THE FIREFIGHTER HUSBAND I DIVORCED IS A QUADRILLIONAIRE

CHAPTER 2, PART 2

Derek looked at his wife. He really looked at her. He looked the exact way a person looks at a complicated puzzle when they are finally ready to see the full picture clearly.

The absolute hypocrisy of the situation and the blatant double standards made his stomach turn. The theatrical acts made his dark gaze narrow and his facial expression darkened completely.

"So if he does it, it is absolutely nothing," Derek said with a bitter and hollow laugh. "But when I do the exact same thing, I am the worst man alive."

"It is about pattern and intention," Erin argued with a dismissive wave of her wooden spoon.

"Tell me the truth, Erin," Derek demanded, stepping closer and fixing his tired eyes heavily on hers.

The quiet words landed softly in the tense room. Erin stilled completely. She stopped stirring the food.

"Just tell me the truth," Derek said again, his voice cracking slightly with pure emotional exhaustion. "Do you really love me?"

The heavy silence stretched loudly across the kitchen. And then, with the cool precision of a skilled actor who had simply decided the grand performance was no longer necessary, Erin set down her wooden spoon on the granite counter.

"Of course," Erin said with a perfectly blank face. "Our love works, does it not?"

Derek just stared at her, waiting for more.

"You are a frontline firefighter," Erin continued, casually crossing her arms over her kitten apron. "I am the founder of the Firefighter Family Safety Foundation. What could possibly be a better love story than that?"

Her steady tone clearly suggested the answer should have been completely obvious to him.

"My public image has never been stronger than it has been with you standing right beside me at the charity galas. You made me completely believable. You made me a real person to the wealthy donors."

"That is your definition of love?" Derek asked, shaking his head slowly as he truly could not believe what he just heard.

"For God sake, grow up," Erin rounded on him quickly, scolding him with the exact same stern face a frustrated teacher uses on a very slow child. "You gave me vital credibility, and I gave you a comfortable life you never could have afforded on your own meager salary. That is exactly what this relationship has always been from the very start. A completely fair exchange."

Those terrible words burned away the very last beautiful illusion Derek had been clinging onto for the past three years.

This was not a real love. This was not a real marriage. It was just a business exchange. For the very first time in his adult life, he saw exactly what he had always been to her.

Three years of cooking her meals. Three years of washing her dirty clothes. Three years of standing silently beside her at public events and constantly rearranging his entire life around her busy schedule.

He had spent three years believing that every single painful compromise brought them closer together as a married couple.

None of it had meant anything at all. Because this was just part of a fair exchange.

But she had not always been like this cold woman standing in the modern kitchen. Derek closed his eyes and vividly remembered the sweet young girl he had met back at the university campus.

Back then, she had simply been Erin.

She was the caring girl who patiently waited outside the fire training center with a cheap yellow umbrella because she knew he had forgotten his raincoat.

She was the brave girl who carried heavy protest signs in the freezing rain and still stopped walking just to help an injured pigeon on the wet pavement.

She was the desperate girl who once spent her very last twenty dollars buying him a secondhand fire service manual because she had seen him staring at it longingly through a dusty bookstore window.

She had been so incredibly young back then. She had been so hungry for justice, so openly afraid of the harsh world, and so genuinely real.

But as Derek opened his tight eyes and looked at the wealthy woman standing proudly in front of him right now, he realized he did not know when she had officially stopped being that kind girl.

To this brand new boss lady, Derek was merely a marital prop used specifically to serve her foundation narrative and boost her public persona. He was just a useful tool.

Something heavy and painful inside his tired soul finally let go. The tight grip he had on their failing marriage released completely.

He stood up a little straighter, ignoring the sharp shooting pain in his badly injured leg.

"I want a divorce," he said calmly.