When Nathan walked into the café that rainy Tuesday afternoon, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. It has been three years since I broke off our engagement two week before the wedding, leaving him with nothing but an empty apartment and a note that began with “I’m sorry” and ended with “I just can’t”. He was furious then. I remember the way his voice shook on the phone.
I'd thought I was doing the right thing. What I didn’t know then and what I learned too late was that my father had quietly called Nathan the morning after I left and told him he’d “never work for this company again”, and just life that, Nathan’s position, one he’d spent years climbing toward, was gone. My father didn’t like broken loyalties and, in his mind, leaving me meant betraying the family.
Now, Nathan was standing in front of me, with his hair a little shorter than I remembered.
“I heard you were back in town” he said with that small smile I used to love “Can I join you?”
I should have said no. I should have told him that we were both better off without re-opening old wounds. But curiosity has a way of making someone foolish and against my better judgment, I nodded.
One coffee turned into two. Coffee became dinners. Dinners became long walks through street. Nathan had changed, at least, that’s what I told myself. He listened more, laughed more and seemed gentler somehow. He did not talked about our broken engagement or the job he had lost because of it, and I was grateful he didn't. I actually believed that he has changed.
And I, like a fool, let my guard down.
When he told me one night, as we lingered outside my apartment that he “never stopped loving me”, I felt something inside me shift. I smiled real hard when he said that. Within three months, we were together again, everything returning back to normal as if nothing ever happened. I was happy. He was attentive, present and thoughtful. He felt like home.
One night, we were having a bottle of wine at my apartment, and I told him something I have never shared with anyone. It was a stupid moment of nostalgia and trust, and the wine didn’t help. I told him about the months after I left, when I’d been drowning in guilt but later resumed work at my dad’s company, and how I’d started questioning everything about my father’s company. I told him about the documents I stumbled across in an old file drive, the contracts, the foreign accounts and the bribes. I told him how I’d written it all down, thinking I might blow the whistle one day but never did because I didn’t have the courage to destroy my family.
Nathan just listened, his hand resting over mine. He said I could trust him and that it was safe with him
One evening, at a dinner party with friends, someone asked how we’d found our way back to each other. Nathan leaned back in his chair, swirling the wine in his glass and said with a small smile “Oh, I’ve been working on this for years”. Everyone at the table laughed, assuming he meant fate or persistence but his eyes stayed on mine, and the word working felt heavier than it should have.
It was a Thursday evening when everything fell into place, and then apart. I came home early, rain dripping from my coat and found him at my kitchen table with his laptop open. He didn’t look startled to see me; in fact, he looked almost pleased “You weren’t supposed to see this yet, I was hoping to gather more, but...” he said, turning the laptop's screen toward me. My breath caught. On it was a folder labeled with my name. inside were scans of the documents I’d told him about that night, my notes, my words, every detail of my father’s crimes, perfectly organized, along with emails, call logs and even audio recordings I didn’t know he had made.
“why?” my voice was thin, unsteady.
His expression didn’t change “You think you ruined my life when you left me but you didn’t ruin me, Sarah, you just set me back. Your father made sure I lost everything. My house, my career, my future. I knew if I was patient, you’d come back to me. You always would. And when you did, I’d make sure you knew exactly what it’s like to lose everything you love”
I could barely speak “if you release that…”
He leaned in slightly, smiling “Your father will be arrested before breakfast. His company will collapse in a week. And you? You’ll be the one who gave the evidence to the police. Your name will be on every headline. A whistleblower”
I stared a him, feeling the floor tilt beneath me “so this… us… all of this…”
“The long game,” he said simply, “I just had to wait for you to hand me the match”
He stood, sliding his laptop into his bag with careful precision. “Goodbye, Sarah. Oh… and don’t bother trying to make a deal” he walked toward the door, pausing to glance over his shoulder with a trace of a smile before stepping outside. I stood there after he has left, the sound of his words replaying in my head. It had not been love that brought him back into my life. It was patience and, in his hands, patience was the most dangerous weapon of all
Image was generated using META AI
