All Chapters of The Divorce He Never Expected: Chapter 1 - Chapter 9

"Vera!"Rushed footsteps came up behind me. Theo jogged the last few steps and stopped in front of me, a little out of breath. "What was that? You see me and you don't even say hello?"I looked him dead in the eye and didn't flinch."You didn't say hello to me either."He frowned. "I saw you. But Lydia was in trouble. You're a grown woman. I didn't need to stop and explain."So he had seen me.I smiled. There was something bitter on my tongue.When he saw me smile, his tone softened. "Lydia's blood sugar crashed. There was no way I could just leave her like that.""Leave her?" I said. "You've been looking after her for seven years. How much longer is this going to go on?""Vera, be reasonable.""Theo." I cut him off, keeping my voice as level as I could. "I'm going to lay it out plainly today. Either you keep your distance from her, or we get divorced."I took the agreement out of my bag, my fingers curling tight beneath the paper.Theo, I'm trying one last time.Just say yes. You can'

I sank into myself for two days, burying it all in work on purpose.But as a rising name in business, news of Theo still kept reaching me, cropping up everywhere I turned.He'd rented out an entire yacht for Lydia's birthday. He got into another brawl with her husband, stood beside her in court as a plaintiff again, and lost again when Lydia went soft.Round and round.I smiled. None of it surprised me.She was always like this, handing out hope, then disappointment, dragging everyone down with her by force.But this time, I wouldn't be one of them.When Amy pushed open my door, she was pale, her voice full of panic."Ms. Morgan. The company's internal email system.""What about it?"Confused, I opened my laptop.The second I logged in, a new email popped up.In the next instant, the image stabbed straight through my eyes. The email held only four or five photos, all of a woman in revealing clothes, in shameful poses.And every single one had my face.I stared at the screen, the blood

Walking down the street, Theo felt lost for the first time.Reason told him Lydia was in danger and he had to get to her right away.He'd promised Lydia's brother he would look after his sister.He owed the man his life, and he had a duty to her.But his mind kept circling back, against his will, to my pale face, to that spreading patch of red.Had he done something wrong?He didn't know."Where to?"Theo gave the address and climbed into a cab.The driver had a livestream going. An influencer had just finished some dance routine, and the screen went dark, but the mic stayed on.The sound poured brazenly into the back seat."Lyd, how'd the photo thing land?""Decent. Shame she only lost her job. Still not satisfying enough."Theo recognized the voice almost instantly.It was Lydia.He knew that voice far too well.For years after he graduated, she'd chased him obsessively, poured out her feelings to him, and called his name into the dark on nights when she was begging him to save her.

After I was discharged, I moved straight to a new place.I cashed out the money I'd had tied up in the market and put it into a real-estate project.The project was in a mid-sized city not far from New York. The scale was small, the upfront cost was manageable, and financing through a bank was relatively simple.One thing led to another, and it grew into something with real shape.After that I rented an office, hired fifteen, twenty people, and pulled a few familiar faces from my old company. The work fell into a steady rhythm.In all that time, I never saw Theo again.It wasn't that I was avoiding him. Everyone had their own lives to get on with. No one stays standing in the same spot forever.But news of him kept flowing to me anyway.Like how he'd stripped Lydia of her position and taken her to court for forgery and defamation.Lydia was sentenced, the term suspended.Or how he'd stepped in personally, joined forces with several companies to attack Ashford Group's stock, and driven