Toxic Echoes

Chapter-14

The drive back from the restaurant was a suffocating nightmare. Leo drove with a frantic, white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, the windshield wipers slapping violently against the torrential downpour. Lee sat as close to the passenger door as possible, her chest aching with a mixture of terror and hot, righteous anger.

The moment they stepped through the front door of their home, the dam broke.

"How could you do that to me, Leo?" Lee yelled, throwing her clutch onto the entryway table.

"You stood up in front of your investors, in front of the people who hold the future of your business, and you acted like a raving lunatic! Graham has done nothing but try to help us!"

Leo spun around, his coat dripping rainwater onto the hardwood floor. His face was flushed, his innocent, adoring eyes now fractured with a dangerous, unstable wildness.

"Help us? You think he’s helping us, Lee? Open your eyes! He is systematically tearing my life apart, and you are letting him walk right through the front door!"

"He knelt in the rain and begged for forgiveness, Leo! You were the one who invited him in!"

"Because I didn't know!" Leo screamed, his voice cracking with a devastating, raw grief.

"I didn't know he was the man who owned your soul! I didn't know you kept his love letters hidden in my project ledger!"

Lee froze, her breath catching in her throat. "What... what love letters? What are you talking about?"

"Don't lie to me anymore!" Leo shouted, tears finally spilling over his hot cheeks.

"I found them. The letters where you swore you’d never love anyone else. The letters where you said marrying someone else would just be a lie to help you survive. You used me, Lee. You married me to make him jealous, to run away from him, but you never stopped wanting him!"

"Leo, no! That’s not true! I haven't written a letter to Graham in years! If they were in your ledger, he put them there!"

Lee stepped forward, reaching out to grab his hands, her heartbreaking at the sheer agonizing pain in her husband's face.

But the poison had deep roots. Leo flinched away from her touch as if she had burned him.

"He told me you’d say that. He told me you’d protect yourself. I don't even know who you are anymore, Lee. I look at you, and all I see is his shadow standing behind you."

Without another word, Leo stormed up the stairs, slamming the bedroom door behind him so hard the light fixtures rattled. Lee collapsed onto the bottom step of the staircase, burying her face in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably. The cage wasn't made of steel anymore. It was made of words, doubts, and the terrifyingly brilliant mind of her toxic ex.