Dying to Divorce Him

Chapter 9

"What the hell is going on with you? God, why did I ever agree to take you on?" Sally muttered under her breath, exasperated, as they walked out of the hospital.

The moment Felix was discharged, he made a beeline for Zia's house. Sally, already suspicious and more than a little worried he might do something reckless, tailed him without saying a word.

Zia hadn't seen Felix since his last hospital stint. He had been ghosting her ever since.

Now that she was blacklisted, desperate to crawl her way back into the spotlight, she knew exactly who to cling to, and Felix was her best bet.

She'd spent hours getting ready, dressed in what she thought was her most flattering outfit, makeup flawless, hair done to perfection.

"Felix, you finally came," she said sweetly, almost too eagerly.

But Felix didn't respond. He walked straight past her and held out his hand.

"Your phone," he demanded coldly.

Zia hesitated, but handed it over. He opened the chat history, hers and mine.

With every message he read, his expression darkened. His hands trembled, veins popping in his neck. Then he reached the photos.

That's when he completely lost it.

He slapped Zia across the face, the sound echoing through the room. Grabbing her by the chin, he forced her to look at the screen.

"When the hell did this happen? When was I ever in these pictures?!"

Of course, he didn't know. Because none of it had actually happened.

The day Zia sent me those photos, I had already hired a specialist to verify them. It took less than five minutes for the expert to see through the lies. The images were fake, digitally stitched together from unrelated photos.

"Thank you," I'd told the expert. "If it weren't for you, I might've believed her and ended things with him."

Even now, cornered and caught red-handed, Zia stuck to her story.

"It was that night… the celebration party. You were drunk. You walked into the wrong room… We, "

Felix slapped himself, hard, staggering slightly from the force of it.

"Can you imagine how crushed she must've been when she saw that? No wonder she was so mad. And I… I defended you."

He was spiraling.

"I deserve to die. You deserve to die."

Then he bolted into the kitchen, yanked open a drawer, and grabbed a knife. With pure rage in his eyes, he charged at Zia.

She screamed and darted out of the way just as Sally burst through the door, having tracked him with his phone's GPS.

"What the hell is going on?!" she yelled, eyes wide with horror.

Two bodyguards she'd brought along rushed in, tackling Felix to the ground and prying the knife from his hand.

Sally had finally hit her breaking point.

"You want to kill someone? Be my guest. But you're gonna come with me first and tear up your damn contract. After that, I'm done."

Felix was hauled back to the agency. Even as he was dragged out, he shot Zia a look so venomous it made her knees weak. The moment he left, she packed up her things and decided to move. She didn't want to risk running into him ever again.

Back at the agency, Sally wasted no time.

"Contract's done. I don't care what you do from now on, you're not my responsibility anymore."

Felix said nothing. He just walked out and went back to my house.

I followed him. I couldn't leave him like that.

He went straight into the bathroom. I watched as he turned on the faucet and began scrubbing his skin furiously, like he could somehow erase everything that had happened.

Again and again, he scrubbed. His skin turned red, then raw. Eventually, it started bleeding.

"Why won't it come off? Why won't it come clean?"

He looked down at his arms, broken.

"It's all my fault… I didn't stay clean. And now I deserve this, I deserve to be left behind."