Chapter 17
He was the one who’d signed those divorce papers. He was the one who’d driven me away.
And now I was gone.
He’d searched everywhere, but I had vanished without a trace.
Was there even a chance left? Could he fix what he’d broken?
His silence stretched on, his body limp like a lifeless puppet. The guys started shifting awkwardly, regretting how hard they’d hit him with the truth.
After a moment, one of them spoke again.
“Hey… maybe it’s time you did a little digging into Nancy. Look, it’s not about us hating her. But man, I’ve got a feeling she’s been doing stuff behind your back. Bad stuff.”
That got Aaron’s attention.
He reached for his phone and made a single call.
Less than thirty minutes later, a flash drive arrived–every last thing Nancy had been up to, all neatly compiled.
Aaron took it with a blank face, but his grip was so tight his knuckles turned white.
The room went quiet. The guys understood the cue and quietly slipped out, leaving him
alone.
Aaron closed his eyes for a moment. Then he plugged in the flash drive and hit play. And as he watched, the truth cut deeper than any knife.
Nancy had faked the kidnapping–hired people to stage the whole thing–just to pin the blame on me.
The soup? There was never any iris petals in it.
And there it was: a clip of Nancy smirking at me before collapsing into a chair, pretending to be poisoned. The sight made Aaron squeeze his eyes shut, rage flaring in his chest.
He had no idea Nancy had done so much–right under his nose.
He’d thought I lashed out because he brought Nancy back, that I was insecure. He thought I was the problem.
But it had been Nancy all along.
He remembered the rose garden–how I had spent those final days popping allergy pills just to get through the pain.
And Nancy’s father? He wasn’t even sick. Another lie.
Aaron felt like an idiot. He’d handed his heart to a woman who used him like a pawn… and in the process, he’d destroyed the only woman he’d ever truly loved. Me.
He clenched his jaw, his eyes burning with fury.
If Nancy had been in front of him right then, he didn’t trust himself not to strangle her with
his bare hands.
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He grabbed his phone again.
347 –
“Bring her back to the estate,” he said. “Lock her in the old storage room. If she fights back… I don’t care what you do. Just keep her breathing.”
He hung up and stared at the flash drive in his hand, gripping it so hard it left deep marks in his palm.
Nancy had made her move. Now, it was his turn.
And she’d better be ready for the consequences.
