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There it was.

The mask slipped, exposing the petulant narcissist beneath, a man furious that a child took priority over his insatiable need for worship.

‘You agreed to split homes and travel upfront!’ I fired back.

‘I did, but I had no idea it would tax us so hard.’

‘So you stumbled and slipped your dick into Francesca?’

He claimed the affair happened because they worked in close quarters, rambling about how lonely he was for affection.

‘You met long before production started,’ I countered, closing the trap. ‘Did it start then?’

‘It did, right after the awards ceremony,’ he confessed.

The sheer audacity took my breath away.

‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ I shouted, my voice cracking with pure venom. ‘You never uttered a single word of discontent! Instead, you kept me around as a trophy while fucking another woman behind my back and ghosting me when I was lying in a hospital bed!’

Despite my fury, Max stuck to his script, insisting his misery justified the leap.

The truth was stark: he didn’t care about the destruction he left behind, only that his fragile ego stayed fed.

Somehow, along the way, he stopped caring about me.

He went on to declare that Francesca and living in Italy suited him better.

‘I’m not coming back to London, Ana,’ he stated. ‘I don’t want the house, the life, or what we had anymore.’

‘Then we call our lawyers and end this now,’ I replied, injecting as much ice as I could into my voice.

‘Bene. And for what it’s worth, I never planned for this, Ana,’ he ground out.

I bit my lip, resisting the temptation to let out the salty-laden expletives queuing in my mind. I wanted to rail into him, to give him a sample of the pain and chaos his cheating was about to cause me.

‘Know this,’ I muttered, ‘Everyone who falls in love with you will eventually feel the way I do about you right now and always will. You don’t even deserve hate, just a pity and contempt because of how despicable and dishonorable you’ve turned out to be.’

Fuck it felt good to say the words.

They were better than insults; they spoke to his lack of integrity, a value Max prided himself on in the past.

He spluttered with shock as I hung up.

I stared at the screen for a long time.

The adage, ‘you never truly knew the person sleeping next to you,’ hit me.

Regardless, Max was showing me his true colors.

I endured my worst crisis in Ethiopia without him.

At the time, my husband’s absence was soul-crushing until Deacon got me out of it.

Max’s ghosting and now this affair forced me to realize how narcissistic and self-absorbed he’d been throughout our entire relationship.

What amazed me was how calm I was; heck, it was strange how well I was handling this news.

Yes, I expected a media circus and a public airing of Max and my disastrous marriage, but I wasn’t as devastated as I thought I’d be.