Chapter Two
??
Thirty minutes later, Elizabeth’s ears were still ringing with their laughter.
She remained hidden on the terrace, consumed by shame and freezing to the bone.
Call her a coward, but she couldn’t face those people knowing what they all thought of her.
At least before, she could hold her head up knowing her husband had her back.
But hearing him laugh and mock her alongside his friends was gutting.
That explains a lot, she thought.
He’d been cold and detached throughout their marriage, but she had always thought that it was his personality. Not once did she imagine that he resented her.
As for the separate bedrooms and retreating immediately after sex, she assumed that he just liked his space.
Memory after memory began to unravel, exposing every lie he’d ever told her. As for never holding her hand? He’d explained that he was a germaphobe. Turns out, she was the germ in question.
Beth winced as she recalled all the times she had been clingy with him. All the times she had begged him to stay in her bed, but he always had an excuse. She had thought they had excellent chemistry and that the sex was incredible, but looking back, some dots were starting to connect.
He always took her from behind, and even when she rode him, he made sure she faced away. Was it because he couldn’t stand the sight of her face?
His friends had called her ugly. And he hadn’t argued.
What she had mistaken for passion in their lovemaking was actually anger.
When Beth performed oral sex on her husband, what she had taken as an act of love and devotion turned out to be an act of degradation on his part.
He always finished in her mouth or on her face, and she didn’t realize until today that it was never about passion. It was about putting her in her place.
Elizabeth had always taken pride in her power over him. In her ability to push him to his limits, but as it turned out, he had always been the one in control.
She began replaying every single act during their five years of marriage and came to a horrifying realization. Sebastian was not the love of her life. In fact, she was the villain in his story.
She had seen his picture in a magazine on her father’s desk and had offhandedly mentioned that he was handsome. That was all she had said, and the next time she was in that office, her father had informed her that the rising tech prodigy was interested in her.
She never questioned how or where he knew her from. She was just excited that a man was interested in her.
Beth was not stupid. She knew how she looked. Overweight, plain and by Miami standards, an ogre. But this man, so handsome and intelligent, was into her.
She hadn’t questioned it. One tiny kiss, initiated by her come to think of it, had her falling headfast in love. Within three months of meeting him, she was walking down the aisle and soon after, jumping his bones every chance she got. Aggressively so, she might add.
She was so in love with him that she didn’t suspect anything was amiss.
Five years!
She had spent five years of her life loving and fussing over this man, believing stupidly, that he was the love of her life.
She had slaved away in the kitchen cooking his favourite meals, spent nights waiting up until two in the morning just to make sure he ate dinner and held his hand at events, never realizing how much he detested her or how embarrassed he was to be seen with her.
It had not been love at all and it hurt.
A single tear slipped down her cheek, quickly followed by a torrent of others, until she was sobbing so hard she couldn’t breathe. Her body trembled violently as she pressed herself against the wall, letting it hold her up while her own legs threatened to give out beneath her.
She had been in the dark for five years, oblivious to the arrangement between her husband and her father. She had truly believed that the brilliant, handsome young entrepreneur had simply fallen in love with her.
She could walk back inside right now and confront the two men she loved most in the world, but causing a scene was the last thing she wanted. They didn’t deserve her tears and they certainly didn’t deserve her anger.
The betrayal was too deep and it ripped away the very foundation of who she was, leaving behind a hollow void.
Then, she came to a decision.
She was not going back inside. Matter of fact, she was never going back to her life.
The people in her life didn’t deserve her, her father included. He’d bartered her away and made her think it had been a love match, making her misread situations that should have been obvious to her had she known the whole truth.
Elizabeth slipped out through the side doors of the Four Seasons, avoiding the valet and the main lobby.
She flagged down a passing yellow cab on the street and rattled off her address as she got in.
When she arrived at their building, she took the private elevator directly up to the penthouse.
Inside the apartment, she gained even more clarity. It was cold and didn’t look like a happily married couple lived here. She had wanted a house with a garden and a pool. Perfect for raising kids, but her husband had overridden her suggestions and convinced her that an apartment suited them better.
