Part 2They Sold My Wife So I Destroyed Their Empire

Dinner was served shortly after. Margaret called us to the table, and Arthur Hughes emerged from his home office. He was sixty-one, a retired tenured professor who had parlayed his academic clout into a lucrative private tech-consulting firm. Eleanor had clearly inherited his stoic, unsmiling nature.

Arthur didn't bother greeting me. He just walked to the head of the table and sat down. Simon took the seat immediately to his right—the place of honor.

Margaret hovered over Simon, eagerly spooning roasted vegetables onto his plate. "Simon, we heard your post-doc research abroad was published in Nature. We are just so thrilled."

Simon offered a modest, polished smile. "Thank you, Margaret. Yes, it’s been a good year."

"So, are you back in the States for good?"

"I am. I’m planning to follow in Arthur's footsteps," Simon said smoothly. "I'll be taking a tenure-track position at the university."

Margaret clapped her hands together. "Oh, that is wonderful news! You and Ellie will be colleagues now. You must promise me you'll look out for her on campus."

Simon’s smile deepened into something that felt oddly intimate. "Don't worry, Margaret. I'll always take good care of Ellie."

Beside me, I felt Eleanor flinch. I glanced down and saw her gripping her silverware so tightly her knuckles were stark white.

Simon leaned back, lacing his fingers together, and looked down his nose at me. "So, Nathan. What exactly is it that you do?"

The clinking of silverware stopped. A heavy silence blanketed the room.

Before I could even open my mouth to answer, Margaret sighed loudly. "Oh, he runs some little video game start-up. There’s really no future in it."

Simon let out a soft, breathy chuckle. The corner of his mouth twitched upward in unmistakable disdain. He didn't say anything derogatory, but the silence that followed was designed to humiliate.

I looked at Arthur, waiting to see if the patriarch of the house would intervene or offer basic decency to his son-in-law. Arthur simply picked up his wine glass, took a slow sip, and looked right past me.

For the rest of the evening, I ceased to exist. The dinner morphed into an exclusive, three-person country club where they discussed academic politics and high-level consulting.

I sat there quietly, eating my food. Margaret was actually a phenomenal cook, but every bite I swallowed felt like ash. It was the most agonizing meal of my life.

The car ride home was suffocating. Eleanor sat in the passenger seat, completely mute, staring out the window into the dark blur of the city.

When I finally pulled into our garage and killed the engine, neither of us moved.

"Eleanor," I said quietly, the exhaustion seeping into my bones. "Don't you think you should say something? We’re married. I don't want there to be secrets between us."

She turned her head slowly, her expression completely blank. "Say what? There’s nothing to talk about."

She unbuckled her seatbelt, opened the door, and walked into the house without looking back.

I slumped against the leather seat, pulling a cigarette from the center console and lighting it. The smoke filled my lungs, but it couldn't touch the heavy, suffocating weight in my chest.

Locked out on my wedding night. And on day two, a golden-boy "senior brother" suddenly materializes out of nowhere, and my wife looks terrified of him.

Maybe rushing into this marriage had been a massive, irreversible mistake.