CHAPTER 4

Clarence’s POV.

"Damon, you are joking. Aren't you?" I laughed nervously, trying not to accept those words that came out of his lips.

"Do I look like I will ever joke with you?" he asked in irritation, sending shivers down my spine.

"Why, Damon? It's been just three years since we got married. I had been nothing but good to you, and you have been the one who kept on hurting me, and I forgave you for everything. Why do you want a divorce?" I questioned him, trying to put the pieces together.

But then I remembered Gina and my heart ached. She must be the one who instigated this. She was back, and getting Damon to divorce me was what she had always wanted. She knew that according to the principles of my family, if my marriage with Damon ended, I would lose everything including my position as the heiress and be tossed aside because none of us was allowed to fail in our marriage, in order not to taint the perfect, successful marriages of my family's history.

"No, I can't accept this, Damon. I will be losing everything: my inheritance, my house, my money, and the chance to walk again. How do I pay for my surgery?" I asked him.

"Do I look like I care, Clarence? If you want to walk again, you have to make that happen, or just accept your fate and forget about it. I will be generous enough to make sure you are taken care of in an old people's home," he replied.

"You cannot do this to me, Damon. My family won't accept this. They would never allow you to divorce me," I said nervously with some confidence.

"You think they won't accept that, right? What if we take it to court and I state my reasons?” He pointed out.

“You can't perform your bedroom duties, you can't give birth to any child for me, you cannot cook for me to eat, and worse, you cannot even do my tie. Peck me goodbye and welcome home when I return from work just like other wives do,” he said and I thought it was over but he went on.

“You cannot rush towards me at the sound of my car to welcome me, and I cannot even lift you up to the kitchen counter sometimes and be intimate with you,” he let out with so much anger and frustration which I could feel in his countenance.

“My life is boring with you, Clarence... you should pity me enough to be the one who should have initiated this divorce a long time ago. Ain't you guilty of keeping me trapped in this? Don't you wish for my happiness? Do you want me to die without an heir? It's been three years of this hell for me, I am no longer accepting it," he declared.

My eyes became filled with tears as he went on and on, reminding me of everything I wished I could do for him as my husband and that was all he had ever done in our three years together, to keep on reminding me of my weaknesses.

“Damon please,” I burst into tears.

"But we have a chance at all this. With my surgery, I am going to walk again and you can do all you want with me. I will carry our baby or we can go the surrogacy way. Please have a rethink, don't do this to me," I begged.

"No, Clearance. I don't love you, and I won't ever do that. Don't think you can snatch the chance I have to reunite with Gina. I have made my decision and it's final. Start preparing to move out by tomorrow and prepare to sign the divorce papers immediately when I'm done showering," he said coldly, shutting the door of the bathroom.

I slid under my bed sheets as a sob escaped my lips. My life was going the way I hadn't dreamed it would go in a long time, and I didn't know what to do to stop it.

I wasn't begging Damon to change his mind because I was in love with him; it was because I was trying to save my inheritance, the one my mother had worked hard to build alongside my father until the day she passed away. It had been the reason I agreed to marry Damon and had remained in the marriage, bearing everything he threw at me.

If I ever thought of opting out, Gina would take over, and that's what I was seeing happening now – what I had been careful enough to endure anything for, so it wouldn't happen.

"Oh my God! What am I going to do now?" I sighed in desperation.

My father passed away last year, and my stepmother, who wanted my place for her daughter, wouldn't even listen to me.

I thought about calling Damon's parents, who were the only ones who could talk him out of his decision, but then I remembered they never liked me. They had seen me as an obstacle to their son's life and couldn't imagine a man of capability like himself agreeing to settle for me, but it had been business, and that's why they were forced to accept.

"You have to do something, Clearance. This cannot happen. You will be disowned and pushed out of your father's house. Mom made sure she made you swear to her that you won't allow anyone to take what she had worked and dedicated all her life to, why would you watch them want to snatch it away?" I said to myself.

I remembered my mom had asked me to meet her lawyer when any emergency occurred, and he would have the solution to whatever my problem would be.

This made me sigh in relief.

I knew I had to do something fast; I had to leave before Damon was done. I dragged off the bed sheets I had used to cover myself and searched around for my phone. When I found it, I contacted my mother's lawyer.

"Let's hold a meeting in an hour," I said to him and ended the call.

Then I took a deep breath and pressed the alert button beside the bed to notify a maid to come into my room. After a few seconds, a maid came inside and stopped when she got to the foot of the bed.

"Help me get dressed, I have to leave right now," I said to her, and she obediently nodded and headed to the wardrobe to bring me a dress. She helped me fit into it and helped me into my wheelchair. I asked her to take me down after calling my driver.

Just as we had gotten to the door to leave, Damon emerged from the bathroom wearing only his pants and grabbed the maid. He pushed her out of the room and shut the door.

"Not so fast, Clearance," he snickered.

He dragged me recklessly from the door to the balcony of our master's bedroom and pressed a button which lowered the balcony guide into the floor, exposing me. I was almost hanging in the open.

He used his left hand to tightly hold onto my wheelchair, making sure one of its wheels was hanging out of the balcony, while he presented the divorce papers he retrieved from his pocket to me with his other hand.

We were on the fifth floor, and I was already shaking. In my wildest imagination, I never expected that Damon would go about hanging my life in a thread like this just to have me agree to divorce him.

He chuckled as his eyes glittered with amusement, enjoying how I was sweating profusely in fear.

"I suspected that you're going to call your mother's lawyer, but you know I'm smart enough not to let that happen. I will make sure you sign these divorce papers and you won't leave this marriage with even a dime.”

“So the option you have left right now is to sign the divorce papers or join your parents on the other side?