Marriage by Revenge: The Deceived Heiress

Divorce settlement?

MARIEL

The pain in my chest was unbearable, a mixture of anguish and betrayal that threatened to drown me.

In front of me stood Rafael, my husband, except that I was now a stranger in his eyes and an intruder in his life that now belonged to someone else. I forced myself to focus on the topic of divorce as it seemed to be the only thing he was willing to discuss.

There was a burning desire in me to profess my love to him again and, perhaps, proffer solutions to our broken marriage such as couples’ therapy. I would have given in to begging him save for his hard stare. Those emotionless eyes—which I had never beheld in nine years—stopped me.

The realization hit me then: for me, our history as a couple ended yesterday, but for him, it ended years ago.

With a trembling voice, I suggested that instead of involving lawyers, we could agree on something better.

"I don't think this has to go through lawyers. I suppose that with a peaceful conversation, we can work this out. And since you're in a big hurry, it will be faster this way. Don't you think so?"

"Mariel, this isn't something we can solve alone."

"But what do we have? What part of us needs lawyers to be divided? It's just several cars, a company, two houses. Rafael, there's nothing more. I gave you the money for the company during our marriage; thus, the division should be easy. Why can't we just talk about it and have a peaceful agreement?"

Once I finished speaking, he stood up and slammed his two palms on his desk. The sound threw me off such that I struggled to gain balance.

"You're not going to touch my company! Is that what you want?! You're not going to touch my company!"

That attitude set off alarm bells in my head.

"What do you mean 'your company'?" I retorted. "Ours! I provided the money. This is not something I need to remind you of, Rafael Lorenzo. The idea was yours, the money was mine. Thus, it became our company!"

"You’ve been busy painting faces! What else have you done for the company so far? Do you think simply providing the money to float an idea that isn’t even yours is having a company? Look around you, none of this would be possible without me, Mariel. I built all of this. I am the only one who can claim ownership of this. While I was working more than eight hours a day, you just picked up a brush, a damn pencil, and a canvas. I was the one sweating day and night, thinking about what to do and what not to do."

I got teary as I remembered how my art and passion had always been belittled by him. I remembered how he had never wanted to pose for me to paint him a portrait; how he later considered trivial what he once admired in my painting.

"Without my money, your idea would be nothing," I whimpered as I spoke. "Splitting it in two and both of us parting with half each is only fair."

"The company is mine alone, Mariel."

"It's ours!"

"How can you prove it, Mariel? You were just a rich girl full of whims! I created this! Me!"

My desperation grew as he denied that any of this belonged to me.

"With my damn money! The money of this woman you now call a rich girl! I gave you my money! All my money! To my husband, to the man who was building a future with me. I trusted you, Rafael. I trusted the man I loved."

I broke down at my last sentence, but he just looked at me with disdain as if I were a fool. I couldn't hold back the tears. My composure escaped me as I faced a reality I didn't want to see. "I trusted you. I trusted you."

"Listen, Mariel," he said with curt coldness. "I'm sorry. You know I was the one who took this forward. It was my idea, my project, my effort. And you? Everything you have is thanks to me. If we still have money, it's because of my work." Every word he said made me feel smaller and more insignificant.

I wondered where the man I loved was.

"I'm not trying to take anything from you. I’m just saying you take half of everything while I take the other half. I know you have invested your time and effort into it. I fully recognize that they are your ideas, that you have invested years and years of sacrifice here, but my money started it all."

"Okay. Mariel."

I relaxed a little, believing that he was finally trying to reason with me.

"Then we can solve this just by giving you the money you gave me, right? Since you talk so much about money."

What? How ridiculous he was to suggest such nonsense!

"Do you think I'm an i***t? How can you repay me with the exact amount I gave you? It's been almost nine years since then. That amount is nothing compared to what the company is now. How, on earth, would you expect me to just accept the same amount of money several years later?"

"You are here because you think we can work this out without legal involvement. Well, here we are, talking about it. No lawyers. Just us. I will give you your money, the one you keep throwing in my face."

"No, I... I'm not throwing it in your face. Why are you trying to make me look like the bad guy here? I gave it to you blindly! So much so that I never even mentioned it to you, damn it! I trusted you. My dad gave me the money after we got married, precisely for this, to build a future with my husband and my family. Rafael, please... don't do things this way. This company is also mine."

He inched forward and grabbed me by the shoulders again. His gaze was cold and hard.

