Future Him Warned Him About My Unhinged Side Chapter 01

Future Him Warned Him About My Unhinged Side Chapter 01

After the eighteenth failed divorce attempt, Ethan Vance suddenly stopped bringing it up altogether.

Every single time before this, it had turned into an absolute, humiliating circus. I’d gone to extreme lengths to stop the divorce, and plastered photos of him and his female assistant across the corporate lobby.

I even caused a public scene involving Sienna Brooks during a press conference, leaving her deeply shaken afterward.

He should have loathed me.

Yet, he never uttered the word “divorce” again. Instead, he came home strictly on time every night and handed over his phone without prompting.

He reported his location every single hour, and even on business trips, he kept a 24-hour video call running with me.

But a persistent unease clawed at my chest. Every day, I pestered him, demanding to know why he’d suddenly dropped the divorce.

He would only look back at me and ask, “Am I not doing well enough?”

He was doing well. So well it felt entirely detached from reality.

It wasn’t until I checked on him yet again and got caught that he finally bared the truth, his eyes heavy with a suffocating exhaustion.

“I received a phone call from myself, from ten years in the future,” he whispered. “He told me that if I divorced you, I would regret it for the rest of my life.”

I froze. “And you actually believed that?”

“He said you set a fire and caused a fire that changed Sienna’s life forever.

” He raised his eyes to meet mine, the depths of his gaze harboring a bottomless, chilling despair. “You’re too unhinged, Chloe. I don’t dare gamble with her life, and frankly, I can’t afford to.”

“Let’s just leave things like this for the rest of our lives.”

That single phrase—leave things like this—pinned me to the spot like a pathetic clown.

He hadn’t explicitly mentioned divorce, yet every syllable bled with his sheer hatred for me.

Those lifeless eyes of his felt like a jagged blade, plunging deep into my chest.

This wasn’t regret, nor was it a sudden awakening of love. He was terrified. He was merely capitulating.

But this broken, toxic excuse for a marriage—suddenly, I didn’t want to endure it anymore.

…

Seeing me still paralyzed in shock, he didn’t bother to soothe me the way he used to. Calmly slipping into his overcoat, he masked his brief lapse of composure and meticulously reported his schedule.

“I’ll arrive at the office by two, and I have a meeting at three that will last for two hours.” He walked halfway out the door, then abruptly paused and turned back. “By the way, I won’t be able to answer calls or FaceTime during that time.”

“If you don’t believe me, you’re welcome to wait outside the lobby door.”

Each word was measured, defensive, and thoroughly detached. Before I could even formulate a response, the car door slammed shut.

Watching that vehicle shrink into the distance felt like watching the gulf between us widen beyond repair.

Finally, the tears spilled over.

The day I first caught Ethan and Sienna together, I completely lost my mind.

I made him wash over and over and checked every detail obsessively.

If I found so much as a single stray hair, I would hysterically drag everyone into endless investigations.

He desperately insisted they had been drugged and set up.

He even showed me security footage and blood toxicology reports, but my mind simply couldn’t absorb his infidelity.

Until the night he laid the divorce papers before me for the very first time.

“Chloe, I’ll give you eighty percent of the estate. Let’s just end this,” he had said, looking thoroughly broken. “Living like this… I’m just too exhausted.”

That was the night I stormed onto the rooftop in despair for the first time.

He had frantically rushed over, dragging me back from the precipice, sobbing and screaming in total agony.

“I was wrong! I was genuinely wrong!”

“Torture me, do whatever the hell you want to me, just don’t hurt yourself!”

“I don’t know how to live without you…”

But why?

Why was the very man who claimed he couldn’t survive without me the exact same person who later begged me, over and over again, to step aside for Sienna’s sake?

The rain began to fall again. Despite holding an umbrella in my hand, I completely forgot to open it.

I suppose I had been utterly spoiled by Ethan over the last decade.

I was accustomed to him chauffeuring me everywhere, holding the umbrella while we shopped, and wiping my mouth at dinner.

Even when we visited the crowded Promenade at Oakridge, he always had the pull to have security clear a path just so his car could park right in front of whichever boutique I wanted to visit.

Now, everything had vanished in an instant.

It felt as though a hollow void had been violently carved out of my chest, leaving it exposed to the biting, frigid wind.

I couldn’t even tell if the moisture streaming down my face was the storm or my own tears.

By the time I dragged myself back to the Greenwood Estate, a fever had taken hold.

In my delirium, Ethan stayed faithfully by my side.

He kept using warm water to help bring down my fever, checking my temperature every fifteen minutes.

When his assistant called to press him about an urgent board meeting, he snarled into the receiver, telling them all to go to hell.

Every time I fell ill, he was always this frantic.

The hand gripping mine felt so incredibly warm, yet my body couldn’t stop shivering uncontrollably.

The phone rang again, but he refused to answer it. The persistent ringing grew so deafeningly loud that it finally forced my eyes open.

There was no one beside me. The space was completely vacant.

It was my own phone that was ringing. Ethan had never returned.

Forcing down the bitter, metallic taste rising in my throat, I answered the call.

“Mrs. Vance, Mr. Vance never actually showed up at the office today,” my private investigator reported smoothly.

I went entirely rigid.

The investigator continued, “Shortly after leaving the estate, he redirected his car straight to the Willow Creek Sanatorium. He’s been inside for over two hours now, and there’s no sign of him leaving.”

A wave of profound nausea churned in my stomach.

The Willow Creek Sanatorium was the upscale private facility where Sienna was currently staying.

The words he’d spoken before walking out echoed mockingly in my ears: “If you don’t believe me, you’re welcome to wait outside the lobby door.”

How could he be so utterly certain that I wouldn’t actually go?

Ah. Because every single time he gave me his itinerary, he threw in that exact phrase. I used to never believe him, and I would always go and wait outside. This was the one and only time I chose to actually trust him.

And yet, I had miscalculated again.

Glancing at the clock, I saw it was already six in the evening. Normally, he would step through the front door at exactly five-thirty.

Since he wasn’t planning on coming back to me, I would go to him.

Every time I had confronted him in the past, he would thrust a copy of the divorce agreement into my face. This time, he wouldn’t need to—I had already signed it myself.