I walked through the door of our cramped apartment, letting it slam behind me. The sound echoed through the tiny space like a gunshot.
Our home. What a joke.
The place looked exactly the same as when I'd left this morning. Chloe's designer handbags scattered on the cheap IKEA table. Dirty dishes piled in the sink that she never bothered to wash. The smell of her expensive perfume hanging in the air like a bitter reminder.
Three years of this. Three years of pretending to be grateful for scraps.
I headed straight to the bedroom and pulled my old suitcase from under the bed. The zipper stuck, just like everything else in this place. Cheap. Broken. Temporary.
Unlike the billions waiting for me.
"Noah?" Chloe's voice came from the living room. "Is that you?"
I didn't answer. I started throwing clothes into the suitcase. Everything I owned fit into one bag. Everything that mattered, anyway.
Her heels clicked against the hardwood floor as she approached. "I brought Chinese takeout. Your favorite."
I almost laughed. My favorite. She had no idea what my favorite anything was.
"We need to talk," she said from the doorway.
"No." I kept packing. "We really don't."
"Noah, stop this." Her voice carried that familiar edge of irritation. "You're being dramatic."
Dramatic. That's what she called catching her with another man.
I turned to face her. She stood there holding plastic bags of cheap food, still wearing the same clothes she'd had on at the hotel. Did she think I was stupid?
"Three years, Chloe."
"What?"
"Three years I've lived in this apartment. Three years I've listened to your family call me worthless. Three years I've pretended their insults didn't matter."
She set the food down on the dresser. "Nobody called you worthless."
"Your father called me a parasite. Last Christmas, remember? Right in front of everyone."
Her face flushed. "He was drunk."
"Your mother said I was dragging down the family name. Your brother said you married beneath yourself." I zipped the suitcase closed. "Were they drunk too?"
"That's different. They were just—"
"Just what? Just telling the truth?" I hefted the bag off the bed. "Just saying what you were all thinking?"
She stepped in front of the door. "Where are you going?"
"Away from here. Away from you."
"Don't be ridiculous." She crossed her arms. "You can't just leave. We're married."
"Are we?" I stared at her. "Because married people don't usually fuck other men in hotel rooms."
Her face went white. Then red. Then cold as stone.
"That was a mistake."
"A mistake." I nodded slowly. "Which part? Getting caught, or cheating on your husband?"
"It didn't mean anything, Noah. Ethan is just—"
"Just what? Rich? Successful? Everything I'm not?"
She didn't deny it. That told me everything.
"Look," she said, her voice turning practical. "What happened today was unfortunate. But we can work through this. Couples have problems all the time."
"Problems." I set the suitcase down. "You think this is a problem we can solve with takeout and apologies?"
"I think you're overreacting to a trivial matter."
Trivial matter.
Those two words shattered whatever restraint I had left.
"Trivial?" My voice rose. "Your affair is trivial?"
"Keep your voice down. The neighbors—"
"Fuck the neighbors!" I exploded. "And fuck you for thinking I'm stupid enough to call adultery trivial!"
She took a step back. In three years, she'd never seen me lose control.
"You want to know what's not trivial, Chloe? Three years of your family treating me like garbage. Three years of you standing there and letting them do it."
"They never—"
"Your grandmother called me a gold digger at our wedding reception. You laughed."
Her mouth opened. Nothing came out.
"Your cousin said I was probably cheating because no real man could handle being kept by a woman. You nodded."
"I was just—"
"Just what? Just agreeing with them?" I stepped closer. "Just letting them destroy my dignity piece by piece while you watched?"
Tears started forming in her eyes. Crocodile tears.
"Noah, please. I never meant—"
"You never meant what? To make me feel worthless? To let your family humiliate me at every family dinner? To fuck another man behind my back?"
"It wasn't like that!"
"Then what was it like, Chloe? Explain it to me. Make me understand how screwing Ethan Pierce was anything other than exactly what it looked like."
