Divorced and Unbound

Corbin never showed his face anymore.

However, I kept getting updates about them while I was recovering in the hospital. Corbin had basically let Ingrid stay at our home indefinitely under the guise of needing Ingrid to take care of the twins for him.

They brought the twins to many places. They watched the sunset at the beach, went on the merry-go-round at the amusement park, and even caught a weekend flight to a tropical country to feed bananas to elephants.

They kept documenting their happy moments as a family.

Corbin even purposely learned how to handwash Ingrid's expensive yet delicate clothes, went to flower arrangement classes to craft bouquets for her, wore the ugly tie Ingrid knotted for him to work, ate her burnt food and praised it like it came from a Michelin-starred restaurant, and basically told her how gifted she was at everything she did.

It was everything I had ever hoped for. I had wanted that life, but Ingrid got everything I wanted without even having to lift a finger. Well, maybe not without lifting a finger.

She had designed an eight-bit music box for him and placed four tiny figurines on the merry-go-round model inside it. Each figurine was modelled after them in real life.

As soon as the design hit the shelves, the music boxes were sold out in seconds because of all the hype it generated. Stallone Group was the biggest client, purchasing ten thousand units of the toy in one go.

That wasn't all. Corbin felt sorry for everything Ingrid was doing for them. He told her not to worry about chores and stuff because I would get them done as soon as I went home anyway.

However, I wasn't going back anymore.

Corbin didn't need me to cook and clean, do the laundry, and watch the kids for him. He just needed a full-time nanny.

Even when he didn't need the nanny because he used to have me, he still never spared even a single ounce of love for me in return.

Everyone and everything had let me down. I didn't want to be a daughter, a wife, or a mother anymore. I just wanted to be myself.

I looked at the digital copy of the divorce papers in my phone that Corbin had signed, feeling as though I finally had a glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel.

I responded with, "Thanks," and bought the next flight ticket to take me out of here.

After determining that my body had recovered enough, I asked to be discharged earlier. Yet, as the time neared for my flight, my phone suddenly started getting bombarded by angry text messages from Mom.

I felt as though I could hear her angry voice in my head as she sent me angry, vulgar text messages that actually hurt to look at.

"You fucking ungrateful bitch! Answer the fucking phone!"

"What did you do to make the Stallones agree to divorce you, you fucking ingrate!"

Calmly, I turned off my phone, retrieved the SIM card, and threw it into the trash. Then, I closed my eyes and answered her in my head, "Guess."

However, I didn't care whether Mom would eventually guess correctly or not. And even if Corbin found out about my disappearance earlier than expected, I couldn't care less about what they thought anymore.

Whatever it was, I wasn't letting them have their way any longer.