She often bribed them with little favors, so when they saw her crying, they instinctively sided with her.
“Michael, what’s wrong with you? How could you make Emily cry?”
“Emily is such a good woman. You’d better not take her for granted.”
I nearly laughed out loud. A good woman? A woman plotting her husband’s murder? She was no saint—more like a modern-day Lady Macbeth.
When asked, Emily recounted what had just happened.
“Michael, you’re barely home. Emily runs everything.”
“She manages the finances while you’re useless.”
“And when trouble comes, you just hide? Are you even a man?”
I sneered.
“So what?”
“And what business is it of yours?”
The neighbors froze. Normally, I was polite, courteous to everyone.
This wasn’t a lack of manners—it was that I had no reason to endure any longer.
They all knew about Emily and Daniel, yet they took her side because she bought their silence with favors, keeping me, the fool, in the dark.
And to think, I even spent my spare time helping them fix things—children’s toys, home appliances, you name it.
Ungrateful bastards.
As for their accusations—utter nonsense.
When I first met Emily, she had just started as a content creator, barely known.