Chapter 3
“I don’t get how you’ve become so damn heartless.”
I struggled to my feet, clutching the back of my head where it throbbed from hitting the floor.
Lucian didn’t even spare me a glance. He scooped Laney up into his arms and walked away.
“I’m staying with Laney tonight. I’m not coming to bed.”
And he didn’t.
I sat on the bed in a daze, the divorce papers open in front of me-unsigned, but long completed.
My hand hovered over the mouse, again and again, stuck on the messaging app.
Back when social media exploded over whether couples should share phone passwords, Lucian and I had exchanged ours as a joke.
“If either of us ever starts feeling suspicious,” he’d said, “just check.”
I never thought I’d be the one actually doing it. Or doing it over and over again.
My phone lit up beside me. A message from my best friend, Mia, popped up.
[Margot, don’t overthink it. That girl’s trauma wasn’t your fault. Lucian knows that. He just wanted to help her.]
[After all these years of marriage, you still don’t know him?]
Did I truly know Lucian Sullivan?
I wasn’t sure anymore.
I didn’t know that the man who’d always kept his distance from other women would spend midnight sending voice notes to comfort a student’s period cramps-while I was curled up in agony from an ectopic pregnancy.
Didn’t know he’d skip the breakfast I made, just to save room for another woman’s lunchbox.
Didn’t know he kept her photos like precious little secrets.
I opened his chat with Laney.
Scrolled through messages from the nights he claimed to be stuck on campus, working late. He’d been helping her pack. Taking her to get her passport. Arranging private French lessons.
And that flash of navy blue in her departure-day photo-the corner of a coat in her airport post-was his.
It was our wedding anniversary.
He never came home that night.
None of their messages crossed an obvious line. But every word screamed betrayal.
Chapter 3
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But each of them shredded my heart to pieces.
I hurled the keyboard across the room. Smashed the computer. Tore our wedding photo to pieces. Snapped
the ‘Mr & Mrs’ keychain in half. Destroyed everything.
Then I just sat there in the wreckage, crying and laughing like a lunatic.
I was the villain now.
The monster who ruined a young, innocent girl’s life.
Maybe I should’ve just handed Lucian over to her from the start.
By the time morning light crept in, I had stopped crying. I grabbed the flash drive with the divorce agreement and stood up.
On my way past the guest room, I couldn’t help it-I looked in.
The bedside lamp was still on. Lucian lay on the floor, fully dressed.
But his hand rested on the bed, fingers entwined with Laney’s.
Tightly. Intimately.
A silent confession-without a single button undone.
I stood there in the doorway, watching the scene before me. Then I laughed. Covered my mouth and laughed until tears spilled from my eyes.
I really needed to leave.
When I returned later, Lucian was already in the kitchen, wearing an apron, making breakfast. He and Laney were laughing about something. Until they saw me. The room fell dead silent.
He didn’t speak until I stood still and said nothing. Finally, he glanced up-eyes landing on the papers in my hand.
When he saw the divorce agreement, his pupils constricted in shock.
