Unforgiven: Divorcing the Tech Tycoon

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Who dances better, your wife or me?

The young girl in the tiny slip dresswho looked eerily like a younger version of medraped herself aggressively around my husband's neck. She leaned right against his ear, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness.

Nathaniel let out a cold scoff. He didn't even bother hiding his disdain.

"You think you're even in the same league as her?"

But a split second later, the video showed him grabbing her as she faked a stumble.

He yanked her flush against his chest, dipping his head down to smash his lips against hers.

The wet, heavy sound of kissing echoed, followed by muffled, breathless gasps.

The audio blasted from the phone speaker, drilling straight into my eardrums.

I stood frozen, my fingernails digging so hard into my palms that the skin turned a bloodless white.

It was the cold, hard truth. Men really could draw a hard line between love and sex.

Chapter 1

Nathaniel was cheating on me.

On Valentine's Day, he claimed he had an important conference in Silicon Valley. Instead, he was on a date at the city's most impossible-to-book Michelin-starred restaurant. Unfortunately for him, my friend caught them on camera and sent me the video.

"Look at her, hanging onto your husband like a literal toddler."

The restaurant lighting was dim, and the video only showed their backs. But I could still clearly make out the girl's snatched waist and high ponytail. From behind, she looked exactly like a younger version of me.

The difference was, I was always quiet and composed. That girl? She was bouncing on her toes, clinging to his arm like an overactive bunny.

In the clip, Nathaniel kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, giving her faint nods whenever she spoke.

But the second her heel slipped on the edge of the decorative water feature, he reacted like his radar had been locked on her the entire time. He snatched her waist, yanking her flush against his side.

The movement forced him to turn around. He stared at her, parting his lips, though no words came out.

A half-second later, a helpless, indulgent smile broke across the face I had mapped out a thousand times in my dreams. It was a look that screamed: You're an idiot, but since it's you, I'll let it slide.

I knew that exact smile. Years ago, when he used to help me with my impossible math homework, he would look at me with that exact same sickeningly sweet adoration.

My stomach plummeted as a memory from a month ago flashed in my brain. I had just gotten back from a business trip to New York. Right there, next to the expensive perfumes on the bathroom vanity, I found a single strand of long blonde hair.

It wasn't mine. It was tucked away in a blind spot only another woman marking her territory would notice. A whole month ago, this nameless girl and I had already established a twisted, silent understanding.

I saw exactly what she left for me to see. And she knew damn well Id find it.

My fingertips trembled. A second later, that glaring strand of blonde hair was washed down the drain by the running water.

That was the first night I secretly unlocked Nathaniel's phone. I didn't find anything incriminating. When I placed it back on the nightstand, a bitter taste flooded my mouth for even doubting him. But staring at this video now, the source of that creeping anxiety finally clicked.

Nathaniel hadn't smiled at me like that in a very, very long time.

A heavy weight clamped down on my chest, making it impossible to draw a full breath. My sleep that night was a fragmented mess of fever dreams.

In my nightmares, Nathaniel held hands with a young girl, their backs retreating further and further away. I ran until my lungs burned, screaming at him, demanding to know why he loved someone else.

He just stood there, absorbing my breakdown, before glaring at me with dead eyes. "Enough, Juliet. You're thirty years old. Stop throwing pathetic tantrums like a child."

The brutal words twisted like a rusty knife in my ribs.

I gasped, jolting awake in a cold sweat.

Pale moonlight spilled across the mattress. The bed next to me was dipped under a heavy weight. Nathaniel had come home at some point. He was still fast asleep, but sensing my movement, he instinctively reached over and tucked the duvet securely around my shoulders.

That muscle-memory gesture made my throat tighten. Was the man who just pulled another woman into his arms in that video really the same guy lying next to me?

Whenever we went out, he automatically took my purse. At any new restaurant, he ordered my exact cravings without me having to speak a word. Every time my cramps hit, he already had a hot water bottle and Advil waiting on my nightstand.

I once asked him why he treated me so perfectly. Nathaniel had simply ruffled my hair, his eyes soft. "I can't help it. Loving you is just baked into my DNA."

Chapter 2

Over the years, he constantly promised me the worldpenthouses, sports cars, diamonds. Yet, looking back, every single moment of actual happiness had absolutely nothing to do with his bank account.

A hot tear slipped down my cheek, soaking into the pillowcase.

