The Day I Caught Him Cheating, I Married Another

I walked into my apartment dripping wet from the rain, only to hear a guttural moan coming from the bedroom. I told myself it was just the TV, but my shaking hands could barely fit the key into the lock.

When the door swung open, I saw a pair of red stilettos on the floor and my fiancé's favorite silk tie discarded like trash. I pushed the bedroom door open to find Javon in our bed with another woman, the sheets I had just washed two days ago tangled around them.

Instead of apologizing, Javon looked at me with a sneer and barked, "You don't know how to knock?" He claimed he paid the bills, even though I worked double shifts just to keep the lights on while he chased a promotion he'd never get.

When I slapped him, he didn't show remorse-he called me a "stupid bitch" and lunged at me with a look of pure malice. My life was a total wreck; my fiancé was a cheater, and my grandmother was about to be kicked out of her nursing home because I was forty dollars short of the payment.

I felt like I was falling off a cliff with no one to catch me. Why was the man I loved treating me like a cockroach in my own home? Just as Javon moved to strike me, a shadow fell over the room. A man in an expensive black trench coat stood in the doorway, his presence sucking the oxygen out of the room.

It was Carmine Wilkinson, a man I had never met but whose terrifying calm made my heart stop. He didn't look at the trash on the bed; he only looked at me. He handed me a monogrammed handkerchief and asked one simple, brutal question.

"Do you want revenge?"

I nodded, desperate for any lifeline in the middle of my imploding world. He didn't offer me a shoulder to cry on; he looked me in the eye and gave me an ultimatum that would change my life forever.

"Good. Get your ID. We're going to City Hall."