Chapter 1The Ramen Queen Gets Even

I built my empire on stinky ramen. I’m the "Ramen Queen" of social media, a micro-celebrity known for slurping down bowls of pungent, spicy, fermented pork broth for millions of followers. My husband, on the other hand, is the apex predator of the Manhattan financial circuit.

Before the wedding, we made a pact: church and state. He wouldn’t touch my business, and I wouldn’t interfere with his. In three years, he hasn’t so much as liked a single post of mine, let alone dropped a "gift" in my livestream.

My frenemies love to whisper about us. They insist he’s secretly pulling strings for me behind the scenes, mocking our pairing as "Street Cart Ramens paired with 30-year Macallan."

One night, fed up with the snide remarks, I decided to lean into the joke. "Hey, Dominic," I said, leaning against his mahogany desk. "Maybe you should actually pave a path for me. You know, make the rumors true?"

Dominic looked up, a slow smirk spreading across his face. He removed his gold-rimmed glasses and pulled me into his lap, the scent of expensive sandalwood and cold hard cash clinging to him.

"Our little internet star doesn't need my help to build an empire," he murmured. "If anything, the day I go bankrupt, I’ll be the one begging to be your cameraman for a paycheck."

We’d been together for five years, and I was still a sucker for that charm. With one effortless, half-joking comment, he managed to smooth out all the wrinkled insecurities in my heart.

Until the day my follower count hit the one-million mark.

A rival influencer bought a smear campaign against me. Suddenly, the top trending topic was "Stinky Ramen Slut and Her Secret Sugar Daddy." The internet was tearing me apart.

Only one person spoke up for me: Camille Rossi, a visionary indie director. But her defense of me backfired, sparking a new wave of rumors claiming she’d "slept her way through every venture capitalist in the city."

I was drowning in guilt until a verified corporate account dropped a bombshell comment on the trending thread.

@CamilleRossi is my most vital partner. Her professional integrity is beyond reproach. Our legal department will be pursuing every account involved in this defamation.

The handle looked familiar. Too familiar. I ended my livestream early and practically sprinted home.

I pushed open the study door and found him there—the man who claimed to have no social media, the man who always told me to "just ignore the trolls." Dominic was gripping his phone so hard the veins in his forearms were bulging.

He was personally operating his conglomerate’s official account, waging war in the comments section to defend Camille.

* * *

I walked right up to Dominic, but he didn't even notice me. His brow was furrowed, his eyes locked onto Camille’s latest post on his private phone.

At that moment, his work phone on the desk lit up with a notification from his assistant: [Mr. Sterling, the situation regarding Miss Rossi has been handled.]

[Should we deal with the trending hashtags regarding your wife as well?]

My heart hammered against my ribs. I was suddenly, paralyzingly afraid of the answer.

Before he could reach for the work phone, I backed out of the room and closed the door, my breath hitching.

An hour passed. The "Sugar Daddy" hashtags about me were still climbing the charts, untouched.

There was my answer.

This was Dominic’s "consistent" attitude toward me. He always preached about "the truth speaking for itself," telling me to stay above the fray of public insults. I had been naive enough to believe that to a titan of industry like him, internet drama was simply beneath his dignity.

But now, every insulting post about Camille Rossi had vanished as if they never existed. I realized then that it wasn't that he was "above it." It wasn't that he was always calm.

It was just that I wasn't the woman he was willing to go to war for.

With a hollow ache in my chest, I went to the kitchen and cooked a bowl of my signature ramen, extra spicy, extra pungent. I ate them like a form of self-flagellation, scrolling through Camille’s Instagram—ten years of history she’d never deleted.

It was a roadmap of my husband’s heart.

I saw the Dominic I knew—the neat freak who winced if I kissed him after I’d brushed my teeth three times—holding a greasy takeout container for Camille, looking at her like she was the only thing in the world.

I saw Camille standing on his rare, limited-edition vinyl records to reach a high shelf, and he was just laughing, taking a photo and captioning it "Adorable." When I had once asked to listen to one of those records, he’d locked the cabinet with a cold, stony expression.

I scrolled further back.

He’d once walked out of a billion-dollar cross-border negotiation just to make it to Camille’s birthday dinner.

Meanwhile, I had waited at the courthouse three separate times for him to show up for our marriage license. The first time was an "emergency meeting." The second was an "unexpected business trip." The third time he actually showed up, he spent the entire ceremony on a work call he refused to hang up.

Seeing this version of Dominic—this reckless, passionate boy—made the bitterness I’d been swallowing for years overflow.

I began to sob, the sound muffled by the documentary playing in the study.

He was watching The Flavor Trail again. He’d invested in it years ago. Only now did I see the director’s credit at the end: Camille Rossi.

The irony was a knife to the gut. Dominic and I had started because of this film. Five years ago, when I was a struggling vlogger, my raw, unpolished review of that documentary had caught his eye. He’d told me he saw "true soul" in my work.

After we married, we watched it together often. Every time the credits rolled and the camera panned over the exhausted film crew, he would get this distant, longing look in his eyes.

I had been vain enough to think that look was a reflection of his pride in me, a nod to our shared beginning.

But I was wrong.

He wasn't reminiscing about how we met. He was staring at the screen, drowning in the memory of the woman he could never truly have.

...

I forced down a massive mouthful of spicy ramen, the chili oil burning my throat until tears streamed down my face.

Hearing me choke, Dominic walked out of the study. He saw my red, swollen eyes and the oil smeared on my lips, and his brow twitched with a familiar irritation.

He sighed, handing me a glass of lukewarm water. "If you can't handle the heat, Jade, don't force it."

His calm, condescending tone was the final straw.

"Dominic," I said, my voice thick. "I’m trending again. Everyone is calling me a whore. I’m tired of being the 'Ramen Queen.' I want to pivot. I want to go into production, to do something real. Can you help me?"