My Ex Left Me Penniless — Now I’m Married To The Man Who Ruined Him
Part 2
By dusk, I sent a single word via messenger to Brian’s estate: “Yes.”
The wedding was a spectral affair, taking place in a private chapel far from the prying eyes of London society.
There were no flowers, no joyous choruses, and absolutely no weeping mothers.
The vicar’s voice echoed hollowly against the cold stone walls as I stood there in a simple gown of dove-gray silk.
I swore to love, honor, and obey a man who stood beside me like a statue carved entirely from ice.
When Brian slipped the heavy sapphire onto my finger, his touch was brief and shockingly cold.
He did not kiss me.
He merely offered his arm, leading me out of the chapel and into my harsh new reality.
For the first three months of our marriage, I rarely saw my husband.
He took his breakfast at dawn, spent his days locked inside his vast library managing his empire, and joined me for dinner only twice a week.
Those dinners were grueling exercises in endurance.
We sat at opposite ends of a twenty-foot mahogany table, separated by silver candelabras and a suffocating, heavy quiet.
He provided everything I could possibly need—exquisite gowns, the finest jewels, a stable of gentle mares.
He gave me everything, except an ounce of human warmth.
My nights were the hardest part of this new existence.
We had separate bedchambers, connected by a heavy oak door that remained firmly locked from his side.
I would often lie awake in the dark, mourning the life I had lost and wondering what dark ghosts haunted the man I had married.
Sometimes, deep in the night, I thought I heard the rhythmic pacing of boots in the room next door, restless and endlessly troubled.
Everything shifted during a violent summer rainstorm that swept over the city, trapping me indoors while he was away.
Seeking a specific book, I ventured into his private study, a sanctuary I usually avoided at all costs.
As I searched the massive bookshelves, my sleeve caught the edge of a stack of correspondence on his cluttered desk.
Papers scattered across the Persian rug like fallen leaves.
As I knelt to gather them, a ledger bound in worn red leather caught my eye.
It had fallen open to a page filled with his sharp, slashing handwriting.
I knew I shouldn’t look, but a name inscribed on the page arrested my breath completely.
Tyler.
It was a private financial journal detailing transactions outside of the estate’s official accounts.
There, dated precisely four months before Tyler had broken our engagement, was a record of Brian purchasing his mounting gambling debts.
Dozens of notes from unsavory clubs, massive losses at the tables—Brian had bought them all to corner him.
I flipped the page and my heart stopped dead in my chest.
Brenda’s name was there too, accompanied by detailed notes on her social engagements.
My husband hadn’t merely stepped in to save me after I was ruined.
He had engineered the ruin of my engagement, pushing a desperate Tyler directly into the path of the wealthy heiress to shatter my heart.
If your own husband secretly engineered the worst betrayal of your life just to trap you, what would you do?
