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PROLOGUE
My gaze fell on his cell phone.
I miss you too.
The words stared at me from the screen, mocking me in a way that should have ripped a huge wound in my chest.
As I slowly rose and stumbled toward our shared bedroom, the last five years flashed before my eyes.
His bag was packed on the bed. A business trip. It must have been his boss then who had missed him enough to send a message to his personal phone. If that wasn't laughable, I didn't know what was.
A chilly sensation spread across the back of my neck, and the longer I stared at the bag, the more goosebumps covered my body.
For some reason, I had believed that one day I would marry this man, not discover that he was cheating on me.
The realization outraged me, yet the anger didn't materialize. Instead, a calm washed over me, prompting me to unzip the bag. Layer by layer, I stacked everything on the bed.
Whatever I thought I would find, I knew what it was the moment my fingers touched the cardboard box. I also threw his socks onto the bed before bringing the condom packaging into the light of day.
It shimmered in the sunlight as if it were some sort of quest item I needed to level up. The sight was like a punch to the gut, simultaneously shattering the last fragments of my already crumbling relationship.
Ultra-thin.
Sure. Cheating was fine, but he insisted on keeping the protection he hadn't needed with me for months. How considerate.
As soon as I heard him fumbling around in the bathroom, I snapped back to reality.
As if I had burned myself on the box, I dropped it back into the bag. His socks followed, then the rest of the clothes. Finally, I zipped the bag closed and returned to the kitchen table.
By now, the display of his phone was dark, and no matter how fervently I willed it, no new notification lit up.
But it wasn't necessary—I had already decided to catch him red-handed for my own peace of mind—before sending him packing because he had not only stolen the last years of my life but also had the audacity to betray me.
Tonight, I would find out who thought they had hit the jackpot withmyboyfriend.
1
AMELIA
The vibrant nightlife in the streets of Toronto made my secret espionage mission feel less exciting than I had hoped. Maybe it was a distraction for my already frayed nerves, imagining myself like Ezio Auditore from Assassins Creed, moving stealthily among the skyscrapers to finally approach my target unnoticed.
A trendy hotel whose top floor housed a high-class restaurant where one could gaze across the entire city.
Not for the first time in the past few hours, it dawned on me that it probably had never been a business trip—but rather, an ongoing scheduled appointment to have sex with someone else. To betray me.
I didn't even want to know how long he had been seeing her.
How long he had been lying to my face, telling me everything was all right, while he was in a solar system light-years away from me. None of that mattered anymore. All I wanted was to see with my own eyes that he was cheating on me. Only then would I have absolute certainty—my perfect boyfriend had turned into a despicable cheater.
It was the honking of cabs on the busy street next to me that almost made me explode. Since noon today, I had felt this burning knot in my stomach. It started as just a slight unease, but with every step closer to the hotel, it worsened, as if I could choke on my own breaths at any moment.
People shuffled past me, their faces hidden beneath masks of indifference. I wondered if they were also experiencing turmoil in their lives, standing amidst the ruins of their existence, feeling somewhat numb, yet unable to erupt like a volcano, as you often see on TV.
The main character was betrayed and immediately embarked on a crusade for revenge, aiming to highlight her wounded feelings. However, I didn't feel hurt in that particular way. We had drifted apart over the past few months, and even though I had fought for things to change, he seemed to have moved on long ago.
A soft snort escaped me. Despite everything, I had turned up to the funeral of my relationship in top form. Everything about me was flawless—not that it was usually any different, but today, I had made an extra effort.
Even then, I wasn't quite sure if I would let him know that I had been at the restaurant and had seen him with her.
