Left in the Rain, Lost Forever

He abandoned me on the storm-ravaged streets of Manhattanleaving me in nothing but a flimsy evening gownjust to pick up his soulmate from the airport after her disastrous marriage ended.

I threw the expensive anniversary gift I had prepared for him, along with my pathetic, begging heart, straight into a street-side trash bin without a second thought. I didn't ask for an umbrella. I let the freezing downpour wash his cologne off my skin.

I went to the airport and bought a ticket for the next flight out. Anywhere. As long as it was far away from Preston and Genevieve.

Chapter 1

The storm hit without warning, swallowing the daylight in seconds. I dashed under a storefront awning, shivering as the torrential rain hammered the pavement.

An hour ago, Preston promised he was on his way to pick me up. Now, there was still no sign of him.

The other women huddled around me were picked up one by one. Their boyfriends or husbands tilted their umbrellas to shield them, holding them close against the chill.

Preston was probably shielding Genevieve exactly like that right now. The girl he loved in his youth.

I heard her marriage had been a living hell. During her three-month divorce battle, her mother had also passed away. Preston had spent countless sleepless nights pacing the floor over her. And today was the day Genevieve finally finalized her divorce and returned to the States.

This morning, he stepped out of the shower and slipped into a freshly tailored suit. He paired it with a tie featuring a faint datura pattern. I handled every single detail of his wardrobe after we got married.

But I didn't buy that tie.

The rain pounded the concrete relentlessly, but my pulse was dead calm. I flagged down a passing cab and slid into the back seat.

The second I closed the door, I wiped every shared cloud memory I had with him from my phone and booked a first-class ticket to the West Coast. This time, I was taking my life back.

For three years of marriage, Genevieve had been the invisible ghost haunting every corner of my life. I was done suffocating.

Just before boarding, my phone vibrated. Preston's name flashed on the screen.

I watched the screen glow until it went dark. Then, I blocked his number.

---

I pulled into the driveway at six o'clock. When I stepped through the door, only the maid hurried over to greet me. I paused, taking off my coat, but instead of handing it to her, I draped it over my arm. "Where is Madeline?"

"She isn't home yet, sir."

My footsteps faltered. It hit me then. Madeline had gone out earlier, and I promised to pick her up. But Genevieve had collapsed crying at her mother's grave.

I was in such a rush to get Genevieve to the ER that I completely blanked on Madeline.

I glanced at the torrential rain thrashing against the windows. My face remained a cold, impassive mask. Would Madeline be mad? That ridiculous thought lasted exactly one second before I scoffed and tossed it aside.

That woman loved me with zero boundaries. Even if the sky fell, she would sit in this mansion and wait for me like an obedient nanny.

"Sir, you're soaked. You should go upstairs and take a hot bath," the maid murmured.

I nodded. "When Madeline gets back, tell her I'll be upstairs."

Chapter 2

I went upstairs for a hot bath, but an inexplicable restlessness gnawed at me. Stepping out of the bathroom, my sinuses felt congested. I wanted to grab some cold medicine, but the first-aid kit was nowhere to be found.

I checked my watch. Almost seven. Madeline still wasn't back. The rain outside had stopped, but the sky had bled into a bruised, heavy black.

I pulled out my phone and dialed her number. It rang. And rang. The heavy silence of the empty bedroom amplified the dial tone until it finally clicked to voicemail.

My jaw tightened. This never happened. Madeline never missed my calls. Maybe the storm caused a pileup?

A minor fender bender? A sharp jolt hit my ribs. I immediately dialed again.

[Beep. Call failed.]

My grip on the phone turned white-knuckled. My face hardened into stone. Gritting my teeth, I tried a third time.

[User unreachable.]

I stood frozen in the middle of the room for a long minute. A quick web search confirmed the dead tone.

Oh. I had been blocked.

A harsh scoff scraped my throat. I guess I needed to take back that thought about my wife being an obedient, boundary-less saint.

---

The plane touched down in a strange city dead in the middle of the night. The second I took my phone off airplane mode, a barrage of notifications flooded the screen.

A string of texts from an unsaved number caught my eye.

[Hi Madeline, it's Genevieve.]

[I heard you and Preston had a fight over me and you haven't gone home. I'm so worried and truly sorry.]

[I feel like I need to clear the air about Preston and me.]

[He did love me deeply, but that was before we went to study in Europe. Preston has always seen me as his soulmate. There's an unspoken understanding between us that someone of your class could never comprehend.]

[I would hate to be the reason for any wedge between you two.]

