Chapter 3

I continued, "You also think that your guilt and responsibility are far more important than our marriage."

Ariel pursed her lips and didn't speak for a long time. Finally, she said, "I never… Matt, you're very important to me. You're my husband—"

"This isn't how you treat a husband," I said quietly. "A husband shouldn't always be the first one expected to make sacrifices whenever you feel like it. He shouldn't always be the one forced to be understanding and magnanimous whenever something comes up."

Ariel wanted to respond, but her phone rang at that moment, cutting her off. She saw that it was a call from Gianna's homeroom teacher, Agnes Rhodes, and she subconsciously glanced at me.

"Answer it," I said.

She didn't move and just let it ring. The people around us began giving us impatient, irritated looks. Finally, she gritted her teeth and answered the call, lowering her voice as much as possible.

"Ms. Rhodes, I'm at the hospital—"

"Ms. Meyers! I'm so sorry, but Gianna ran out of school just now and disappeared!"

Agnes sounded anxious and panicked. "The guards said that they saw her running across the street, and we've been searching for her everywhere. Can you please come over as quickly as possible?

"Gianna's mental state hasn't been well lately, and we're worried that something terrible might have happened to her—"

Ariel straightened her back at once.

I lowered my head and gripped the hem of my shirt so tightly that my knuckles turned white.

She said, "Matt, I…"

A lump formed in her throat.

I simply said, "Go. Gianna needs you."

Ariel closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened her eyes again, they were dark and broody.

"I'll be right there, Ms. Rhodes," she said into the phone before hanging up.

She stepped toward me, intending to hug me, but froze halfway and slowly lowered her arms.

"Go home and rest for the time being. I'll be home once I've settled this," she said quickly, her voice restrained. "We need to have a proper talk tonight. Wait for me, alright?"

I didn't answer her.

She stood there for a few more seconds and gave me one final glance before turning to leave. Her footsteps hurried off until she disappeared out the hospital doors.

I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes.

I wasn't going to wait for her anymore.

It was late afternoon by the time I finally recovered enough strength to leave the hospital. The sun was a little blinding when I stepped outside, and I squinted as I waited by the roadside for my Uber.

A group of people came out of the hospital just then. They kept sneaking glances at me while murmuring among themselves in hushed voices.

I could make out a few words such as "That's him", "He's the homewrecker", and "I feel so bad for Isaac". I just lowered my head and took out my phone.

I barely had to search before seeing my face plastered across the top trending news stories of the day.

The headline was glaring.

"Police Officer's Marriage on the Rocks. New Lover Allegedly Swooped In While Husband Was Sick."

I tapped on the news article and saw a video clip from a few days ago, showing the moment Isaac bumped into me while he was at the hospital for a check-up.

There was also an audio recording of an interview with him. His voice sounded pained, yet his logic was clear. "I only agreed to divorce Ariel because I was sick and didn't want to be a burden to her. But she promised me that she would wait for me to get better.

"As for Mr. Tanner, he was one of the hostages she rescued during a bank heist back in the day. I knew about it, of course, and I even met up with him to offer some words of comfort… But I never thought that he would…"

Hundreds of thousands of comments appeared under the news article.

"That Tanner guy knew he was a homewrecker and still went on with it! I hope he's happy now that he's driven Isaac crazy! Some people really are shameless, stopping at nothing to get what they want these days!"

"I knew it! Men can be homewreckers too! They're just as shameless!"

"I heard that Officer Meyers was the one who helped the Tanner guy pull strings to arrange for his father's surgery. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you."

"I feel so bad for Isaac. He fell ill and got his wife snatched away, and his daughter is still so young…"

I had only just turned off my phone when an old beat-up van suddenly screeched to a halt right in front of me. The door was thrown open, and before I even knew what had happened, someone reached out and yanked me straight into the van and clamped a sweet-smelling towel over my nose and mouth.

I struggled at first, but soon stopped fighting as my vision went black.

When I regained consciousness, I heard a child screaming loudly beside me, and I struggled to open my eyes.

I realized that I was now lying on the floor of an abandoned warehouse. My arms were tied up behind my back, and my mouth was also taped shut with duct tape.