By the time I walked home, the city lights blurred through my tears. The echo of my heels on the pavement sounded like a metronome counting down to the end of something.
At the gate, I froze. Voices carried through the open study window—familiar ones.
I shouldn’t have listened. But I did.
“Elara still thinks she’s your legal wife,” Declan’s voice said—steady, loyal, calculating. My lawyer.
Adrian’s reply was ice-cold. “She was never meant to be permanent. She was convenient. Wealthy. Infatuated. Simple.”
A silence followed, broken only by my mother-in-law’s scoff. Margot. “Too soft. Too emotional. Always needing validation. Alessia’s nothing like her. Alessia knows when silence is power.”
Declan spoke again, measured. “She handed you control of Ardent Trading, Salt & Silk Holdings, and Blue Peak Estates. Her signature—authentic or not—opened every door.”
Adrian’s laugh was low, almost pitying. “She trusted too quickly. Fell too hard. That’s always been her flaw.”
“And Alessia?” Declan asked.
“Alessia understands legacy,” Adrian said. “She doesn’t ask for love. She gave me a son—Nikolai. My heir.”
Margot’s voice was pure triumph. “Then it’s settled. Nikolai will inherit everything.”
Adrian’s tone softened, almost proud. “Elara gave me access. Alessia gave me lineage.”
---
The floor might as well have vanished beneath me. Every word replayed in my head like a bad recording.
Convenient. Weak. Disposable.
My legs gave out halfway down the steps, my knees scraping against the stone, but I didn’t even feel it. I just sat there, shaking, until the door flew open and Adrian appeared like some hero from a scene he’d rehearsed.
“Elara!” His voice sounded worried, maybe even sincere. He knelt beside me, scooping me up with practiced gentleness.
“What happened?” he asked. He carried me to the sofa, brushed hair away from my face, pretending he still cared.
Was any of it real?
“Are you dizzy?” he murmured.
I forced a shaky breath. “Yeah. Maybe heatstroke.”
He exhaled, turning sharp. “You let her walk home in this weather?” he snapped at the driver. “Collect your last pay.”
“Stop,” I whispered. “I told him I wanted to walk.”
He knelt again, inspecting the blood on my knees—and blew on the wound softly, like tenderness could erase betrayal. “You’ve always been too soft, Elara.”
That word again. Soft. Like it was a flaw.
---
For a fleeting second, I wanted to believe it was a mistake. Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe someone tricked both of us. But then I asked, testing him, “Our marriage papers—they’re gone. Should we refile?”
A flicker of something passed over his face. Not surprise. Fear.
Then, composure. He straightened his suit. “You don’t need to worry about that. Declan will take care of everything. Just rest.”
And before I could respond, Margot’s perfume filled the room, sweet and suffocating.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she drawled, surveying me with disdain. “What’s she done to herself now?”
That’s when it hit me.
I had never been a wife. I’d been a contract. A stepping stone.
And the woman who’d thought she was married to love—wasn’t married to anyone at all.
