He threw me out on the street after inheriting 75 million, believing I was a burden. But when the lawyer read the final clause, his triumphant smile turned into a face of panic.

We had been married for ten years. Ten years in which I, Vanessa, had given everything I had. I wasn’t just a wife—I was his support, his shadow, and for the last three years, I was his father’s full-time nurse.

My father-in-law, Mr. Arthur, was a real estate tycoon, an iron man who built a $75 million empire from scratch. But cancer doesn’t respect bank accounts. When he fell ill, his son—my husband, Curtis—was too busy with his “important meetings,” his golf outings, and his friends who talked louder than they listened. He said watching his father wither away was “too depressing,” and that he needed to “protect his mindset.”

So I took charge.

I cleaned up Arthur’s vomit, listened to his war stories when the morphine made him hallucinate, read him the newspaper every morning, and held his hand when the fear of death gripped him in the early hours. Curtis would appear from time to time, impeccably dressed, to pat his father’s shoulder and ask, “Did he say anything about the will today?”

I didn’t want to see Curtis’s coldness. I loved him. Or so I thought. I told myself his distance was a defense mechanism. How naive I was.