He looked at me.

I slowly shook my head. “We are legally married!” Ethan shouted, his voice cracking with hysteria. “This is a marital asset!” Daniels sighed—the sigh of a man exhausted by domestic stupidity.

“Mr. Bennett, my precinct has already reviewed the deed and the emergency injunction filed this morning. This property is solely titled to the woman standing behind that door. You have zero legal standing to be on this concrete.”

Ethan’s mouth opened and closed like a landed fish. The reality of his utter disenfranchisement finally crushed him. The swagger of the Cancun playboy was dead and buried.

“Load your boxes into the cab,” Officer Ruiz instructed, pointing at the increasingly terrified taxi driver. “We’ll wait.”

It took them twenty minutes of humiliating, sweaty labor to cram their shattered lives into the trunk and backseat of the taxi under the watchful gaze of the Columbus Police Department.