[No one wants Preston to be happy more than I do. Madeline, when you see this, could you call him back? Or at least let us know you're safe.]

A dry, humorless laugh escaped my lips. If they were so worried about my safety, there were a million ways to find me. With Preston's money and connections, tracking my ID would take seconds. Yet, the first person to reach out wasn't the police.

It was Genevieve.

Bile rose in my throat at the sickening realization that she had a front-row seat to every single tremor in my life. I left her on read.

But Genevieve was relentless. The screen lit up with an incoming call from her number. I swiped right. Dead silence stretched across the line.

A second later, a low, mocking chuckle echoed through the speaker. "Turns out, you aren't the perfect little wife Preston made you out to be. Three years to finally snap. You really do have a high tolerance for pain, don't you?"

"Madeline." Her voice dripped with condescension. "Since you're finally volunteering to give up your seat, I'll make sure Preston writes you a generous alimony check."

I let out an ice-cold laugh. "Genevieve, since you love picking up my discarded trash so much, consider him a gift. Just a friendly reminderhalf of Preston's assets belong to me now. Please enjoy your final romance before the bankruptcy hits."

I ended the call. I blocked her number and set my phone to reject all unknown callers.

Chapter 3

Day three of Madeline's disappearance.

I called her grandmother halfway across the globe. After the usual stiff pleasantries, I probed, "Grandma, Madeline mentioned she wanted to visit you a few days ago."

"No need for her to come all this way," her grandmother replied cheerfully. "I'm doing perfectly fine. Tell her not to make that exhausting trip."

I gripped the phone, standing on the sprawling terrace as the blood-red sun dipped below the skyline. A heavy stone dropped in my gut.

Her grandmother was her only living relative. I naturally assumed she had thrown a tantrum and run back home. But she wasn't there. So where the hell had she been for the past three days?

I turned around, my eyes landing on her vanity. It was immaculately clean, as always, except for a silver hairbrush left out. I walked over and picked it up. A few long, dark strands were tangled in the bristles.

Madeline had beautiful, jet-black hair. Never dyed, never damaged. My fingers tightened around the handle. I stood there, staring blindly at it.

The phone buzzed a second time with Genevieve's caller ID before I snapped back to reality.

"Preston, I just walked past your garden. The roses are all wilted," Genevieve's soft voice drifted through the speaker. "You should have the gardeners clear them out. They look so ugly."

"No." For the first time in my life, I flat-out rejected her.

Genevieve froze. A beat of silence passed before she spoke again. "Preston, are you mad at me? You're right, it's your and Madeline's house."

"You two should make the decisions" Her voice hitched, thick with unshed tears.

The tension in my jaw loosened. "That's not what I meant."

"Any news from Madeline?"

"No."

"This is all my fault. I never should have come back" Genevieve began to sob quietly over the line.

Listening to her weeping, my jaw tightened. I rubbed the bridge of my nose. Madeline rarely cried. Only once, on our wedding night, gasping in pain while I held her.

And then maybe during our first year of marriage, when I missed her birthday. I had flown out of the country overnight because Genevieve's husband had gotten violent.

I rubbed the bridge of my nose, stifling a surge of annoyance. After three years of marriage, I had no idea Madeline possessed such a stubborn, irrational streak.

I sat on the edge of the bed. After a long moment of staring at the floor, I dialed Madeline's only close friend. The woman was shocked. She hadn't heard from her.

Madeline wasn't in her city.

When I ended the call, a slight tremor ran through my hand.

I lit a cigarette but didn't bring it to my lips. Madeline was a neat freak. Whenever she was home, not a single corner of this massive estate had even the faintest trace of smoke.

My phone rang again. An unknown landline number.

Normally, I would have sent it straight to voicemail. This time, I swiped to answer before the first ring finished. "Hello." The word scraped out of my throat.

"It's me, Madeline."

The second the call connected, I shot up from the bed. Yet, my habitual tone of command dripped with suffocating arrogance. "Madeline, your little runaway game ends right now. Do you have any idea how much Preston Corp's stock will tank if the press catches you pulling this stunt?"

"Save your sickening stock market lectures for someone who cares, Preston."

Chapter 4

I gripped my phone and loosened my tie. The crushing boulder sitting on my chest suddenly vanished.

"Since you know you messed up, hurry up and come back," I said, my tone softening a fraction.

"Preston, I'm calling about something else."

"Like what?"

"I mailed you something. It should have arrived by now."

"Why would you mail something? Just bring it with you when you come home."

Madeline's voice remained infuriatingly calm. "I'm not coming home. Just look out for the package. If you don't have any objections to the terms, sign it."

