Chapter 3
When I got home, I didn't bother turning on the lights.
By the light of the moon coming through the window, I kicked off my heels and threw myself onto the couch.
The living room was eerily quiet, with only the ticking of the wall clock breaking the silence.
David had bought this place for us, planning to use it as our home after we got married.
I picked out the curtains for the living room, and the vase on the coffee table was something I picked up while shopping last year.
Every corner of this place holds a piece of our story.
I fished out the pack of cigarettes and lighter David had left under the coffee table, pulled one out, and lit up.
The cigarette tip flickered in and out of the darkness, the harsh bite of nicotine hitting my lungs and making my eyes sting.
David and I had been together for ten years.
That number kept echoing in my mind.
We had been together for ten years. That's more than three thousand six hundred days.
From my early twenties to my early thirties, all my most precious youth was spent on David.
We were both dirt-poor students who clawed our way out of the mountains.
Our personalities couldn't be more different, but our ambitions were rooted in the same soil.
He was bold and impulsive, while I was steady and cautious.
But deep down, we shared the same ambition.
We both craved to stand above everyone else, to climb to the peak of power.
After graduation, we were totally in sync.
We crammed ourselves into a damp basement and started our business from scratch.
He was out there hustling, chasing down clients and making deals.
I was basically chained to my laptop, coding nonstop and handling all the tech stuff around the clock.
We'd pull all-nighters, barely getting any sleep at all.
When things got really tough, we'd split a single bowl of instant mac and cheese between us.
We wouldn't even waste the last bit of soup. We'd soak some stale bread in it and call that dinner.
Five years, two rounds of funding.
We finally moved out of that gloomy basement and into a bright, modern office.
Investors used to praise us as the golden duo.
I once naively believed this was having it all, love and career, perfectly balanced.
But once we started moving up in the world, things began to sour without us even noticing.
I bet everything on our tech, trying to build a fortress no one could break into.
But David grew impatient. He wanted things fast, explosive growth, and skyrocketing numbers.
He craved those eye-popping valuations to show off his decision-making skills.
We'd get into heated arguments in meetings, both of us red in the face.
Luckily, back then, David still knew how to leave work at the office and not let it mess with our personal life.
When he got home, he'd change out of his suit.
He'd lean against the kitchen door, watching me cook.
He'd share stories from his day.
I always thought that's how life was meant to be, through all the ups and downs, at the end of the day, we were still partners in love.
The real fracture began when David secretly signed a partnership deal without telling me.
He bypassed both me and the tech team, pushing through a half-baked plan no one was ready for.
Three days after it went live, the whole system crashed, and customer complaints flooded in.
Even while burning up with a 104°F fever, I took charge of the tech team, painstakingly troubleshooting and fixing every issue, one step at a time.
Those days, I barely left my desk for anything. I ate, slept, and worked right there in the office.
Through sheer grit, I forced things back on track, bit by bit.
After that, David kept a low profile at the company for a long time and stopped trying to meddle in the tech department I was running.
With their profits taking a hit, the shareholders started voicing their complaints about him.
But David began to suspect I'd deliberately sabotaged things behind the scenes, to make his plan look bad.
That look of suspicion in his eyes was like a dull blade, slowly cutting away at whatever was left between us.
A sudden sting hit my fingertips; the cigarette had burned down to the filter and the ember singed my skin.
I gave my head a shake and crushed the butt in the crystal ashtray.
The shadow of that assault years ago had nearly destroyed me, even though it had not caused any lasting physical harm.
It was a blow that nearly ruined my entire life.
In those darkest days, I lost count of how many times I wanted to disappear for good.
It was David who scooped me up, my whole body ice-cold, and rushed me into the ER, begging the doctors to pump my stomach.
When he saw my wrists wrapped up in thick bandages, he lost it. He held me tight and broke down, crying so hard he could barely breathe.
After that, he stuck to me like glue, watching over me twenty-four seven, barely daring to close his eyes for even a second.
He was the one who pulled me back from the brink, refusing to let me slip away.
That's why I always thought of us as partners in battle, lovers who could trust each other with our lives.
So there were many times when he crossed the line and sidelined my team.
He even tried to cut me out and seized control of the whole company's decision-making.
I looked the other way, not wanting to argue with him.
I always figured, as long as we were after the same goal, all the petty power struggles didn't really matter.
But now, he was the one who ripped open my old wounds and served them up as dinner party fodder.
He put our most private secrets on display, to give everyone a laugh.
He could sell me out for power.
But he had no right to stab me right where it hurt the most.
Ten years. After all we've been through, this was where it ended.
I stared at the silent living room, swallowed by darkness.
The pain in my chest ebbed away like a receding tide.
All that was left was a clarity and resolve I'd never felt before.
The lock clicked in the darkness. I knew David was back.