Left Behind, Never Looking Back

Ninety-nine times, I let Gabriel fail me as a husband, and ninety-nine times I convinced myself love could still save him. But on the hundredth betrayal, something inside me finally shattered beyond repair.

He let his mistress, Camille, drive me home—an act of negligence that ended in a crash and the death of our unborn child. I thought that was the lowest point of my life, until I heard their voices through the thin hospital curtain.

“I killed your baby,” Camille cried, broken and frantic. “I ruined everything. Marielle is going to kill me.”

“Calm down,” Gabriel murmured, his tone disturbingly gentle—so unlike the coldness he had reserved for me for years. “It’s not like I ever wanted that child. She was the one insisting. I only needed the baby to secure the inheritance from the old man.”

“Then leave her,” Camille pleaded.

“Not yet,” he replied quietly, sealing my fate without hesitation. “We wait until everything is transferred. After that, I’ll end it. I promise.”

In that moment, the woman who had forgiven him ninety-nine times died beside the child we lost. Something in me went still and final.

I would no longer wait. I would no longer forgive.

Gabriel would be left with nothing but the consequences of his lies—and I would finally walk away toward a life that didn’t demand I break a hundred times just to be loved.