"I'll call you back in two days. I borrowed this phone, so don't bother calling back. I won't get it."

"Madeline, what the hell is that supposed to mean?" My chest instantly tightened again.

"I'm done playing your perfectly tailored accessory, Preston."

"The divorce papers are with your mail. Sign them."

I didn't speak. She didn't either, as if politely waiting for my confirmation.

"Where are you right now?"

"That doesn't matter."

I stared out at the suffocating dusk pressing against the windows. "Madeline, what kind of tantrum are you throwing?"

Not another word came from her end. A faint, low scoff echoed through the receiver. Then, the line went dead.

I hit redial purely on reflex. But this time, an older woman answered. She spoke in some thick, unintelligible drawl I couldn't understand. I muttered an apology and hung up.

The heavy shadows of twilight swallowed the room. I sat in the darkness, paralyzed.

For three years of marriage, Madeline had been like a lukewarm glass of water. She never got angry. She never threw fits. Her voice was always soft and yielding.

Everyone loved her. Everyone praised her.

I had almost forgotten.

The foundation of our marriage was nothing but a debt owed between our families' elders. A woman who managed to leverage such a trivial favor to secure the title of Mrs. Preston could never be as harmless and clueless as she pretended to be.

I spun around, stalked over to the vanity, and slammed her silver hairbrush onto the marble top. My reflection stared back from the mirror. Jaw clenched, eyes burning with a dark fury. I never let my emotions slip.

Yet here I was, losing my mind over this trivial bullshit.

I forcefully wiped the scowl from my face, restoring my usual cold mask. I strode out of the master suite and headed downstairs.

Genevieve called my name from the living room. I gave a curt grunt of acknowledgment and ordered the maid to bring over today's mail.

I sifted through the pile, ripped open a large manila envelope with Madeline's name on the return address, and pulled out the documents.

Genevieve stood to the side, feigning shock as she covered her mouth, though a gleam of greedy triumph flashed in her eyes.

My face remained deadpan as I ripped the divorce papers in half, then into quarters, and chucked the pieces into the nearest trash can.

"Preston" Genevieve stepped closer, lightly tugging at my sleeve, her voice dripping with gentle concern. "Don't be mad. Madeline is probably just acting out on impulse. She's always been so accommodating"

"It must be my fault. If I hadn't come back to the States and burdened you with my mess, she wouldn't be throwing this tantrum"

My voice turned to ice. "This has nothing to do with you. She's losing her mind over nothing."

Chapter 5

"If she's acting out, isn't it because you spoiled her?" Genevieve's smile didn't quite reach her eyes. "Even when I was abroad, I heard endless rumors about how much you doted on your wife"

Before she could finish the sentence, tears spilled over her lashes.

A cold sneer tugged at my lips. "Why did I marry her in the first place? The rest of the world might not know, but are you really going to pretend you don't?"

Genevieve stared at me, tears streaming down her face. "Preston was it really because of me?"

I didn't answer. I just gently pulled my sleeve out of her grasp.

"I have business to attend to. Do you want the driver to take you home, or are you staying the night?"

Genevieve quickly wiped her eyes. "I'll wait for you here. With you and Madeline fighting like this, I wouldn't be able to sleep anyway."

I gave a curt nod, ordered the maid to prep the guest room, and told my driver to pull the car around. As I turned on my heel and walked out, I didn't miss the way Genevieve's eyes darted to the shredded divorce papers in the trash bin, her lips pressing into a tight, calculating line.

---

I knew it the day I left. Tracking someone down was child's play for a man with Preston's endless resources. It only depended on whether he actually wanted to.

So, when I saw him leaning against a black SUV outside my Airbnb, I wasn't surprised.

In the crisp early autumn air, he wore a light gray trench coat, casually dragging on a cigarette. He was tall, striking, radiating an effortless, commanding magnetism that immediately drew eyes from across the street.

Standing there gripping my grocery bags, I felt painfully ordinary in contrast. A loose linen maxi dress, my hair lazily tied back with a scrunchie, zero makeup. I looked more like one of the maids from the Preston estate than his wife.

When we first got married, that glaring contrast used to gnaw at my insecurities. But I was entirely over it now.

Just like a cheap diner mug sitting on a Michelin-starred table, Preston and I were a fundamental mismatch from day one.

He snuffed out his cigarette and looked at me, his face an impassive mask. I set the heavy grocery bags down on the pavement.

Preston checked his watch. When he spoke, his voice dripped with that same suffocating, cold authority. "Go pack your things. Thirty minutes should be enough."

