Marrying My Ex For Revenge

A year ago, he left me standing alone at City Hall for a girl who scaled fish at the harbor for ten dollars an hour.

I can still see the shadow of a smirk in his eyes when he told me, Erica, you dont understand. Shes... refreshing. Shes real.

I watched him walk away, a hollow, wintry ache settling behind my ribs. It felt like my entire life had been gutted and left to dry in the sun.

It only took him six months to regret it.

The girl from the docks was a novelty, a splash of salt air in his curated life, but eventually, the smell of the harbor wouldn't wash off. The gap in their worlds became a chasm he couldn't bridge. He crawled back, begging for forgiveness, certain that I would still be there, waiting to be his wife.

And I did marry him.

For the first six months of our marriage, he was the picture of a perfect husband. Attentive. Gracious. Desperate to atone.

But why should I be the only one to know the copper taste of betrayal? Why should I be the only one who had to swallow the glass of a broken heart?

Six months into our "happily ever after," I made sure he caught me with another man.

Nathans eyes were bloodshot, his face a mask of fractured sanity as he demanded to know why.

"Are you punishing me? Erica, Im done with that life! Ive been home every night. Ive given you everything. Where did I go wrong?"

Clothes were strewn across the hardwood floor in a frantic, tell-tale trail. I sat on the edge of the bed, draped in nothing but a silk robe that revealed far too much, watching Nathan unravel.

He stood in the doorway, a dark, suffocating silhouette against the hallway light.

"Get out," he spat at the man behind me.

The man didn't move. He looked at me first, searching my face for a signal. When I kept my gaze fixed forward, cold and unblinking, he finally stood, dressed with a practiced, lethal efficiency, and left.

Then, it was just me and Nathan.

He was shaking with a suppressed, violent kind of grief. He grabbed a stray shirt from the floor and tried to force it onto me, his fingers fumbling with the buttons.

"Erica, I can overlook this. This once. But if you ever" He stopped mid-sentence, his breath hitching as he saw the faint bruises on my collarbone. His grip tightened, his movements turning rough as he shoved my arms into the sleeves.

My wrist twisted painfully. I winced, my brow furrowing.

"Nathan, stop it! Youre acting like a psychopath!" I shoved him back, my voice echoing in the silent room.

He lunged forward, pinning my wrists, his teeth bared. "A psychopath? I walk into my own home and find my wife in bed with a stranger, and Im supposed to what? Stand here and applaud?"

Watching the agony ripple across his face, the sharp pain in my wrist felt like nothing. It felt like a fair trade.

I looked up at him, a slow, sharp smile spreading across my lips. "I just wanted to see for myself. I wanted to see if the world outside was really as 'refreshing' as you claimed it was."

Nathan recoiled as if Id slapped him. "You married me... just for revenge?"

"Im done with her, Erica! I haven't seen her in months!"

"Done?" I let out a sharp, jagged laugh. It started in my chest and climbed up my throat until it turned into hot, stinging tears. "You crawled into her bed over and over again. You think 'ending it' scrubs that clean? You think I can't smell the salt on you every time you touch me?"

Nathans eyes were crimson. He paced the room like a caged predator, gasping for air, before his fist collided with the wall.

A streak of blood smeared down the paint. The violence of it seemed to ground him.

"Erica," he said, his voice dropping to a low, terrifyingly calm register. "Were even now. Youve had your pound of flesh. From now on, we move past this. We live our lives."

I laughed again, the sound brittle. "You slept with her a thousand times, Nathan. You think one night with someone else balances the scales?"

"What do you want from me?" he rasped, his voice breaking.

"I. Want. A. Divorce."

"A divorce?" He looked at me with a sudden, cruel flash of derision. "Erica, look at yourself. You aren't the girl you used to be. Whos going to take you now? Whos going to give you this life? You think you can find someone who loves you more than I do?"

He reached out, his voice softening into a patronizing silk. "Be a good girl. Ill forgive you this time. Lets just forget the past and start over."

In that moment, I felt a profound sense of the absurd. This man, the boy who used to bring me wildflowers and talk about our future under the oak treeshow had he turned into this monster?

When did the rot start?

I think it was when his startup finally took off, right around the time the "Old Money" of my family's estate began to crumble. My fathers firm collapsed, a slow-motion car crash that ended in total bankruptcy.

My parents moved back to the countryside, leaving me in Nathans hands like a precious heirloom.

My father had said, "Im glad I had the foresight not to stand in your way when Nathan was starting out. Now that the family name is gone, you have him to lean on. I can sleep peacefully knowing you're taken care of."

I had nodded, tears blurring my vision, grateful that I had a rock like Nathan to cling to.

But after my parents left, the rock began to erode. He started coming home later and latermidnight, 2:00 AM, sometimes not at all.

When I asked if work was really that demanding, hed give me the same tired script: "Were breaking into the global market, Erica. I have to be there. Im the CEO; I have to set the example."

Hed done the same during the early days of the company. I had no reason to doubt him.

Until the day of the fender-bender.

I was stuck in traffic near the waterfront when I saw his car parked illegally by the pier. I saw Nathanmy Nathancarrying a young woman in his arms. He looked frantic, his face etched with a desperate worry as he lifted her into the back of an ambulance.

The world went ice-cold.

In the middle of a sweltering July afternoon, I started to shiver.

