The Rejected Live-in Husband Returns

Part V: Divorce

With a sudden, violent swing of her arm, she slapped the phone out of his hand. It clattered against the marble floor, the screen cracking into a spiderweb of lines.

“How dare you!” she shrieked, her voice trembling with a fury that was mostly fear. “You were spying on me? You had someone film me? What is wrong with you, Leo? Are you that pathetic and insecure?”

In that moment, as her phone skidded across the floor, Leo’s face finally changed. The last vestige of hope, the fragile belief that maybe there was some insane misunderstanding, shattered. The calmness on his face solidified into something harder, colder. 

“So,” he said, his voice dropping to a near whisper. “It’s true.”

The dam broke. Seeing his calm acceptance, Amelia felt cornered. All the repressed resentment, the years of quiet shame she felt about her unambitious husband, the giddy high of Julian’s proposal, and the terror of being exposed—it all erupted at once.

“TRUE? OF COURSE IT’S TRUE!” she yelled, pointing a trembling finger at him. Her composure was gone, replaced by a hysterical rage. 

“Look at you! Just look at you, Leo! Sitting there in your sweatpants in this monstrous house that my mother pays for. What are you? What have you ever been? I need a husband the world can respect! A man I can be proud of at a podium, not a… a servant who only knows how to cook my meals and wash my laundry! How are you worthy of me? Tell me that!”

The words hung in the air, cruel and absolute. They were the unspoken truth of their marriage, finally given a voice.

Leo didn’t flinch. He absorbed the vitriol, his gaze steady on her. When he spoke, his question was simple, quiet, and it cut deeper than any shout could. “So that’s your reason for betraying your vows? Because you decided I wasn’t ‘worthy’?”

Amelia opened her mouth, but no sound came out. The question, so stark and moral, punctured the balloon of her self-justification. 

For a terrifying second, she saw herself from the outside—successful, yes, but also cruel, ungrateful. 

She felt a sudden, vertiginous panic, as if she had just thrown something precious off a cliff and only now realized its value. 

But her pride, a fortress built over years of striving, would not let her surrender.

She avoided his gaze, turning her head to stare out the window at the perfectly manicured lawn. Her voice, when it came, was cold and stiff, a poor imitation of control. 

“If you say it’s true, then it’s true. What does it matter?”

A sad, wry smile touched Leo’s lips. It was a smile of immense relief and immense pain. “It matters,” he said softly. “It makes everything very simple.”

He leaned forward, reaching not for the broken phone, but for a manila folder that had been sitting on the coffee table beside him. He hadn’t been just sitting there all nigh—the’d been preparing. He opened it and pulled out a document. 

The header was clear and bold. 

DIVORCE SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT.

Amelia’s eyes snapped back to him, wide with disbelief. The panic returned, tenfold. This wasn’t the script. He was supposed to beg, to cry, to argue. He was supposed to fight for her. Not… this.

“I had my lawyer draw this up last night,” Leo explained, his voice eerily calm. “After I saw the video. I needed to be ready, just in case the woman I married was capable of this.” He picked up a pen from the table, uncapped it, and without a moment’s hesitation, signed his name on the designated line with a firm, decisive hand. He held the papers out to her. “It’s generous. You’ll see. I have no interest in a messy fight. What happened between us… it will stay between us.”

The calm finality of his actions sent Amelia into a tailspin. The attacker suddenly became the abandoned. Her mind reeled, searching for any angle to regain control.

“You… you had this ready?” she stammered, her voice rising again, becoming shrill. “You were just waiting for this, weren’t you? Waiting for me to make a mistake so you could pounce! Is that it? Or… or is there someone else? Do you have some little secretary tucked away? Is that why you’re so eager to get rid of me?”

The accusations were wild, desperate, and Leo saw them for what they were. The disappointment in his eyes was so profound it was almost tangible. He looked at her not with hate, but with a weary, bone-deep pity.

“You need to calm down, Amelia,” he said, standing up. He looked taller somehow, freed from an invisible weight. “Think carefully about what you really want. I’ll be back in three days to collect the signed papers.”

He turned and walked toward the door. He simply walked away from the mansion, from the life, from the woman who had just shown him her true heart.

The reality of his departure, so quiet and resolute, finally crashed down on her. “LEO!” she screamed, her voice echoing through the vast, empty house. “If you walk out that door today, don’t you ever think about coming back! Do you hear me? You’ll regret this! YOU’LL REGRET IT!”

The front door closed with a soft, definitive click, silencing her hysterics. He was gone. And for the first time, standing alone in the crushing silence of her

success, Amelia Coote felt truly, terrifyingly, alone.