My Husband Slapped Me Out of His House for His Mistress, Then the Most Feared Man in Chicago Put His Ring on My Finger

February arrived with the blinding speed of a super-speedway draft.

The Daytona 500 was held under a cloudless blue Florida sky, eighty-five degrees, sixty thousand fans packing the grandstands, the roaring thunder of forty stock cars echoing off the concrete walls.

In the garage area, the atmosphere was white-hot.

DeSantis Motorsports occupied garages one and two—pristine, spotless bays lined with carbon-fiber tool carts, high-definition telemetry monitors, and sixteen mechanics wearing crisp navy and gold uniforms.

At the far end of the garage lane, tucked in bay thirty-four, sat the single, battered car of Whitaker Racing.

Chase had managed to secure a last-minute emergency loan from a predatory high-interest lender in Miami to get his car on the track. His crew consisted of four inexperienced mechanics he had hired off local short-tracks, and his car was completely blank—devoid of a single corporate sponsor logo, painted in a dull, unpolished gray primer.

Brielle stood near his pit cart, wearing an ill-fitting team shirt, holding a clipboard and looking exhausted, her eyes rimmed with red under cheap sunglasses.

At 1:00 PM, the command was given to start engines.

The roar of forty 750-horsepower V8 engines shook the ground beneath our feet.

I stood on top of the DeSantis Motorsports pit gantry wearing a headset, a radio unit strapped to my belt, three screens in front of me displaying live telemetry for Sarah Jenkins and Ricky Miller. Beside me stood Matteo, looking cool and imposing in a dark linen suit despite the Florida heat, an arm resting casually around my waist.

"Green flag, green flag!" the spotter called over the radio.

The field surged across the start-finish line in a tight, three-wide pack at two hundred miles per hour.

For eighty laps, the race was a masterpiece of tactical driving. Sarah Jenkins, driving our lead navy-and-gold car, ran seamlessly in the top five, her engine temperatures hovering at a perfect one-eighty-five, her tire wear index matching my predictive models to within one-tenth of a percent.

Chase, meanwhile, fought desperately at the back of the field, his gray car twitching violently through turns three and four.

On lap ninety-two, the inevitable happened.

"Watch the thirty-four car," I said into the radio to Sarah. "His left rear tire is blistering. He’s pushing too hard on the entry."

"Copy that, Vivian," Sarah’s calm voice came through my headset. "I’m clearing him on the high side."

As Sarah’s blue-and-gold machine swept past Chase on the outside groove, Chase tried to block her. But his weak left ankle—the physical limitation he had refused to rehabilitate properly—failed him under the heavy braking load into turn three.

His car snapped sideways.

The gray primer machine hit the outside retaining wall with a sickening CRUNCH of tearing sheet metal and exploding fiberglass, spinning three times across the track in a shower of sparks before coming to a dead stop on the apron, steam billowing from its crumpled engine bay.

The yellow caution flag waved instantly.

Sarah Jenkins sailed through cleanly, taking the lead of the race.

I looked down from the gantry at the apron. Chase stepped out of his wrecked car, unbuckling his helmet, and threw it violently against the concrete barrier in front of sixty thousand screaming fans and national television cameras.

He looked broken, defeated, a small man standing in the rubble of his own arrogance.

Matteo leaned down, his lips brushing my ear. "It’s over, Vivian."