When Love Became A Transaction

When Love Became A Transaction

Gavin

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The phone rang, a sharp, unwelcome sound cutting through the quiet of my office. It was Olivia, my wife. A smile touched my lips. Six months pregnant, a miracle after years of heartbreak. "Hey, honey. Everything okay? Did you pick out a color for the nursery yet? I' m still team blue." Then, silence. A heavy, dead-air kind of quiet. Her voice, when it came, was a ghost: "Ethan... can you come to the hospital?" My heart stopped. My mind raced through a thousand terrible possibilities, but none prepared me for the sight of her in the surgical waiting room, her face pale, her belly-our baby-gone. "I had an abortion, Ethan." Her words shattered my world. "He was bad luck," she said simply, as if explaining the weather. Then she pointed towards the ICU. "Liam is in here. He was in a car accident." Liam. Her college sweetheart. The ghost in our marriage. "The baby... he was too perfect. All our good luck went to him. I had to get rid of the bad luck. I had to save him." Her twisted logic was terrifying. I stumbled home to find my mother humming happily in the nursery, folding a tiny blue onesie. The room was a testament to a dream now destroyed. "She lost him," I managed to tell her, a desperate lie to shield her from the grotesque truth. But she sensed it. The pain of our son' s death, coupled with Olivia's betrayal, hit my mother hard. Her doctor called it "broken heart syndrome." Then came the call from Olivia's doctor. "It's highly unlikely Olivia will be able to conceive again. The damage is permanent." That night, I discovered our joint savings account, tens of thousands of dollars, completely drained. Funneled to Liam's experimental medical clinic. I found Olivia at his bedside, peeling an apple for him. "It wasn't a problem," she said, "It was a sacrifice. For you. For us." "Good girl," he replied. "Once I'm out of here... Miller will be out of the picture." My son's death wasn't a tragic act of madness. It was a transaction. And I had been played for a fool from the very beginning. Liam called me, arrogant and triumphant. "You were just a placeholder." "You're too selfish!" Olivia shrieked, when I confronted her. Her words, so twisted and absurd, snapped the last thread of any feeling I had for her. "I want a divorce, Olivia." I hung up, then blocked both their numbers. The decision was made. The war had just begun.

Introduction

The phone rang, a sharp, unwelcome sound cutting through the quiet of my office. It was Olivia, my wife.

A smile touched my lips. Six months pregnant, a miracle after years of heartbreak.

"Hey, honey. Everything okay? Did you pick out a color for the nursery yet? I' m still team blue."

Then, silence. A heavy, dead-air kind of quiet.

Her voice, when it came, was a ghost: "Ethan... can you come to the hospital?"

My heart stopped. My mind raced through a thousand terrible possibilities, but none prepared me for the sight of her in the surgical waiting room, her face pale, her belly-our baby-gone.

"I had an abortion, Ethan." Her words shattered my world.

"He was bad luck," she said simply, as if explaining the weather. Then she pointed towards the ICU. "Liam is in here. He was in a car accident."

Liam. Her college sweetheart. The ghost in our marriage.

"The baby... he was too perfect. All our good luck went to him. I had to get rid of the bad luck. I had to save him." Her twisted logic was terrifying.

I stumbled home to find my mother humming happily in the nursery, folding a tiny blue onesie. The room was a testament to a dream now destroyed.

"She lost him," I managed to tell her, a desperate lie to shield her from the grotesque truth. But she sensed it.

The pain of our son' s death, coupled with Olivia\'s betrayal, hit my mother hard. Her doctor called it "broken heart syndrome."

Then came the call from Olivia\'s doctor. "It\'s highly unlikely Olivia will be able to conceive again. The damage is permanent."

That night, I discovered our joint savings account, tens of thousands of dollars, completely drained. Funneled to Liam\'s experimental medical clinic.

I found Olivia at his bedside, peeling an apple for him. "It wasn\'t a problem," she said, "It was a sacrifice. For you. For us."

"Good girl," he replied. "Once I\'m out of here... Miller will be out of the picture."

My son\'s death wasn\'t a tragic act of madness. It was a transaction. And I had been played for a fool from the very beginning.

Liam called me, arrogant and triumphant. "You were just a placeholder."

"You\'re too selfish!" Olivia shrieked, when I confronted her.

Her words, so twisted and absurd, snapped the last thread of any feeling I had for her. "I want a divorce, Olivia."

I hung up, then blocked both their numbers. The decision was made. The war had just begun.

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Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

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I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved. He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again. "Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports. For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian. In return, he treated me like furniture. He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey—her favorite drink—forgetting that I despised the taste. I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home. So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco. I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage. But I underestimated Dante. When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat. He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away.

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