"You will not touch this company!" he declared. I tried to reply, but he released me amid laughter and resigned to his place by his office desk.

"You have nothing that ties you to the company. None of this has anything to do with you. Your name doesn't appear anywhere. Rafael Lorenzo is the sole owner." And he was right. "So I just have to fight so you don't get half of what's mine. And I'll tell you here: you can keep both houses and the cars; the only thing I'm interested in is keeping what I built with my effort. With the money I'm going to give you, just keep up with your hobbies, go shopping, visit the beach, organize lavish hangouts with your friends and, maybe, you can sell your paintings. Just don't run out of money in less than a year, please."

The thought of him leaving me with almost nothing tormented me. There was nothing to prove that I had been a part of the company, not even a legal half-page paper to show that I had invested any money.

"I'm your wife! Half of what's yours belongs to me even if you claim this company is yours alone. Half of it still belongs to me, Rafael." But he laughed again. His laughter was derisive—a knife in my heart.

"Get out of my office, please."

"I'm not leaving, Rafael. We're not done talking!"

"I'll have my lawyers contact you. We have nothing more to discuss. This conversation should never have happened, and you have nothing to do here." He stared at me, waiting for me to leave. Paralyzed, I didn't know how to react. I just stood there until he took me by the arm and shoved me out of his office, slamming the door against me embarrassingly.

Did he just kick me out of his office? My head started to throb with the reality before me.

I went out into the hallway, feeling defeated with every step. I cried uncontrollably.

At that moment, not only had I lost my husband, but I was also facing the possibility of losing everything we had built together. It was a reality I never imagined I would have to face.

I walked out feeling lost and more alone than I ever did before I arrived. Every step I took down the hall was a reminder of my new reality—the reality that I had been stripped not only of my marriage but also of any security I thought I had. Tears blurred my vision, but I managed to get to my car and, once inside, I collapsed into the driver's seat, sobbing uncontrollably.

After several minutes, I shakily picked up my phone and dialed my brother's number. Upon hearing his voice, the words poured out of me in torrents amid pain and confusion. I told him what had transpired at Rafael's office, how he had scorned me and rejected my claims to the company; how he had scoffed at my contribution and thrown me out.

"I'm such an i***t, but I gave my money to my husband, not to that man who just threw me out like a piece of trash a few minutes ago."

"It's okay, Mariel. Calm down," my brother comforted me in a calm but firm voice, holding back his anger at everything happening. "We're going to fix this. I have the contact information of some excellent lawyers. It's best if we see them as soon as possible."

"Yes, yes. Okay," I managed to say between sobs. "I need to do something. I can't let him take everything from me."

We agreed to meet the next day at a law firm.

On the drive back home, every mile I traveled was like moving away from a life that no longer existed. When I arrived, I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. My eyes were swollen and red. My makeup was smeared with tears.

"You have to be strong," I consoled myself, even though being strong at that moment felt like a mirage.

Next, I went to my studio—that place that had always been my sanctuary of peace and creativity. But today, there was no sign of peace; only a broken heart and a mind full of confusion and rage.

Impulsively, I took my brushes and paints, desperate to channel all that inner storm onto the canvas. I wanted to paint something, anything, to portray the anger and emptiness I felt. But as I tried to make the first brushstrokes, tears began to fall, blurring my vision, and disrupting any attempt at concentration.

Frustration took hold of me and, in a moment of fury, I threw the brushes and paints to the floor. The sound of the jars hitting the ground echoed through the room—an echo of my despair. I collapsed to the floor, surrounded by the remains of my failed attempt to paint, my hands shaking and tears streaming down my cheeks.

"Damn you, Rafael," I said between sobs. "How could you do this to me?" The words were a scream in the solitude of my studio. A studio that was once filled with love and passion for art was now witnessing my deepest pain.

Every memory of us together, every shared moment, every dream built in unison, every single thing seemed to crumble before my eyes. I felt betrayed, abandoned, and worst of all, I felt powerless.

There, on the floor, surrounded by the chaos of my studio, I let the pain flow freely. It was as if each tear I shed took away a little of the weight I carried inside. At that moment, I was not an artist; I was not a wife; I was simply a broken woman, trying to find some way to put myself back together.

Time passed. I don't know how much of it, but eventually, the tears dried, and with them, the intensity of my pain gave way to an empty calm.

Slowly, I stood up, looking around at the scattered colors, the discarded brushes, and the immaculate canvas.

How could I possibly process that my husband was doing this to me?