She’d been too in love and thought he made sense back then, but now, with her eyes wide open, she realized what it really was. Her husband had taken pleasure in wrecking every single one of her fantasies.
Even her attempts to make the place homey had been thwarted when he employed the most sought-after interior designer in the city. And looking around now, the brief was glaringly obvious: create the coldest, most impersonal apartment in Miami.
Beth breathed a sigh of relief as she reached the stage of acceptance. He could keep living in this cold mausoleum alone. As for her? She was done.
She needed a clean break, and as she packed, her instincts took over. Using her credit cards or withdrawing money from her bank accounts was out of the question.
Her father and Sebastian would trace her in seconds. They were powerful men with vast resources and the moment they realized she was gone, every transaction would be tracked.
She walked straight into Sebastian’s private study where a safe sat behind a decorative oak panel in the wall. The key code was his company’s founding date, a detail he had never bothered to change.
Inside sat stack upon stack of cash in crisp hundred-dollar bills which Sebastian kept for emergencies.
Elizabeth didn’t hesitate, she grabbed every single stack, sweeping the roughly ninety thousand dollars into her tote bag.
In her bedroom, she stripped off her gown and threw on a plain grey hoodie, dark leggings and sneakers. She then grabbed her favourite weekend duffel bag and stuffed it with essential clothing, her passport and jewelry.
She pulled her wedding ring off her finger, but kept her engagement ring. It’ll come in handy someday, she thought, slipping it into her pocket as she walked into the kitchen.
She tossed the platinum band onto the kitchen island, left the penthouse and didn’t look back.
Down on the street, she caught a taxi straight to Miami International Airport where the terminal was humming with late-night international travellers.
Elizabeth walked up to the self-service kiosk, her mind blank.
She had no destination, no plan and no intention of ever being found.
While waiting near a newsstand, her eyes caught a travel magazine sitting on the display rack.
On the cover was a towering skyline framed by futuristic glass super trees over a glowing harbour.
Singapore.
She had never been there. It was halfway across the world, thousands of miles away from Biscayne Bay, her father’s reach and Sebastian’s orbit.
She walked up to the airline counter, paid for a one-way ticket to Singapore in cash and went through airport security.
Once inside the terminal, she knew she couldn’t walk past international customs on the other end with ninety thousand dollars in paper bills. She had to get creative.
Pushing through the bustling duty-free area, she spotted the glowing display of an elite luxury boutique. Twenty minutes later, the stack of cash in her bag was gone.
In its place were two luxury timepieces strapped snugly under her sleeves and a diamond pendant resting against her collarbone, eighty-one thousand dollars converted into personal effects no border control officer would question.
With nine thousand dollars in cash left in her purse, Beth walked straight toward her boarding gate.
Two hours later, Beth was crammed into a middle seat in economy class on a long-haul flight. The seats were tight and the legroom was practically non-existent.
It was a novel experience, as she had never travelled any way other than first class or by a private jet in her entire life.
Yet, as the plane lifted off the runway and the glowing city of Miami shrank to tiny dots of light beneath the clouds, Beth didn’t care about the tight space. For the first time in hours, she could finally breathe.
Back in Miami Sebastian returned to the main ballroom, his eyes casually sweeping the room for Elizabeth. He expected to see her sitting near the lounge area or chatting with her father near the bar, but she was nowhere to be seen.
He pulled his phone from his tuxedo pocket and checked the time. It was almost eleven.
She probably headed home, he thought, feeling a faint flick of irritation that she hadn’t checked in with him first.
He spent another hour networking, shaking hands with potential partners, and receiving congratulations on PayVault’s success. But by midnight, he was ready to leave.
On his way out, Arthur approached him, holding a fresh glass of whiskey.
How he detested the man.
“Where is Elizabeth?” Arthur asked, his thick grey eyebrows drawing together in a sharp frown. “I have not seen her in two hours.”