No More Handyman: His Last Stand

“For three years, I poured my soul into Innovate, building Brittany' s startup from the ground up as her lead engineer and live-in boyfriend. I fixed her code, her leaky faucet, and every problem in her life, while she paid me a pittance, treating me like a glorified handyman. But at her success party, watching her beam at her ex-boyfriend Dylan, unveiled as the new "visionary," something inside me snapped. Then came the ultimate insult: demotion to Dylan' s assistant, his snakeskin boots propped on MY desk, MY awards tossed in a dusty box. The years of exploitation culminated in a single, burning question: how could someone I gave everything to treat me with such utter contempt? No more. I handed her my resignation, a meticulously itemized invoice for eighty-seven thousand dollars of unpaid work, and played a recording of her own words. "Forty-eight hours, Brittany," I said, pocketing my phone. "The clock is ticking." That night, I walked out of her apartment for good, the trash bag holding her memories of me thudding satisfyingly down the chute. This wasn' t just an exit; it was a declaration of war.”