Those first few days I stayed locked in my room until the owner, Mrs. Henry, knocked on my door. When I didn’t answer, she let herself in and found me in the same clothes as when I had arrived. A fucking mess is what I was. She convinced me to call my parents, which I did, and both of them came to me trying to convince me to go back home.

My dad was on a rampage, wanting to kill Cain for hurting me, but my mother made him calm the hell down. I stood my ground and told her that I never wanted to see either one of those dickheads again.

Even with Windsor being right across the river from Detroit, it took a little convincing and two weeks of my mom staying with me to get her to let me stay. Meanwhile, she ignored all of Cain’s phone calls. He left voice mail after voice mail until she finally turned her phone off, leaving him no way to get in touch with me at all.

Didn’t stop the asshole, though. He resorted to going by their house continuously, pounding on the door, pleading and begging my father to tell him where I was. Dad hated him before he cheated and even more so after. He told him nothing. Cain continued going to my parents’ house every day for about a month, sitting outside in his car when my dad stopped answering the door. One day he just stopped. Fell off the face of the earth, just like I did.

My name is still Calla, but my last name is no longer Bexley or Greer, which was my maiden name. It’s now Calla Bexley-Henry, which wasn’t easy to do. It’s complicated but it’s legal.

Legal because I am still fucking married to that piece of shit. Which brings me back to the here and now. I don’t want to be married to him anymore. Going through all the bullshit of living in a foreign country, filing for taxes and most of all, lying to the last man I dated.

It took me four years to even want to look at a man, let alone go out with one. Even then, I just dated here and there; nothing serious. My body would constantly tighten up the minute they would try and touch me. Until I met Mikel Voskov.

Mikel is a hockey player. We met at an ice skating rink, naturally. His team was there with a group of fourth grade students whose class won a fundraising event, the prize being a night skating with the Canadian Ducks with Mikel as their goalie.

My eyes watched him, the way he bent down to the level of every child he spoke to and smiled, his attention focused on them.

I accidentally plowed him down turning a corner on my skates too sharply, and fell right on top of him. I laughed right along with him, for the first time in years. I had forgotten how good it felt to laugh. I missed it. I missed the longing looks from a man. The feeling of being cherished. A simple touch, a kiss, all of it. Mikel gave me all of those, and so much more.

After going out for several months, he told me he loved me. He wanted me to move in with him, get married. But how can anyone get married when they are still married to someone else?

He was heartbroken when I told him. Who could blame him? I never want to see the look on another man’s face that I did on Mikel’s. I hurt him by lying and betraying him the way I did. Never again. Cain is not worth it.

You keep saying he’s not worth it. Why haven’t you done anything about it before now? Why did you wait until a perfectly good man walked into your life to get a divorce? whispers the charming little devil on my shoulder.

I’m almost twenty four years old and tired of living a lie. I want to live, have a real life; an honest life. I also want to finish law school, move on, and forget about Cain once and for all.

I’ve stalked him online since he returned a year after I left; Google is quite friendly in telling you everything you need to know about a person. He never did fulfill his dream of becoming a cop. He is now the President of his dad’s club, The Sinners of Revolution. A club that was once just that, a club, but now it’s all kinds of screwed up. The Sinners are involved in illegal activities in every sense of the word.

Cain has changed so much; he’s not at all the man I expected him to be, and I want no part of the fucked up life he has created for himself. Pictures of him and his notorious club are everywhere across the internet. He lives and breathes for them. He’s untouchable, they say.

The one thing that hasn’t changed much about him is his looks. He still looks like the young man I fell in love with all those years ago. Dark hair, rock-solid body. That delectable, dipping V. I’ve stared into those eyes for hours on my computer, praying that he is living in a cesspool of regret in the darkest reaches of hell for ruining my life. Fuck. I hate him.

Pulling my car to a stop, I hand the border control officer my documents and tell him I am crossing the border to visit family. He winks flirtatiously at me as he hands me my Visa and passport back.

Pulling back into traffic, my heart rate accelerates as I cross over into Michigan and get on the interstate to head to the one place I dread more than anything. A part of me wishes he wouldn’t even be there, the other part of me hoping he is just so I can shove these papers in his face.

“Keep telling yourself you hate him, Calla. Remember what you saw,” says the angel on my other shoulder.

I love her so much more. I flick that devil off my other shoulder and put a smile on my face, even though I suspect it’s not real.

I come to a stop at the gas station a mile down the road from the compound. I sit for a few minutes, my breathing all kinds of erratic. My hands are shaking. I can do this. I have to, for no one other than myself.

What if he’s with someone else and I walk in on him fucking her like before? What if he’s doing drugs? All kinds of shit starts going through my head. Maybe I should go get my dad. He would be more than happy to shove these papers at Cain.

“No, Calla. You can do this. Just walk in there and be nice. He has to want this over just as much as you do.”

The sound of my own voice and words calms me. I glance at myself one more time in the mirror. My long, dark hair is flat-ironed straight. My greenish-blue eyes are made up with a sultry look, and my tight, red pencil skirt and low-buttoned white sleeveless shirt make me feel like a badass. Top it all off with my black Jimmy Choo stilettos and I am one hell of knock out, if I do say so myself.

Just like last time, I pull up to the gate, which is heavily guarded. My eyes bulge when the biggest man I have ever seen taps a gun on my window. There are tattoos up and down his arms, and a colorful snake tattoo that looks real drapes around his neck, its mouth covering his right cheek, hanging open as if ready to strike.

I’m so freaked out I’m unable to move. I’m studying to be a lawyer, for God’s sake. I shouldn’t be intimidated by this man, but I don’t like the deeply entrenched feeling I’m getting in the pit of my stomach that something terribly wrong is happening around here. What the hell has Cain done with this place?

I jump clear out of my seat when his gravelly voice crashes through my window as if he were sitting right next to me.

“This isn’t a carpool parking spot, little mama. Get the fuck out of here.”

He taps my window one more time then turns his bulky frame away from me. My hands continue to shake when I lower the window just a crack.

“I’m here to see Cain,” I squeak.

He stops but never turns back around.

“Is that so? Boss man went and got himself a high class hooker instead of dipping his dick into that Emerald whore, huh? Well, he never told me about you... so like I said, get the fuck out of here.”

Two steps is all this big bear of a man gets before my fear turns into full-fledged anger. My heart goes from cold to glacial knowing Cain’s still with her.

“Look, you son of a bitch. I am not a hooker. Now do whatever the fuck you do when someone is here to see your so called ‘boss man,’ and tell him his wife is here.”