---- Chapter 8 Chapter 8 Kyle Lopez POV: The world had tilted on its axis. One moment | was the king, the next | was a beggar on the street outside my own castle. The security guards had been firm but polite. "Mr. Lopez, your access has been revoked." Revoked. My life had been revoked. "This is your fault!" Karma shrieked, her nails digging into my arm. "You were supposed to handle her! You told me she was a weak, emotional fool!" "Shut up, Karma," | said, my voice a dead monotone. | pulled my arm from her grasp. "Where are we going to go?" she wailed. "Your cards aren't working! They kicked me out of the corporate apartment! We have nothing!" We. The word was a bitter irony. There was no 'we.' There was only me, and the parasite who had helped orchestrate my ruin. "There is no 'we, | said, finally looking at her. The beautiful, adoring woman | had been so besotted with was gone. In her place was a grasping, shrewish girl with terror in her eyes. "Go home, Karma. Go back to your family." ---- "But my family... the legal fees... you promised!" "The promises of a king are worthless when he's been deposed," | said. "| have nothing to give you." | turned and walked away, leaving her screaming my name on the crowded sidewalk. | didn't look back. | walked for hours, aimlessly, my mind a maelstrom of confusion and rage. Aimee. How could she have done this? The poison pill... it was a level of strategic, long-term cunning | had never imagined she possessed. | had always seen her as my brilliant co-pilot, but | had never realized she had built her own ejector seat and a mechanism to scuttle the entire plane. | ended up at the waterfront condo, the one | had so generously offered her in the divorce. My key didn't work. The locks had already been changed. | leaned my forehead against the cold, unyielding wood of the door and laughed, a harsh, broken sound. She was always ten steps ahead. My phone rang. It was my mother. "Kyle? What is this I'm hearing? The board has suspended you? For what?" Her voice was sharp, accusatory. "Aimee," | choked out. "It was Aimee." "| told you that woman was too ambitious," she snapped. "! told you she was cold-hearted. You should have gotten rid of her years ago." ---- "It's not like that, Mother. |... | made a mistake." "You made a mistake?" she scoffed. "You've destroyed the family legacy, that's what you've done! Fix it, Kyle. | don't care how, just fix it." She hung up. Fix it. How could | fix a catastrophe of this magnitude? | went to my bank. My personal accounts were frozen, tangled in the corporate asset lockdown. | had the clothes on my back and a few hundred dollars in my wallet. I, Kyle Lopez, the tech mogul, was effectively homeless and broke. Desperate, | went to the only other place | could think of. The house. Our home. The one we had built together. Surely she wouldn't have changed those locks yet. The key turned. A small flicker of hope ignited in my chest. | stepped inside. The house was dark and eerily silent. And it was empty. All my things were gone. My clothes, my books, my art. The entire house had been stripped of my presence. All that remained was her. Her scent lingered in the air. Her minimalist furniture stood like silent accusers. On the coffee table was a single, crisp manila envelope with my name on it. Inside were the divorce papers. Signed. And a copy of the termination of her employment contract for Karma Wells. And finally, a restraining order, legally barring me from coming ---- within 500 feet of her, her home, or her place of business. She hadn't just deposed me. She was erasing me. A guttural roar of despair tore from my throat. | sank to my knees amidst the ghosts of our life together. | had lost everything. My company, my money, my home. And | had lost her. | had catastrophically, irrevocably lost the only thing that had ever truly mattered. And | had no one to blame but myself.