In the dead of night, Nathaniels heavy limbs draped over me, pulling me flush against his chest. But the second his lips brushed my cheek in his sleep, he met that freezing wetness.

He jolted awake. His brows pulled together in the dim light.

"Hey. What's wrong? Nightmare?"

I stared at him, my chin trembling as I forced a nod. "I dreamed you fell in love with someone else. That you threw me away."

A micro-expression twitched in Nathaniels dark eyes. A sharp stutter in his gaze that he quickly masked.

Right after high school graduation, my mom passed away. Within a single month, my dad remarried and suddenly introduced a half-brother I never knew existed. My new stepmom refused to pay a single dime toward my tuition, and since my dad looked wealthy on paper, I didn't qualify for a single federal loan.

It was Nathaniel who swallowed his own pride, sacrificing four years of his life just to put me through college.

While I was practicing in a warm, brightly-lit, high-end dance studio, he was shivering in a freezing, unheated basement. He would wrap himself in a ratty, secondhand blanket, pulling brutal all-nighters just to write code.

I made a silent bargain with God: Just let him tell the truth right now, and Ill bury it. Ill pretend the video never existed.

But nothing came. Absolute dead silence.

After that split-second hesitation, Nathaniel settled back against the mattress and yanked me flush against his chest. "Stop overthinking, baby. Go to sleep."

His tone was eerily smooth, identical to his everyday voice. But his arm banded around my waist with a crushing, suffocating grip. He held me so tight it felt like he was trying to crack my ribs and fuse my body directly into his.

Every nerve in my body screamed to shove a finger hard into his sternum and demand to know what the hell he was feeling so guilty about.

Instead, the words died in my throat. I just let out a numb, muffled, "Mmhmm."

Nathaniel actually believed he was a master of deception. He severely underestimated how terrifying a woman's intuition could be.

Occasionally, I'd catch the faint, sickly-sweet stench of cheap drugstore shampoo clinging to his collar. A week later, I caught him sitting in his Porsche, frantically shoving a burner phone into the glove compartment.

He was so incredibly arrogant, so certain I was clueless, that he didn't even bother scrubbing the text history.

I scrolled through the screen, my eyes locking onto a specific thread.

The contact was saved under a sickeningly cute nickname: Baby Stella. She had sent a meme of a cartoon girl raising her hand. "Hey mister, do you know the rule about buying a girl her first Pumpkin Spice Latte of the season?"

Nathaniel didn't type a single word in response. He just sent her an $800 Apple Pay transfer.

She declined it.

Half an hour later, Nathaniel sent a single question mark, followed by a photo of a loaded Starbucks delivery bag sitting on his office desk.

This time, Stella replied instantly: "They say whoever buys the first fall coffee is the one whos more in love. And there is absolutely, definitely no way you love me more than I love you! So obviously, I had to be the one to treat you!"

Nathaniel never replied to that message. Whether her raw, naive devotion made his heart skip a beat, I had no idea.

My face remained entirely blank. I took precise screenshots of the entire thread, AirDropped the files to my own phone, and meticulously wiped my digital footprint from the device before tossing it back into the glove compartment.

In Nathaniel's eyes, I was probably incredibly stupid.

Back in our high school days, I used to trail behind him like a lost puppy, bombarding him with endless questions. Half the time, I genuinely didn't understand the homework. The other half, I just hated seeing him so closed off and made up excuses just to hear his voice.

After a while, whenever he caught me hovering, he would curl his long fingers and flick me lightly on the forehead. "I literally just explained this equation to you an hour ago. Do you have the memory of a goldfish?"

I would rub my forehead, grinning shamelessly. "Hey, not everyone is a tech prodigy like you. Some of us actually have to study."

Even years later, as we stood outside City Hall holding our marriage certificate, he had pulled me in by the waist and murmured, "Juliet, I've met brilliant women my entire life. How the hell did I end up completely ruined by you?"

He was right. I wasn't brilliant.

Even now, staring at the complex microchips and chaotic circuit boards scattered across his home office desk, it all looked like an alien language. When he went on tangents about 3D spatial processors, my eyes still glazed over.

But I knew exactly what it looked like when this man loved me with his entire soul.

So, when that love finally began to rot and fracture, I felt the shift in his tectonic plates before anyone else did.

