His Three Minutes Cost Him His Wife Chapter 10

His Three Minutes Cost Him His Wife Chapter 10

Three full years later, I’d permanently settled down. in a quiet seaside town, relocating my interior design studio to a small storefront overlooking the 

coastal boardwalk. 

My client workload stayed steady and 

manageable, and I lived alone with a plump domestic orange tabby house cat. 

Its belly dragged nearly across the floor every time 

it padded through my apartment rooms. 

On weekends I walked barefoot along the public 

beach shoreline. 

Warm ocean waves washed over my ankles and dragged fine sand away back out to sea as the 

tide receded. 

Families with small children, hand–holding young 

couples, and solo beachgoers filled the sandy 

stretch around me every Saturday and Sunday 

afternoon. 

I’d never entered another romantic relationship 

after splitting from Nico. 

It wasn’t unresolved heartbreak holding me back- 

I simply preferred the quiet independence of living 

solely for myself. 

Every household item sat exactly where I placed it, 

I washed and put away my own dishware on my 

own timeline, and I could sleep in until midday 

with zero obligations weighing on my shoulders. 

Friends occasionally asked if I’d like them to set 

me up on blind dates with single local men. I 

always politely declined their offers. 

One former design industry coworker met me for 

coastal waterfront lunch one afternoon, leaning 

across the restaurant table to lower her voice into 

a hushed murmur. 

“Do you remember Nico at all?” 

I chewed a bite of grilled white fish slowly before 

replying. 

“What’s become of him these days?” 

“Word’s gotten around that the Valenti clan elders 

forced him to bring Serena back under the same 

roof with him anyway. 

Their dynamic’s nothing close to reconciliation- 

it’s more like two people chained together by 

decades of old blood debts they can’t escape. 

They fight constantly nonstop, and she’s been 

admitted back into the Swiss trauma wellness 

retreat multiple times since that day at your studio 

plaza. 

The Valenti clan elder board stripped him of all 

authority to oversee the South Pier freight 

monopoly entirely. 

The old generation of family leaders all agree he’s proven himself unfit to manage the clan’s 

multi–million–dollar commercial assets after 

destroying his own marriage so publicly.” 

I lifted my drinking glass and took a slow sip of 

clear water, responding with only one quiet single 

syllable, “Oh.” 

My coworker stared at me across the table, 

chopsticks suspended mid–air over her seafood 

platter. 

“That’s all you’ve got to say about everything he’s lost and all the misery he’s stuck with?” 

“What other reaction were you expecting from 

me?” 

She shook her head slowly from side to side. 

“You’ve truly let every last piece of that 

relationship go for good, haven’t you?” 

“I let go ages ago.” 

That evening once I returned home to my seaside apartment, my tabby cat curled fast asleep 

belly–up across the windowsill planter holding my golden pothos plant. 

All four paws tucked tight against its furry torso. 

I unlocked my phone and glanced at the digital clock reading exactly eleven PM on the home screen display. 

A faint distant memory flickering through my brain of that eight–year nightly three–minute phone call routine Nico kept for Serena’s sake. 

I had no clue who he spoke to at eleven o’clock every night these days, and I didn’t care to find out any details about his new routine either. 

I set the mobile device down on the countertop and heated a mug of homemade steamed whole 

milk in the microwave for three full minutes, the 

appliance chiming a soft ding once the heating 

cycle finished. 

I carried the warm mug over to the floor–to–ceiling ocean–facing window, thin sea breeze slipping 

( 

through the glass crack to dissipate all warm 

steam rising from the milk surface. 

I drained the mug’s full contents down my throat, 

rinsed the ceramic clean in the kitchen sink, and 

switched off every overhead light fixture before 

climbing into my queen–sized bed. 

My orange tabby jumped down from the 

windowsill planter to pad across the mattress, 

settling its chin gently against the palm of my 

outstretched hand and rumbling a loud steady 

purr against my wrist skin. 

I never heard a single rumor or update regarding 

Nico ever again after that lunch conversation with 

my former coworker. 

Whether he lived in constant regret or found some 

fragile peace with Serena trapped under the same 

townhouse roof didn’t affect my quiet, stable 

seaside life in the slightest. 

His remorse, his losses, all of it belonged entirely 

to his own story now, separate and cut off from 

mine for good. 

I still remembered walking out of that Riverside 

townhouse all those years ago with tears dripping 

nonstop down the back of my hands, heart 

shattered into countless jagged fragments. 

After that day, I never shed another tear over any man again. 

My heart hadn’t hardened into cold stone through all the heartache–I’d simply learned to reserve all my softness and vulnerable tears for myself alone, only crying for my own pain and my own healing from that point forward. 

The sun always rises again after every long dark night. 

And you can build a full, happy, complete life all by yourself, no spouse or soulmate required to make it worthwhile.