7 Chapter 7
A few months later, my lawyer contacted me to say that Ryan had been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. 1
I turned to leave. Behind me, Ryan screamed, “Don’t leave me! Lidia, please! I’m begging you! Don’t divorce me, I don’t want to be alone!”
That monster didn’t deserve to be buried with his parents.
Afterward, she tried to squeeze money out of him. Ryan, lost in despair and rage, got drunk and ran her over with his car.
The lawyer hesitated. “According to regulations, he’s allowed one final visitor. He named you.”
I had loving parents and a career of my own. My life before him had been happy and full. Why had I ever thrown that all away for one man?
“She deserved it!” Ryan roared. “She killed my parents! It’s her fault I’m in here, her fault I’ve become this!”
In the end, after much persuasion, I reluctantly went to the prison.
I laughed. “I’m not going. He has nothing to do with me anymore.”
I had my money, my time, and a world to see. I was finally, gloriously free.
I took a deep breath and deleted every last trace of Ryan from my phone.
Their love was a warm balm on my soul. I regretted the foolish decision I’d made to marry Ryan in the first place.
My parents didn’t blame me for the divorce.
“Well, that’s convenient. Saves us the trouble of a court battle for the divorce,” I said
cheerfully, watching the sunset over the Aegean Sea.
I was named the executor of his will.
I turned and gave her a brilliant smile. “Anywhere we want.”
That day, she had deliberately delayed telling Ryan about the hospital’s urgent call,
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causing him to miss the critical treatment window.
Behind me, my secretary asked, “Boss, where to next?”
She had only wanted to embarrass me. She never thought things would spiral so far out of control.
“Miss Carter, the suspect is asking for you by name. He’s threatening suicide if you refuse to see him.”
“I’m sorry,” I said lazily to the officer on the line, “but what does that have to do with
me?”
Six months later, I received news of Ryan’s suicide in prison. In his will, he requested to be buried with his parents in the cemetery just outside the city.
I glanced back once as the guards dragged him away. Watching his retreating figure, I felt nothing.
I nodded, my face impassive, as I looked at the lunatic before me. It was hard to believe he had been a glamorous, wealthy heir just a few days ago. “So? You’re telling me all this because you want my pity?”
They only cared about whether Ryan had mistreated me all those years.
Ryan had only married me out of a sense of obligation. When Madison came back, she was consumed by jealousy.
“My life is just beginning,” I told my parents. “I’m never living for anyone but myself again.”
Men, marriage, love–to hell with them all.
I raised an eyebrow. “And that’s my problem… how, exactly?”
The world was vast and brilliant, and I had once foolishly tried to shrink it down to the size of a single man.
I tore the document into shreds and burned them.
Standing on a peak in the Alps, racing across the plains of Africa, I finally realized how foolish I had been.
Ryan stared at me through the glass, his eyes bloodshot. He had been crying since the
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moment he saw me. He was like a madman, repeating over and over, “I’m sorry, please don’t leave me.”
I let out a cold laugh. “You did this to yourself. You deserve every bit of it.”
I handed the operations of my company over to my assistant and secretary and set off to travel the world.
That’s when I learned the whole truth.
I looked him over coldly. “Was it Madison you killed?”
After settling everything, I went home to rest for a few days.
A few days later, I got a call. Ryan had killed someone while driving drunk and was being held in the state penitentiary.
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