And yet, whenever he dragged me out shopping, Nathaniel maintained his flawless, patient facade. The almighty CEO of his tech empirea man who had venture capitalists kissing his boots everywhere he walkedwould still drop to one knee in the middle of a high-end boutique, unbothered by the stares, just to strap a designer heel onto my foot.

Chapter 3

I stood in front of the full-length mirror, listening to him tell the SA to wrap up everything I had just tried on.

He had always been generous with me, but he rarely threw money around with such blatant, overcompensating desperation. Watching this uncharacteristic display, only one word locked into my brain: Guilt.

The SA hovered around me, her eyes practically sparkling with envy. "Ma'am, your husband absolutely puts all those Wall Street elites to shame. Other men just blindly toss down a black card, but he actually bought out the entire seasonal collection for you and stayed to watch you try on every single piece."

Did he actually love me? Maybe.

I turned my head to look at Nathaniel standing by the register. A sharp ache twisted in the pit of my stomach as the memory of his last text message flared in my mind.

The girl named Stella had reminded him: "You promised to come to my showcase at eight. Don't be late."

Nathaniel had replied with a simple: "Yeah."

And now, it was already seven-thirty. Yet he wasn't rushing at all. Before he walked over to hand his platinum card to the cashier, he was still calmly advising me on which pair of stilettos paired best with my silk dress.

He knew my exact tastes inside and out. The unwavering devotion in his eyes almost made me forget that he was actively counting down the minutes to meet another woman.

I stared at him, suddenly realizing I was looking at a complete stranger.

These past ten years, Nathaniels path hadn't been smooth. He had clawed his way through countless brutal setbacks before finally securing his empire in the cutthroat tech industry. The people hed manipulated, the ruthless deals hed closed, the flawless lies hed spunthey had polished him from a desperate kid into a hardened, untouchable apex predator. Even with him standing less than ten feet away from me, I could no longer see through his flawless facade to spot the cracks underneath.

After settling the bill, Nathaniel walked out of the boutique with me. Amidst the chaotic ambient noise of the luxury mall, his deep, soothing voice sounded completely surreal.

"Juliet, Chase just called. Theres a critical flaw in the microchip sample test at the Silicon Valley lab. I need to head back and handle it immediately."

Time, location, witnessesall perfectly aligned. It was such a bulletproof, rational excuse that I couldn't even formulate a reason to stop him. My acrylic nails dug brutally into the soft meat of my palms. "Do you really have to go?"

Nathaniel paused. After a microsecond of hesitation, he leaned down and pressed a firm kiss to my forehead.

"It's an emergency, baby. Keep shopping. Swipe the card for whatever you want. Don't worry about saving me money."

Don't worry about saving me money.

That was his favorite catchphrase over the last two years.

Back in my sophomore year of college, on my birthday, Nathaniel was terrified the other dancers would look down on me. He blew his entire savings on an insanely expensive performance costume.

The moment I tore open the package, a heavy rock plummeted in my stomach. All I could picture was him running himself ragged across three different part-time jobs. Sure enough, when I went to surprise him at work the next day, I caught his manager jabbing a finger into his chest, screaming at him for accidentally sleeping through his lunch break.

He kept bowing his head, swallowing his pride, apologizing over and over. When the manager finally stormed off, he turned around to grab his lunch and froze. I was standing ten feet away, tears silently streaming down my face. I told him right then that dancing was too brutal, that I wanted to quit.

Nathaniel took one look at me and immediately saw right through the lie.

He took a bite of a two-dollar street hotdog, grinning as he wiped my tears with his thumb. "Don't worry, Juliet. I promise, one day I'm going to make sure you can swipe a black card in Beverly Hills without checking the price tag. You'll buy whatever you want."

Nathaniel spent the next ten years bleeding to fulfill that exact promise. And he actually pulled it off.

We upgraded from a damp, leaking basement to a sun-drenched penthouse. His gifts grew exponentially more expensive every single year. But we never replicated that pure, raw happiness we had splitting a cheap hotdog on the freezing sidewalk.

We still hugged. We still kissed. We still automatically told each other to drive safe before walking out the door.

But it felt more like muscle memory hollowed out of actual love. When the love evaporates, the habits stick around just to help you lie to each other.

I stood rooted to the marble floor, staring at the back of Nathaniel's tailored suit.

A pathetic, tiny part of me waited to see if his steps would falter. I waited for him to turn around and tell me he was canceling his plans.

He didn't. He stepped onto the escalator, offering me a calm, flawless wave goodbye.

