Chapter 1

I stared at the three messages on my phone screen and froze in place. I didn't know who the sender was. The number was a string of digits that I'd never seen before.

"What are you looking at, Derek?"

My wife, Noelle Ramsey, suddenly popped up next to me and leaned over my screen, and I instinctively locked my phone.

Her expression shifted instantly. She yelled at me, "You're hiding things from me? It was a text message from some bitch begging for your attention, wasn't it?

"Are you not going to fire all the women in your office? Derek Weaver! You're cheating on me, aren't you? You betrayed me! I want a divorce!"

She suddenly flew into a rage as she screamed at me and flung the glass on my desk onto the floor.

Had this been in the past, I would have immediately pull her into my arms and soothed her down the moment she lost her temper because I'd get worried she'd hurt herself.

However, over the past few months, she had been losing her temper with me very often and breaking down in public because my job required me to interact with female coworkers.

But this time, I was done. Maybe it was because I was exhausted, or the three text messages from earlier did something to change my mind. I just stared at her losing her shit at me and said in a low voice, "I never betrayed you, but I'll agree to the divorce."

Noelle suddenly froze mid-tantrum and stared at me incredulously. Her lips quivered for a long time before she finally asked, "W-What did you just say?"

She had always been very possessive of me. After we first got married, I kept showing her how much I loved her through my actions just to put her mind at ease.

She loved spicy food, so I adjusted my usual diet to accommodate hers. She loved flowers, but I was allergic to them, so I would always pop some antihistamines before bringing her shopping for flowers every week.

And to provide her with a better life, I worked myself to the bone, building a company from a tiny ten-person studio into a massive tech firm with more than 300 employees now.

I also went out of my way to make sure I came into contact with as few female staff at the company as possible. Noelle even had to personally interview and approve every finance staff member and assistant that we hired.

However, for some reason, her possessiveness seemed to have gotten more and more out of hand lately. She escalated from simply checking my phone to monitoring my schedule and interrogating me about everyone I met.

She verbally abused the secretary who brought documents into my office, slapped a new intern, and even tried spreading rumors that some random pregnant employee was carrying my baby.

I kept questioning myself, wondering whether I'd really been doing such a terrible job as a husband, but it wasn't until I received those three messages that I finally realized she was just trying to destroy me under the guise of "loving" me.

I raised my head and repeated my words from earlier.

"Let's get a divorce, Noelle."