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“You better learn not to run your fucking mouth like that. Don’t talk about my wife like that.”

“I wasn’t talking about her,” she snapped. “I was talking about you. If you weren’t such a controlling, weak-ass man, you might’ve kept her.”

“I did keep her,” I growled. “For years. Until you ruined it.”

“No, Mark,” she said, voice shaking now—but not with fear. “You did that all by yourself.”

She stepped back, toward the phone on the counter. “I’m calling the police.”

I froze.

Just for a second.

Long enough to realize the panic thudding in my chest wasn’t fear of her—

It was fear of losing everything I’d built.

My reputation.

My career.

The power I’d spent years wrapping around me like armor.

All unraveling because one woman walked away.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Iwas the one who was supposed to leave.

The one who filed.

The one who got the last word.

Instead, I was standing in someone else’s house, desperate, humiliated, and seconds away from a police report.

“Janet,” I said, breath ragged. “Don’t do this.”

“Get out,” she snapped, pointing at the door with tears pooling in her eyes. “I already signed the papers. Sam gave me a hundred grand just to walk away. I don’t need you anymore.”

I clenched my jaw. That bastard bought her off.

I turned, walked out before I did something worse.

I barely remembered the walk home. My mind was running wild with pieces I couldn’t put together. All I knew was this—

Sam and Zane had been cheating before she left.

They had to be.

And somehow, he’d convinced her to vanish and erase me from her life like I was some minor footnote in her past.

I realized how illogical my thoughts were, but they also sounded true to me.

This shit was driving me crazy.

Chapter 30- Sam

I hadn’t expected to cry in the doctor’s office.