BURNED TWICE

Chapter 3

THE RETURN

The text message came on a Tuesday.

"I need to see you. Not for me. For you. M"

I'd deleted Marcus's number years ago. Seeing it now felt like time travel, like something reaching backward from the past and tapping me on the shoulder.

I didn't respond.

The voicemail came on a Wednesday.

"Bella, please. I know you don't owe me anything. I know I forfeited the right to ask you for anything the moment I..." He paused. His voice sounded different. Older. Smaller. "I need you to hear something directly from me. Not rumors. Not through the city. From me. Please."

I deleted it.

The handwritten letter arrived on a Thursday, delivered to my office by actual courier. The envelope was thick, expensive paper. My name was written in his handwriting,the one I'd seen on a thousand sticky notes, reminder cards, and love letters from a lifetime ago.

I left it on my desk unopened for six hours.

Then Amber came to me with concern in her eyes.

"Are you okay?" she asked. "You've been staring at that envelope for forty minutes."

"I'm fine," I lied. "Clear my evening. I need to..." I didn't finish the sentence. What did I need? To understand? To get closure? To stop being haunted by a man I'd successfully destroyed?

"Go home," Amber finished. "I'll lock up. Don't come back until tomorrow."

I took the letter with me.

My apartment was on the sixty-fifth floor of a building that used to be designed for CEOs and hedge fund managers. Now it was filled with successful entrepreneurs and tech people and people like me people rebuilding themselves. I'd bought it with the profits from TechVenture's first year. It was a penthouse. It had everything. And it was the loneliest place I'd ever been.

I poured myself three fingers of scotch the expensive kind, the kind Marcus used to drink and opened the letter.

His handwriting was shaky. He'd written this, then rewritten it, then written it again. There were crossings out. There were corrections. This wasn't a polished letter. This was a desperate one.

"Bella,

I don't deserve your time. I know that. But I need you to hear the truth, because the only way I can explain what happened is if you understand the context. I'm not asking for forgiveness. I'm asking for five minutes of your time.

Three years ago, when you exposed me at the gala, everyone thought it was because I'd cheated on you. That's what I told myself too. That I was a villain in a simple story seduced by a beautiful woman, overcome by desire, choosing the wrong person.

But the truth is more complicated. And more damning.

I met with a private investigator this week. It cost me everything I had left, but I needed to know. And what I found out is that Sophia orchestrated everything. Not just the affair. Everything. She researched you. She researched me. She worked her way into our lives deliberately. She was collecting information on me, on my family, on my business. The affair wasn't passion. It was espionage.

But here's where I'm the real villain: I knew. On some level, I always knew. I knew she was different. I knew something was off about how she appeared in my life. But I didn't care. I was tired of being the perfect husband. I was tired of your sacrifice making me look bad. I was tired of you being better than me in every way that mattered.

So I convinced myself that what was happening was justified. That I deserved to be happy. That you deserved to be hurt because you made me feel inadequate.

You didn't make me feel that way. I made myself feel that way. And instead of fixing it, I destroyed it.

I want you to know that none of this is about getting you back. I've accepted that I've lost you permanently. I want you to know it because I'm tired of lying. I'm tired of being the villain in every room I enter. And I'm tired of knowing that I hurt you for the worst possible reason not because I fell in love with someone else, but because I was too weak to face my own insecurity.

You're probably planning to destroy me. Dominic told me you would be. He came to see me last month, said he'd been helping you sabotage everything I built. He said I should tell you the truth, because if I didn't, you'd spend the rest of your life waiting for revenge to feel like victory, and it never will.

I don't know if you believe in second chances. I don't even know if I believe in them anymore. But I'm asking for one anyway.

Not to be with you. Just to be forgiven.

Marcus"

I read it three times.

Then I poured another scotch and sat in the dark of my apartment, looking at the lights of the city, trying to figure out what I was supposed to feel.

The letter was a lie. It had to be. It was manipulation. It was Marcus trying to get back into my life by making himself seem vulnerable, seem reformed, seem like a victim of circumstances beyond his control.

Except something in it felt true.

And something else felt even more true: if I believed one word of this letter, if I let him off the hook, if I accepted his remorse and moved forward, then I would have wasted three years of my life on a revenge that meant nothing.

My phone buzzed. A text from Dominic: "Don't see him alone. If you see him at all, I'll be present."

I didn't respond.

But the next morning, I texted Marcus: "One hour. Neutral location. Tomorrow at noon."

He responded within seconds: "Thank you."

That night, I couldn't sleep. I lay in my expensive bed in my lonely penthouse and stared at the ceiling, feeling like I was standing at the edge of something. Not just a confrontation with Marcus. Something bigger. Something that would reorganize my life the same way the

gala had.

Something that, one way or another, was going to change everything.