. He was just a selfish man who wanted more than he had, and when he met me, he saw an opportunity to have everything he wanted without giving up anything he already possessed.”
Angel picked up one of the court documents and read through Cole’s financial disclosure. His salary, his assets, his monthly expenses—all laid out in clinical detail. Nowhere in the documents was there any mention of remorse or accountability or recognition that his choices had hurt innocent people.
“Dahlia,” Angel said suddenly, “what if I’m not the only one?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if Cole has done this before? What if I’m not the first affair he’s had, just the first one that got discovered? What if there have been other women who got the same lies, the same manipulation, the same stolen money?”
The possibility hit Angel like a physical blow. If Cole was capable of maintaining a twenty-six-month affair while lying to his wife daily, what else was he capable of? How many other women might have been drawn into his web of deception?
Angel’s phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number: “This is Cole. You can block my calls but you can’t ignore reality. I need help, Angel. After everything we meant to each other, you owe me at least that much.”
Angel stared at the message, feeling the last of her romantic illusions about Cole Sloane crumble into dust. Even now, even after everything that had been revealed in court, even after Harper’s life had been destroyed and his daughter’s family had been shattered, Cole was still trying to manipulate women into taking care of him.
“Angel?” Dahlia’s voice brought her back to the present. “Are you still there?”
“He just texted me,” Angel said, her voice hollow. “He says I owe him help because of everything we meant to each other.”
“What are you going to do?”
Angel looked around her apartment one more time—at the expensive furniture purchased with Harper’s money, at the artwork Cole had bought her for Christmas, at the remnants of a relationship built entirely on lies and theft.
“I’m going to disappear from his life completely,” Angel said with sudden clarity. “I’m going to move out of this apartment that he helped me afford. I’m going to return everything he ever gave me. And I’m going to make sure he never has the opportunity to use me as a weapon against another woman again.”
Angel walked to her bedroom and pulled out a suitcase, then began methodically packing clothes that Cole had never seen, jewelry he’d never touched, books that predated their relationship. She would take only what was purely hers, untainted by his deception.
“Where will you go?” Dahlia asked.
“I have some savings,” Angel said. “Real savings, from my actual job, not subsidized by a married man’s theft. I’ll find a smaller place I can actually afford. I’ll rebuild my life the right way this time.”
As Angel packed, she felt something she hadn’t experienced in over two years: clarity. The fog of Cole’s manipulation was finally lifting, and she could see herself clearly for the first time since she’d met him. Not as his lover or his victim, but as a woman who’d made some terrible choices and now had the opportunity to make better ones.
“Angel,” Dahlia said gently, “I’m proud of you. It takes courage to walk away from a life, even a life built on lies.”
Angel paused in her packing and looked at her reflection in the bedroom mirror. The woman staring back at her looked older than she had that morning, marked by the kind of hard-earned wisdom that came from having her illusions thoroughly shattered.
“I thought I was in love,” Angel said quietly. “But I was in love with a man who doesn’t exist. The real Cole Sloane is a coward who steals from his family to fund his affairs and then blames everyone but himself when he faces consequences.”
Angel zipped up her suitcase and took one last look around the apartment that had been her sanctuary and her prison for the past year. Tomorrow, she would turn in her keys and disappear from Cole’s life forever.
Tonight, she would mourn the death of a love that had never been real in the first place.
And she would begin the long process of forgiving herself for being human enough to believe a liar’s promises.
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