I called him. Once. Twice. Ten times. He declined every single one.

In a meeting, the auto-reply text read.

Those three words felt like a death sentence.

I drove home in a trance, and halfway there, I got rear-ended. My head hit the steering wheel, and as I felt the warm trickle of blood down my forehead, a sick thought occurred to me: This is good. I would call him, tell him I was hurt, and he would come rushing back. He would leave that girl and hold me.

But as the paramedics loaded me into the ambulance, his phone was still off.

The nurse handed me an ice pack, her eyes full of a pity that made me want to scream. "Try him again later, sweetie. I'm sure he's just tied up with something important."

I sat in the sterile silence of the ER, listening to the busy signal, a strange, eerie calm settling over me.

I sent him a photo of my injury. He didn't reply.

It wasn't until I had been sitting in our dark living room for four hours that he finally burst through the door.

"Erica! My god, are you okay? Does your head hurt? Do we need to go back to the hospital?" He stumbled over the rug, rushing to gather me in his arms. The terror in his eyes looked so real.

After seven years, I knew he still loved me in his own twisted way.

But the smell of the hospitalthe scent of her crisiswas still clinging to his jacket. It ignited something inside me.

"Where were you?"

"Im so sorry, babe. Things at the office are just insane. Once this merger goes through, I promise Ill make it up to"

I slapped his hand away before he could finish the sentence.

I looked at him, my eyes burning with a cold, sharp rage. "Youre lying. Nathan, where were you this afternoon?"

He tried to double down. "I told you, I was in a meeting."

I picked up my phone and showed him the photo Id taken at the pier. There he was, disheveled and frantic, holding a girl in a stained apron.

Nathans face drained of color.

He fell to his knees, wrapping his arms around my waist, his voice thick with a fake, desperate remorse. "Im sorry, Erica. It was a momentary lapse. I was weak. Please, you have to forgive me."

I broke. I threw my phone, I screamed until my throat was raw, and I smashed every piece of porcelain in that room.

"Why, Nathan? Why her?"

He just kept apologizing, letting me hit him, letting me vent my fury.

"I just felt sorry for her, Erica. She has nothing. It wasn't... it wasn't like us. I'll end it. I swear. You're the only one who matters."

And I was stupid enough to believe him.

I tried to bury the memory. I tried to go back to the way we were. He proposed againproperly this timeand I threw myself into wedding planning, counting down the days until our September 9th date at City Hall.

I don't think Ill ever be able to scrub that day from my mind.

I stood in front of the Marriage Bureau, clutching my paperwork, watching the sun climb to its zenith and then sink below the skyline.

The security guard, a man who had clearly seen enough heartbreak for ten lifetimes, finally sighed and told me it was time to go. They were closing.

I walked for two hours. I walked until the heel of my Louboutin snapped, until my feet were blistered and bleeding.

It felt right. The physical pain was a distraction.

When I finally let myself into the house, it was pitch black. Nathan wasn't there.

My phone had died hours ago. I didn't bother turning on the lights; I just sat on the sofa and watched the shadows stretch across the room until dawn broke.

He didn't walk through the door until 8:00 AM.

He looked exhausted, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He saw me and asked, "Why are you up so early?"

He had completely forgotten. The most important day of our lives had been erased by whateveror whoeverhad kept him out.

"Nathan," I said, my voice sounding like it had been dragged over gravel.

"Where were you yesterday?"

There it was again. The question that had become the soundtrack to our relationship. Where were you? Who were you with? I had become the nagging, paranoid wife I always swore Id never be.

Nathans face darkened with annoyance. He yanked at his tie. "Something came up at the office. Don't start, Erica."

I didn't remind him what day it was. I just nodded and let it go.

If he couldn't let her go, I would do it for him.

I hired a private investigator. Her name was Becca. She was a "fishmongers girl"a high school dropout who worked the stalls at the local market, scaling sea bass with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth.

She was young. She was beautiful in a raw, unrefined way.

And she had a following. She was a local "blue-collar" influencer, the "Harbor Queen." People loved her because she was "authentic," a far cry from the polished socialites Nathan usually dealt with.

That was the draw. The extreme contrast. To a man who had everything, she was a trip to the wild side.

I made sure the "authenticity" of her brand was ruined. I leaked evidence of her affair with a married man to the local tabloids and her comment sections. Suddenly, the "Harbor Queen" was just another homewrecker.

Her live streams were flooded with vitriol.

Nathan grew more sullen by the day.

Finally, the dam broke. Someone threw a bucket of fish guts at her during her shift, screaming that she was a slut.

I was at home, eating lunch while watching the footage on my tablet, when Nathan slammed through the door.

"Was this you? Why are you doing this to her? Shes not like you, Erica. She didn't grow up in a mansion with a silver spoon. Shes just a girl trying to survive, and you're destroying her!"

"Stop it, Erica. Just stop."

I looked into his eyeseyes full of disappointment and rageand I actually felt a laugh bubble up.

"Have you eaten yet?" I asked, smiling through the tears that were finally starting to fall.

My heart felt like it was being squeezed by a cold hand.

In the background of the tablet, the crowds jeers grew louder. Nathans expression hardened. He told me to end the "charade."

I looked at him defiantly. "And if I don't?"

"Then don't expect me to be kind. Your family is gone, Erica. You have no one else. Where else are you going to go?"