Introduction

The music was thumping, a forced celebration for our third wedding anniversary, but all I wanted was to give Olivia the velvet box in my pocket.

Instead, I pushed through the crowd to find her, radiant, but not looking at me – she was looking at Liam Hayes, her childhood best friend. Then, Liam dropped to one knee, holding a diamond ring, and asked my wife to marry him.

My blood ran cold as her friends cheered, chanting, "Say yes!" and Olivia giggled, touching his face without a word of protest. When I finally confronted them, Liam mocked me, and Olivia dismissed it as "just a game."

Before I could react, Liam feigned an ankle injury, and Olivia, with an ugly scowl I' d never seen before, pushed me away, shouting that I' d ruined her party. I stumbled, my feet tangled, and the world tilted.

I woke up at the bottom of the stairs, my leg screaming, the house silent. My wife, on our anniversary, had left me there, bleeding and broken, to care for a man who faked an injury.

At the hospital, Liam intercepted the paramedics' call, claiming I was drunk and Olivia was too busy caring for his "bad ankle." Then Olivia called, not to check on me, but to accuse me of pulling a "stunt" for attention, and demanding I apologize to Liam.

The doctor' s grim prognosis-a tibia fractured in two places, a permanent limp-crushed me. But the real blow was realizing Olivia had been actively preventing a pregnancy for a year, all while pretending to dream of a family with me. How could I have been so blind? How could the woman who once called me her hero leave me to bleed?

Lying in that sterile hospital bed, ignored and abandoned, a cold, unwavering certainty settled within me: it was over. I couldn't do this anymore. I would cut every tie, sever every connection, and rebuild my life, far away from the wreckage of our marriage.