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "You don't understand the pressure I'm under."
"Pressure?"
"My parents expect certain things. The family has standards."
"Standards I don't meet."
"That's not what I said."
"But it's what you meant." I picked up my suitcase again. "Well, congratulations. You don't have to be embarrassed by your loser husband anymore."
"What are you talking about?"
"I want a divorce."
The words hung in the air like smoke. She stared at me as if I'd spoken a foreign language.
"A divorce?"
"You heard me."
"You can't be serious."
"Dead serious."
She laughed. Actually laughed. "Noah, do you have any idea what you're saying? Do you know what happens to you without me?"
"Enlighten me."
"You have nothing. No money. No job prospects. No education worth mentioning." She gestured around the apartment. "This place? It's in my name. My family pays the rent."
"I know."
"You work for a food delivery service. You make minimum wage plus tips." Her voice turned cruel. "Without my family's connections, you'd be living on the street."
"Would I?"
"You'd come crawling back within a week, begging me to take you back."
I almost smiled. If she only knew.
"Is that what you think?"
"It's what I know." She stepped closer, confident now. In control. "You need me, Noah. You've always needed me. Where are you going to go? What are you going to do?"
"I'll figure it out."
"With what money? Your savings account has maybe three hundred dollars in it."
She was right about that. The money Noah Lancaster the delivery driver had saved wouldn't last a week. But the money Noah Lancaster the Steele family heir had access to? That would last several lifetimes.
"Money isn't everything, Chloe."
"Says the man who's never had any." She sat down on the bed. "Look, I get it. You're hurt. You're angry. But running away isn't going to solve anything."
"I'm not running away. I'm walking away. There's a difference."
"Is there?" She tilted her head. "Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like you're giving up. Quitting. Just like you always do when things get difficult."
"When have I ever quit on you?"
"You quit your job at the warehouse. You quit night school. You quit—"
"I quit those things for you!" The words exploded out of me. "You said the warehouse job was embarrassing. You said night school was taking time away from our marriage."
"I never said—"
"You said everything, Chloe. Maybe not with words, but with every look, every sigh, every disappointed expression when I came home."
She went quiet. Good. Maybe some truth was finally sinking in.
"I want a divorce," I repeated. "We can do this easy or hard. Your choice."
"And if I say no?"
"Then we do it hard."
She stood up, smoothing her skirt. Back to business mode.
"Fine. If that's what you really want, I won't fight you."
"Good."
"But I can't do it tomorrow. My grandmother's 80th birthday party is this weekend. The whole family will be there."
Of course. Another Bennett family event where they could parade their disappointment of a son-in-law around for everyone to see.
"Handle it however you want. Just make it happen."
"I will." She picked up the Chinese food. "But Noah?"
"What?"
"When you're living in some studio apartment in Queens, eating ramen noodles and wondering how you're going to make rent, remember this moment."
"I'll remember."
"Remember that you chose to leave a good thing. That you threw away a family who cared about you."
"Cared about me?" I opened the bedroom door. "Your family hated me from day one."
"They would have come around eventually."
"No, they wouldn't. And neither would you."
I walked toward the front door. She followed me.
"You'll regret this, Noah. Mark my words. You'll come crawling back, begging me to forgive you."
I stopped at the door and looked back at her one last time. Beautiful, cold, and completely convinced of her own superiority.
"Why would a tycoon with a net worth of more than a hundred billion kneel to someone from a family who were merely multi-millionaires?"
The words slipped out before I could stop them.
She blinked. "What did you say?"
"Nothing." I opened the door. "Discuss the divorce with your family. Call me when the papers are ready."
"Noah, wait. What did you mean about—"
I closed the door behind me and walked away from the biggest mistake of my life.
Behind me, I could hear her shouting through the door.
"You'll be back! You hear me? You'll be back!"
I kept walking. Three years of pretending to be someone I wasn't were finally over.
Time to show the world who Noah Lancaster really was.