Chapter 3

The next morning, I made the first call. I found the number for the best, most ruthless divorce lawyer in the city, a man named Mr. Thompson. I explained the situation in cold, clipped tones, leaving out the emotion, focusing on the facts: the deceit, the secret marriage, the fraudulent surgery, the financial inheritance she was planning for her lover's children.

"This is... unprecedented," Mr. Thompson said, a note of professional excitement in his voice. "This is not just a divorce, Mr. Payne. This is a strategic dismantling. We will not be loud. We will be precise." His words were a balm to my raw nerves. I finally had an ally. My path to self-rescue was starting to take shape.

Later that day, I sat in my office, watching the security feed of the living room on my computer. Sarah was playing with the twins. She was laughing, a sound that now grated on my ears. I thought about the timeline. She had married me, an orphan with a significant inheritance from my parents, and then almost immediately began her plan. The surgery five years ago.

The secret marriage to Mark. The two years she waited before bringing the twins home, letting me believe our child-free life was a shared decision. She had been playing a long game, and I had been the perfect, unsuspecting mark. A bitter smile touched my lips. Her plan was about to come crashing down. The clock was ticking, but it was ticking toward her ruin, not my defeat.

I walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water. A half-eaten lollipop lay on the counter, its sticky residue forming a pink, disgusting puddle on the marble. The sight of it, so mundane, filled me with a fresh wave of revulsion.

This house was no longer mine. It was contaminated by them, by their presence, by the sweet, cloying scent of their deception. I grabbed it with a paper towel and threw it in the trash with more force than necessary.

As I turned to leave, the twins ran into the room, their faces streaked with chocolate. Annie, the little girl, held up a shard of porcelain. It was from a vase my mother had owned, one of the few things I had left of her.

"Liam broke it!" Luke shouted, pointing an accusatory finger at me. "He pushed it off the table!"

"I saw him!" Annie chimed in, her lower lip trembling in a practiced show of distress. "He did it on purpose!"

I stared at them, at their little, lying faces. They were framing me. These three-year-old children were already experts at manipulation, taught by their mother to see me as the enemy, the obstacle. "I didn't touch it," I said, my voice flat.

Sarah rushed in, drawn by the commotion. She immediately knelt and gathered the sobbing Annie into her arms, shooting me a look of pure venom. "How could you, Liam? It was just an accident, you didn't have to scare them! And that was your mother's vase!"

"I didn't do it, Sarah," I repeated, but my words were lost. She didn't believe me, or she chose not to. She stood up, her arm protectively around both children, pulling them away from me as if I were a monster.

"I think it's best if you stay in the guest wing for now," she said, her voice dripping with cold disappointment. "You're clearly not handling this well. The children are afraid of you."

I felt a sharp pain in my chest, a physical ache from the sheer injustice of it all. I was being cast out of my own home, painted as the villain in a story she had authored from the very beginning.

I was sick, physically ill, with a headache pounding behind my eyes. The stress, the shock, the constant, low-level hum of her gaslighting was taking its toll. The grand, beautiful house felt like a prison, its opulent rooms closing in on me. I retreated to the guest room, the door clicking shut behind me, the sound of her comforting the children echoing in the hall. It was the sound of my complete and utter isolation.