Husband Fled with First Love, I Saved World with Medical Expertise Chapter 08
Forty-eight days in, the countdown to the grand reopening finally began.
The news said full transportation would resume Monday, with international flight corridors already flickering back to life.
Adrian’s calls went from once every two days to twice a day.
He still wasn’t calling me. He was calling his mother.
But every conversation was about me.
“Has she been talking to a lawyer?”
“Did she go back to work at the institute?”
“How’s she doing? Has she said anything about getting back together?”
Evelyn always gave him the same answer. “You’ll have to ask her yourself. She doesn’t tell me anything.”
It was the first time she had ever admitted to her son that she’d lost her grip on me.
She was scared now.
Not of me.
Of the documents in my hand that she still refused to look at.
What Daniel had done for me went beyond simple discovery.
Through his firm, he also pulled Adrian’s overseas spending records for the past six months.
It took some legal maneuvering, but it was entirely aboveboard.
We were still married, and I was entitled to audit every cent spent on the authorized user card linked to our joint line of credit.
The statement ran three full pages when printed.
The biggest charge was the rent for a single-family home in the Port Kensington suburbs — twenty-five hundred USD a month.
Next came a jewelry store. Two separate purchases: three thousand here, five thousand there.
Then there were charges from a furniture store, an appliance retailer, and a pet shop.
A pet shop.
They had a cat.
I stared at the line reading PetCentral — $380 until the letters blurred.
In five years of marriage, I’d told Adrian more than once that I wanted a cat.
He said he was allergic.
I believed him.
For five years, I believed him.
That afternoon, when I got home from the institute, I did something I should have done a long time ago.
I moved Evelyn’s things out of the primary bedroom and into the guest room.
Then I gathered the last of Adrian’s things — the stray shirts, the old coats — and boxed them up for the dark corners of the storage unit.
Evelyn watched me move everything.
She didn’t stop me.
She stood in the hallway with one hand braced against the wall, her lips trembling once or twice.
Then she turned and retreated into the guest wing like a defeated shadow.
That night, I slept in the middle of the master bed, reclaiming the space that was rightfully mine.
Our wedding photo was still sitting on the nightstand.
I turned the frame facedown.
I didn’t throw it away.
He could take it himself when he came back.
Later, Daniel sent over the final settlement breakdown and strategy memo.
First: challenge the below-market transfer of the retail property and recover the $116,000 gap.
Second: Reclaim the sixty-two thousand drained from the joint fund.
Third: Press felony charges for the forged mortgage signature.
Fourth: File for divorce on grounds of adultery and seek a disproportionate asset split.
Fifth: the apartment stays mine; the remaining debt stays with him.
I read every line.
At the end, Daniel added one sentence:
Claire, this is enough evidence. But if you go through with legal action, you need to be prepared. His career and his credit will almost certainly be destroyed.
I thought about it for three seconds.
Then I replied with two words: [File it.]
When he abandoned me, did he give it even three seconds?