10 Chapter 10
Back at Yale, Rannie had been surrounded by a group of friends. But after she married him, she had slowly let those connections fade. 1
Wright felt like he was drowning. His lungs burned, gasping for air that wasn’t there. With trembling fingers, he unfolded the divorce papers one more time.
Under the section detailing the reason for the separation, Rannie had written a single, devastating line: “Due to the husband’s infidelity…”
Disbelief widened Wright’s eyes.
Exposed. Rannie knew everything about his affair with Lucia.
But how? She had been so calm, so normal. She had acted as if she knew nothing at all.
His heart hammered against his ribs in a frantic, wild rhythm. He replayed the last two weeks in his mind, desperately trying to understand.
It all clicked into place. The day he had given her the ring, her faint, serene smile… he had mistaken it for happiness. Now he saw it for what it was. It was the smile of someone who had been broken, someone who was hiding an ocean of pain.
He remembered the night Lucia had shown up at their door. He remembered Rannie asking him, her voice trembling almost imperceptibly, “Do you remember our wedding vows?”
With a sickening lurch in his stomach, he recalled his own smooth, confident reply: “Between us, there shall be no betrayal, no deception, and no turning back.”
But Rannie’s expression hadn’t been one of relief. It had been a look of profound, controlled grief, of tears held back by an iron will.
“She knew… She knew the whole time!”
Wright crumpled to the floor, consumed by a wave of furious self–hatred. He slammed his fist against the hardwood floor again and again, unable to contain the violent storm of emotions tearing through him.
A single, hot tear splashed onto the divorce papers, blurring the ink of Rannie’s beautiful, elegant signature/
He frantically wiped at his eyes, terrified of destroying the last piece of her he had left. This document, this contract, was the only tangible proof that she had ever been a part of his life, and he couldn’t bear to let it disappear.
But it was already too late.
His tears had already smudged her name. It felt as if the very foundation of his world had been
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10 Chapter 10
washed away by his own selfish actions. Wright clutched the damp paper to his chest, his body wracked with uncontrollable sobs.
“Rannie, Rannie, don’t leave me, please, don’t leave me…”
He didn’t know how long he lay there.
When he finally stumbled out of the penthouse, night had fallen. The tears on his face had
dried.
But one question still burned in his mind: How had Rannie found out? He had been so careful, so meticulous. She should never have known.
His feet carried him on autopilot to the back of the town car. Inside, Lucia sat in the passenger seat, the window down, casually scrolling through her phone. Even from a distance, Wright’s eyes locked onto her screen. On the left side of the chat window was Rannie’s black and white profile picture.
An icy dread snaked its way down his spine. He crept closer, his movements silent, a sickening /suspicion growing in his gut. As he got nearer, the messages on her screen came into focus. His
heart began to pound.
A picture of a positive pregnancy test. A photo of him and her in bed together… It was a
relentless, one–sided stream of messages from Lucia, with no reply from the other side, but also no indication that she had ever been blocked.
A sharp, stabbing pain shot through his skull, and the world seemed to shatter around him.
It was her. It was this treacherous, scheming woman who had told Rannie everything. Lucia had betrayed him. She was the reason Rannie was gone.
Completely lost in her own smug satisfaction, Lucia was admiring the chaos she had unleashed. As she re–read her own messages, her phone was suddenly ripped from her hands.
Startled, she spun around, ready to unleash her fury, but her eyes widened in shock at the sight of him.
“Wright?”
His face was a twisted mask of pure rage. His jaw was clenched so tight that a muscle pulsed in his cheek. His voice was a low, seething hiss. “Who the hell gave you permission to use my first
name?”
Without another word, he began to scroll through the conversation between her and Rannie, the entire, ugly truth laid bare before his eyes.
Lucia stared at him, the color draining from her face. She stammered, “Mr. Charlotte, this is all just a big misunderstanding. Please, just let me explain…”
