Our Marriage Rotted in the Eighth Year

Chapter 3

I thought my concessions and my desperation would bring him to his senses, but reality answered with the cruelest slap yet.

A month later, on my 26th birthday, I sat alone in the empty Harrington mansion, where the candles had burned down to stubs and Dominic still wouldn't pick up his phone.

Late that night an anonymous email landed in my inbox, and at the same moment a set of photos shot to the top of the city's entertainment news. They'd been taken in the executive office on the top floor of Harrington Capital, and against the floor-to-ceiling windows, Dominic had a woman pinned to his desk.

That woman was Gemma, my best friend of ten years.

They were lost in each other, and Gemma was even wearing the birthday bracelet I'd given her the year before.

The double betrayal went through me like a dull blade, and my throat filled with blood as I coughed a mouthful of it onto the untouched birthday cake, staining the frosting red.

"Why…? Why did it have to be Gemma?"

Rage burned off the last of my reason, and I stopped swallowing it in silence. I spent my savings buying off the media, then sent every major paper the video of Dominic and Gemma together along with proof that Gemma had embezzled company funds, and I swore I'd take them both down.

But I'd badly underestimated Dominic's reach in the Crown District, because by the next day every report had vanished, and in their place Harrington Capital put out an official medical statement: Aria Miller suffers from severe paranoid schizophrenia, with a long history of self-harm and delusions.

Dominic showed up at a press conference, eyes red, grief in his voice. "My wife, Aria, has been suffering delusions brought on by severe psychological stress, but I will always stand by her." In the same breath, he announced a $5 million for Gemma to study abroad in Aldermere. "Gemma shouldn't have her future ruined by baseless accusations, and I can't wait to see what she accomplishes when she comes back."

To the whole country, I became a madwoman and a joke, while Dominic was the devoted tycoon standing by his sick wife and Gemma was an innocent young professional hounded overseas.

That night Dominic came back to the mansion and gently took my cold hand, sounding indulgent rather than angry. "Aria, you pulled a knife on me last month, and I didn't care for that, because a man can't let himself be threatened. Sleeping with your best friend was just a little lesson—I figured you two were close enough that even if you found out, you wouldn't kick up too much of a fuss." He leaned in. "Act up again, and don't say I didn't warn you."

His punishment was quick and vicious, because the next day he took up with a girl from an elite university, and to grind down what little self-respect I had left, he sold the basement apartment in Riverside where we'd once lived.

That basement was where our happiest memories started, where we'd split a single packet of ramen and he'd held me and cried, swearing he'd never betray me as long as he lived.

I ran to his office and dropped to my knees, and with nothing left of my pride I clung to his pant leg and sobbed until my chest ached. "Dominic, please! I don't want the mansion or the shares, just don't sell the basement. Please! It's the only home I've ever had!"

He looked down at me without a shred of warmth and had security drag me out like trash.

The basement that had witnessed the purest years of our love was sold, and the money went to rent a luxury place for the girl in East Heights.

The abuse finally broke me, and I got by on handfuls of antidepressants, because every time I shut my eyes I saw Dominic with a different woman—a silent horror reel that wouldn't stop.