My Fiance is an i***t!

The elevator doors slid open with a soft chime, and Sheila Greene stepped out into a hallway that smelled like money and cologne. She smiled a little, despite the day she had—a twelve-hour day, three board calls, and a headache that had started somewhere behind her left eye around noon and hadn't let up since. She hadn't told him she was coming. She liked the idea of surprising him—showing up instead of texting first, like she used to when things were newer between them. She didn't knock as she still had a key. But the door was unlocked, which didn't strike her as strange—Raymond was careless like that, always had been. It used to be one of the things she liked about him. He didn't carry himself the way she did, tight and calculated in every direction. He drifted, and she had thought, once, that she needed a little of that in her life. She heard music before she saw anything as she entered the condo—a familiar track she recognized because she had been in the room the last time he played it. "Ray?" She called, stepping further in, already thinking about getting out of her heels and into something that wasn't a blazer. "You home?" There was no answer. Just the music, but beneath it, there was something else. Sheila saw a maroon coloured block-heels that wasn't hers and stopped walking. She stood there a moment, one shoe still on, and one hand still halfway to her hair. Something in her chest went very still, but she kept walking anyway. Maybe the shoe was hers and she had forgotten she owned it, Sheila thought, trying to not overthink the situation. She went to Raymond's bedroom and it was worse. Sheila saw a black jumpsuit all sprawled on the ground, a blue panties and bra somewhere close to the bathroom. These were definitely not hers! And even if they were, why were they on the floor..?! No… no… no… Sheila's head began to turn fuzzy. This can't be happening, they were engaged for Christ sake! Her mind screamed. But even as she saw the truth staring at her in the face she still wanted to see… to make sure. It could all be a prank—Raymond had pulled one like this last year on the night of her birthday—so maybe… maybe this was the same. She removed her second heel and walked towards the bathroom. As she got closer, Sheila was already convinced as she was hearing voices—a woman's and that bastard's! But she was still going to confirm. She was still going to see for herself. Marcus, her brother, had warned her about this. He knew it was just a matter of time before it happened, but she didn't listen. Love, they say, is blind. And as she stood at the doorway of the bathroom, she couldn't be anymore convinced. Sheila stood there for exactly three seconds before either of them noticed her. But three seconds was long enough. Long enough to see the woman's hand splayed against Raymond's wet bare chest, long enough to see the tattoo on his shoulder—the one he had gotten the year he proposed, the one he had told her meant something—long enough to understand, completely, what kind of fool she had been. "Sheila—" "Don't." Her voice came out flat. She spent six years building a company out of steadiness, so she wasn't about to lose it in Raymond's bathroom. The woman scrambled for a towel. Raymond didn't move fast enough, he didn't even look ashamed enough, and that—more than the woman, more than any of it—was what finally cracked something loose in Sheila's head. "Baby, it's not what it—" "It's exactly what it looks like!" She was already pulling the ring off her finger, and it came off easier than she expected. It was almost like it had been waiting. "Save the rest. I don't want it!" She set the ring on his dresser, next to a framed magazine cover with his face on it—Cute-Ray, the caption read, some profile piece about Miami's hottest rising artist and the empire-heiress fiancée on his arm. She almost laughed. "Sheila, wait—" She didn't wait. She was already walking, already past the point where waiting did anything for her. Behind her, she heard him running out of the bathroom and fiddling with his clothes, calling her name again, but she was in the elevator before he made it to the door, and she was in her car before she let herself feel any of it. She didn't go home. Home had his things in it. Had six years of evidence that she had built a life around a man who couldn't be faithful for the length of an engagement. She couldn't sit in that tonight. So she went to the office instead. Greene Pastures' Brickell tower was quiet at that hour, most of the floor dark except for the low hum of security lighting. Sheila let herself into her own office, closed the door, and finally—finally—let her hands shake. She didn't cry. She had promised herself a long time ago that men didn't get her tears, not after the first time, and definitely not tonight. Instead she sat at her desk, opened her laptop, and did the only thing that had ever reliably made her feel like herself again. She worked.