My Rise from The Ashes After Divorce

Chapter 7 -I'd Fear Him Not

"Yes, why wouldn’t I? She’s, my secretary." He said arrogantly.

Before I knew it. I had hauled off and slapped Blake across the face. That's when I knew there was a thin line between love and hate. I hated Blake Crenshaw.

“I'm warning you." He said fiercely, pushing my back hard up against the wall. "Don’t ever put your hands on me again. You don't know the things I do to people regularly. Don't make me show that side of me to you, woman!” Blake shouted, taking his fist tightly bawling it up in my face. Blake looked at me, and I can tell it was the same look he had seen the night when he showed up at my house seven years ago looking for my dead-beat gambling uncle. I was afraid, but I refused to show no signs of it as I was doing right now. My stance used to turn him on, but now it made him furious!

But I was very afraid, but the life I lived as a very young child has taught me a few things, one, never letting them see you sweat. Because bullies, predators and those who prey on the vulnerable will take advantage of your weakness. To avoid possibly being beaten or even worse, r***d. I had to pretend many times to be fearless as I faced the men who threaten me to get to my uncle, head on.

"So, you are a common thug! Who goes around threatening women and children and beating up people for money! Is that who I married?"

While Jake cheered quietly on the other side of the door listening. “Yes, Treasure. Stand up to him.”

"Blake, you deserve more than a slap. You’ve done everything wrong. You are such a jerk!” Treasure said, pushing him off her, as she went into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.

Blake hated that he was losing control over Treasure. So, he roughly pushed open the bathroom door. "I may have done wrong, but have I left you? Don’t I still come home to you? So why can’t you just be happy with that?”

I can hardly breathe. I feel like my whole world is falling apart all over again. “I see there is no repairing this marriage. Yet you stand there so casually. You haven't asked about our baby once. I don’t even recognize the person in front of me anymore. The little warmth I once felt for you has faded into nothing, replaced by this coldness you’re showing me. Do you really think I can just pretend everything’s normal? It’s infuriating! What do you think I am? A fool?"

I felt the weight of his betrayal so heavy on my chest, choking any hope I had of returning to the life we used to share. I saw no guilt or sorrow in this man's eyes. He really thought I would just brush everything aside to be next to him, no matter what.

"You expect me to stay here, keeping the house and taking care of this family as if your absence from my life is something I can simply ignore. I’m not your maid. I’m your wife. It’s maddening! I trusted you, Blake. I vowed to love you, but now that our poor baby is gone. I can’t keep going like this! You expect me to just smile and pretend the gaping holes in our relationship don’t exist. How cruel can you be? You stand there saying nothing has changed, but you’re too late for that. Everything has already changed between us. I'm no longer your obedient little wife. I’m Treasure Delgado. And I refuse to be submissive to a man who betrays me.

"Why did you marry me in the first place?"

Blake was so angry, I can see the smoke emitting from his pores as he clenched his jaw fighting to hold back his raging temper.

“I had my reasons.”

“What reasons? Not one of them had anything to do with being in love with me. You are pathetic.”

My calm, but dagger piercing words was getting to him. In his fit of anger, he let a long held secret spill from his mouth.

"What’s pathetic is your uncle. Do you want to go back and live with him? I can arrange that!”

“That miserable uncle of yours, who constantly took your money and begged me to take you off his hands and marry you! Don't forget where you came from. When I came to that roach and rat filled house and saw a pretty girl like you living that way, I tried to save you from a miserable life with that man, and this is the thanks I get. You had to make me look like I’m the bad guy."

Blake shouted, his words heavy in the air. "You had to recognize I was never into this marriage like you were."

He saw me flinch, as if he had slapped me.

"So, my uncle used me? And you thought, let me use this naive innocent girl too, so she can pay off this debt! If I would have known what my uncle had done. I promise you, on my parents’ grave, I would’ve never married you!”

Learning that I been sold into servitude by my uncle. It took a minute for my brain to wrap around the information I’m hearing.

I uttered. “Oh my God!” I had no choice but to release my pain and shock through tears.

Blake showed no remorse for his words. He continued, “I never said I loved you—unless we were being intimate, and that was only lust. You’re beautiful, and I’m just a man. I enjoyed being intimate with you, in those moments, it felt like love, but I lied."

Each word dripped with bitterness, a toxic mix of resentment and indifference.

His words suffocated me, and he wouldn’t shut up or stop. "Look! Are you happy Treasure, are you happy? Now, you finally know the truth!" Blake declared, as if truth were a weapon—and he was using it against me.

“So, you never viewed me as your wife, just a possession or some flimsy payment you were owed.”

“Look, let’s leave things as they are, so we can carry on as usual. You still owe me, Treasure."

“I owe you nothing. And I will never carry on as usual, this is sick! And I won’t accept this life!”

“Is that your final answer?”

“Yes.”

“Then get out of my house! Not tomorrow, tonight, I want you gone!” He uttered in a seething tone.

That's when the thunder clapped so loudly the house momentarily became silent.

"Blake, this is my home too, and I can’t leave in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm."

"Let's get one thing straight: this is not your home. Your name is nowhere on the deed. So, get out! After all these years, I have never asked you for a divorce, and you have the nerve to want to divorce me. You can't stay here any longer."

"Blake, you know I don't have anywhere to go, and I don’t have any money. Where am I supposed to go?"

He stood there and I can see the evil thoughts churning in his sick brain. I stood there on pins and needles not knowing what he was going to say or do next.