Only the sudden, eager jog as he disappeared out of my line of sight finally betrayed his crushing desperation to get to her.

Chapter 4

The streetlights were bound to burn out by dawn, but during my darkest hours, he had been the one illuminating the path ahead. Hating him was a physical impossibility. But swallowing this lie and pretending I didn't know? That was going to kill me.

When I got home, I ordered the housekeeper to pack up every single one of Nathaniel's belongings. By the time he walked through the door, I was sitting dead-eyed on the living room rug.

"Why are you still awake?" He walked over, dropping onto the floor next to me.

The massive flat-screen was paused on the very last frame of our wedding video. Nathaniel dragged me into his chest, resting his chin on top of my head. The sickeningly sweet smile on his face suggested he was just as blissfully lost in the memory as I was supposed to be.

"Your skin is freezing. Didn't Shirley tell you to put on a sweater?"

"I gave her the night off," I stated, my voice completely hollow.

Nathaniel shot me a questioning look, but he never argued with my domestic calls. He simply grabbed the cashmere throw from the sofa and cocooned me in it.

"Well, now I'm gonna have to write you up, Juliet. How old are you, and you still don't know how to take care of yourself?" His voice dropped, low and teasing. "Do you have any idea that if you get sick, it ruins my entire workday?"

It felt like a pair of invisible hands had reached into my ribcage, twisting my organs until I couldn't draw a breath.

I thought back to the year right after graduation. A persistent migraine had forced me into the ER. Back then, a doctor at the local community clinic had misread my MRI scans, casually handing me a potential death sentence of a brain tumor.

Nathaniel had immediately burned through massive amounts of cash and called in every ruthless favor he had. He bypassed the month-long waitlist, forcibly shoving me onto the emergency priority list of the city's top neurosurgeon at a private hospital. He held me so tightly my bones ached, promising me it was nothing.

"It's just a tiny piece of tissue, baby. We have money now. We'll just pay them to cut it out."

His absolute certainty had anchored me. But when I woke up in the middle of the night for a glass of water, I found Nathaniel standing in the dark kitchen. I watched him slam his fist brutally into the marble countertop, his jaw clenched so hard a muscle feathered in his cheek. His eyes were bloodshot, his entire massive frame shaking.

It was that exact moment. That raw display of breaking down had convinced me I was his only lifeline. It fueled a dangerous delusion that lasted for yearsthe illusion that he could never survive without me. I handed him my blind trust on a silver platter.

A solid block of ice lodged itself in my esophagus. I couldn't swallow.

Then my eyes snagged on his collar. A speck of iridescent stage glitter. The exact kind used by performance dancers.

My stomach lurched. A sour rush of bile hit the back of my throat. I squeezed my eyes shut, my pulse hammering a frantic, sickening rhythm in my ears.

For forty-eight straight hours, I had been ripping myself to shreds. Was I not enough? Did I suffocate him? Was my thirty-year-old body finally too expired for his taste?

The unanswered questions clawed viciously at my skull, dragging me into severe insomnia. When the orthopedic surgeon told me the leg injury would permanently end my dancing career, the physical agony hadn't even come close to this level of suffocation.

The nightmare was officially over.

I pulled out my left AirPod and held it out to him. "Wanna listen?"

He assumed I wanted to rewatch the wedding vows. We had replayed that expired sugarcoated fantasy a million times before. He took the white pod without a single second of hesitation, popping it into his ear.

I tapped the screen.

The blood drained out of his face in real-time.

Through the audio, the girls bratty, entitled voice pierced the silence: "I heard your wife danced this exact routine at the college showcase. So, who dances it better? Her or me?"

The unmistakable flick of a lighter echoed through the speaker. Nathaniel exhaled a drag of smoke, his tone dripping with absolute mockery: "You think you're even in the same league as her?"

The girl didn't back down an inch. "Whatever. I don't care about comparing myself to her. At the end of the day, you're the one standing here with me."

Nathaniel opened his mouth to reply.

A second later, his breathing dissolved into a heavy, primal groan.

Chapter 5

The girl must have made a move. The wet, heavy sounds of kissing and frantic panting quickly drowned out everything else.

Smash.

The sickening audio cut off abruptly as I hurled the phone onto the hardwood floor.

I could vividly picture her straddling his thighs, staring dead into the mirror with a provocative smirk.

Nathaniel shot to his feet. A muscle feathered in his jaw. "Did you bug me