Chapter 2: The Name I Had Never Heard
His knees buckled, but he didn't fall.
Not yet.
I watched him grab the edge of the podium.
The microphone picked up his sharp intake of breath.
Four hundred people went quiet.
He found my face through the glass.
I didn't move.
I just looked at him.
His mistress touched his arm and whispered something.
He shook her off like she was a stranger.
Then his phone rang again.
He answered it this time.
Whatever he heard made him close his eyes.
He walked off the stage without another word.
He came through the side door thirty seconds later, and when he saw me standing there, he stopped.
"You wouldn't," he said.
"I already did," I said.
"Everything I built—"
"Was built on my family's money.
Every contract.
Every property.
Every account.
All of it reverts back tonight."
His face changed then.
The arrogance drained out of it completely.
"You can't do this to me," he said.
"Not here.
Not like this."
I picked up my bag from the chair beside me.
"You humiliated me in front of everyone we know, Adrian.
You chose tonight.
I just chose how it ended."
I walked toward the exit.
Then I heard him say one name behind me.
May you like
A name I had never heard before.
And everything I thought I knew about our marriage shifted under my feet.
