Chapter 12 - The Desertion
David returned to the cheap motel room, expecting to find Claire complaining about the terrible smell.
Instead, the door was wide open, and the small, disgusting room was completely empty.
All of Claire’s expensive designer bags, her jewelry, and her clothing were entirely gone.
Sitting on the stained mattress was a single piece of notebook paper with a hastily scribbled note.
"I didn't sign up to be poor. Have a nice life, loser. - Claire."
David stared at the note, his mind completely snapping under the immense weight of his total ruin.
His wife had abandoned him the exact second the money stopped flowing into their bank accounts.
He had sacrificed his own mother, his own flesh and blood, for a woman who never actually loved him.
He fell onto the dirty mattress, sobbing uncontrollably into his hands until his lungs burned.
He had traded a mother who would have died for him for a wife who left him for being broke.
The profound, agonizing realization of his own stupidity felt like a physical knife twisting in his stomach.
Meanwhile, I was sitting in a private box at the opera, listening to a beautiful aria.
My phone buzzed with an update from my private investigator, detailing Claire’s sudden, cowardly departure.
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I smiled softly in the dark theater, thoroughly enjoying the tragic, beautiful music echoing around me.
The villains of my story were destroying themselves without me having to lift a single finger.
