Part 3He Rotted Waiting For You

I found out about the affair when I was three months pregnant with Jade. It was a difficult pregnancy; my stomach was a roadmap of bruises and needle marks from the hormone shots.

Xavier walked in on me one night while I was changing. He looked at my bruised, swollen skin and actually recoiled. He made a face of pure disgust.

"Kat, you’re honestly repulsive," he’d said.

He stopped coming home after that. I spent my entire pregnancy in a cold, quiet house. The day I went into labor, the headlines in New York were splashed with photos of him at a gala with a "young, mysterious muse."

After the birth, I tried to leave. I wanted a divorce, a clean break. But Xavier knew exactly how to hurt me. He knew my daughter was the only thing I had left.

"You can divorce me," he’d told me, eyes cold as ice. "But you’ll leave the kid. Do you really think the courts will give a 'depressed, unstable' mother custody against a man with my resources?"

He didn't care about Jade. He just cared about his image. "Keep your mouth shut, play the part of the happy wife, and you get to keep your daughter. If you ever harass Hailey, I’ll make sure you never see the girl again."

So, I checked out. For years, I treated him like he was already dead.

Maybe it was karma that his brain turned against him. He was diagnosed with stage four glioblastoma and spent his final months wasting away.

When his family came to visit him in the hospital, I played the grieving saint. The moment they left, I had the nurses wheel his bed into the hallway next to the public restrooms. He couldn't speak, couldn't complain. To the world, I was the devoted wife. To him, I was the last thing he’d ever see—a woman who no longer felt anything for him.

Before he died, he had one final "spark" of life. He’d crawled out of bed and somehow made it to that suburban house, hoping to find Hailey. But she’d vanished the moment the money stopped flowing.

He died in that house, crying for her. His last words were a plea for me to "give her everything" if she ever returned.

I smiled at him as the light left his eyes. In his blurry vision, I’m sure I looked like I was weeping.

"I’ll make sure you’re together forever," I’d promised.

And I kept that promise. I let him stay right there, in their "love nest," waiting for his queen.

As for the money? I’d moved every cent of the Ronald fortune into offshore accounts and trust funds for Jade years ago.

He died in the morning. By that afternoon, I was on a private jet to Europe, tasting salt and freedom for the first time in a decade.