"Did you sign them?" I held out my hand. "Hand over the signed divorce papers, and I'll go back with you to finalize the paperwork."

Those dead, emotionless eyes of his didn't flicker, though they darkened a fraction. "Now is not the right time to announce our divorce."

"Then we won't announce it. Just finalize the paperwork."

"Madeline, you know the company's anniversary gala is next week. You need to attend it with me." Preston's lips curled into a faint, mocking smirk. "You timed your little stunt perfectly."

"But you should know by now, I don't respond well to being manipulated."

I met his gaze dead-on, my voice slicing through the air. "You want me to play your perfect little trophy wife one last time for the cameras? Fine."

"Transfer five percent of Preston Corp's shares into my name as an inconvenience fee. The second the gala ends, you sign the papers."

He stared at me, the silence stretching taut between us.

We had shared the most intimate acts a husband and wife could share. But men like him could surgically sever sex from love. Women couldn't. That freezing downpour in Manhattan hadn't physically touched my skin, but the ice had permanently seeped into my veins, killing whatever pathetic affection I had left.

But Preston would never understand that. Because he had never loved me.

Chapter 6

"You want me to play your perfect little trophy wife one last time for the cameras? Fine. Transfer five percent of Preston Corp's shares into my name as an inconvenience fee. The second the gala ends, you sign the papers."

I looked at him, offering a smile as gentle as the ones I used to give him. "Preston, this is a win-win for you."

He stared at me for a long, heavy moment. Finally, he gave a curt nod. "Fine. After the company's anniversary gala next week, I'll sign."

I didn't go back with him. I waited until the day before the gala to fly back to New York. To keep the paparazzi from spinning wild divorce rumors, his private driver picked me up from JFK and drove me straight back to the estate.

When I stepped out of the car, Genevieve drifted out of the front doors, greeting me like she owned the place.

"Madeline, you're finally home." She hurried over, grabbing my hands, her eyes already brimming with perfectly timed tears.

I just stared at her. Her designer dress, the immaculate makeupeverything screamed quiet luxury. She looked exactly like a billionaire's wife hosting a guest in her own home. I didn't say a word.

I just pulled my hands out of her grip.

Genevieve deliberately flaunted her fingers, showing off the massive diamond rings bought with Preston's money. I shot them a cold glance. I didn't need tacky rocks to prove my worth, while she had to rely on a man's charity to play dress-up.

When I first found out about Genevieve, I used to foolishly compare myself to her in my head. Now? She could drip in diamonds, and my pulse wouldn't even jump. I walked right past her, carrying my own bag.

Genevieve bit her lip, a flash of humiliation tightening her features.

A maid rushed over. "Ma'am, let me take that."

I offered a polite smile and sidestepped her. "I've got it."

The maid froze, glancing nervously at Preston.

"Let her be," Preston muttered, turning his back and heading toward the main house.

But I didn't follow him. I turned on my heel and headed straight for the guest house.

"Madeline." Preston's voice snapped like a whip. His jaw clenched. My blatant disrespect in front of the staff was a direct hit to his ego and his precious Genevieve.

I didn't stop. I didn't look back. I had absolutely zero desire to speak to him. All I wanted was to get through tomorrow night so this dead marriage could finally be buried.

When Preston and I linked arms and walked into the grand ballroom, the cameras instantly flashed. He played the part of the devoted husband flawlessly, and I played the elegant, supportive wife. While shaking hands with investors, he kept his fingers interlaced with mine. Every now and then, he would tilt his head and look at me with warm, affectionate eyes.

I would duck my head and smile back.

In the past, that smile used to be a genuine, shy thrill. Now, it was just a suffocating plastic mask. I felt sick playing this game, and I despised him for dragging me into it. I counted the minutes until it would be over.

Toward the end of the banquet, a server placed a plate of raw oysters in front of me. The faint, briny stench hit my nose. My stomach aggressively lurched.

Acid clawed up my throat. I shoved my chair back, ignoring the stares, and practically ran to the nearest restroom. I gripped the cold marble sink, dry heaving until my ribs ached. When I finally forced myself upright, the edges of my vision blurred.

The bathroom lights spun. Then, everything went pitch black.

When I opened my eyes, the harsh fluorescent lights of a hospital room blinded me. Members of the Preston family crowded the space. Preston sat right next to my bed. He grabbed my hand, his face lit up with a rare, unfiltered thrill.

"Madeline, do you have any idea? You're pregnant."

Chapter 7

"Just hit forty-five days