UNBOUND A MATES BETRAYAL

The printer hummed, spitting out the last page of the asset transfer agreement for a company I' d spent five years building with my husband, Liam. Five years of a marriage that was now just ash.

My phone buzzed. It was Dr. Alex Chen. "Chloe, are you sure about this? There are other ways." His voice was gentle, the same way it had been for years, trying to hold me together. "No, Alex," I replied, my voice hollow and distant, "There' s no other way. Not for me."

He was sick, he didn't know what he was doing. But I was sick too. Sick of waiting for a man who no longer existed, a man who, two months ago, drugged me with potent sleeping pills so he could go out with his ex-girlfriend, Sophia. Because of that, his mother, Liam' s kind mother, died alone. He admitted it without a hint of guilt.

My heart finally turned to stone. The love I had clung to, the hope I had nurtured in the dark, it all died with her. For five years, I had cared for him, run our tech company, the one we built together, while he slowly disappeared. His memory didn't just fade; it rewound. He was twenty-one again, and dating Sophia Reed.