Isla’s POV
Alaric never once admitted that I existed when other people were around.
For three entire years, I belonged to him only behind locked doors. In public—within the organization, among politicians, businessmen, and rival families—he remained untethered. Immaculate. Untouchable. The kind of man everyone assumed was waiting for the right woman, someone worthy of standing beside the head of the Montenegro empire.
No one ever imagined that woman was me.
And I never asked him why.
Not once.
Back then, I convinced myself that simply being near him was enough. I told myself I should be grateful—that being chosen in private mattered more than being acknowledged in public. I was his, even if only when the lights were low and the doors were closed.
I had loved him long before that arrangement ever began.
It went back to our school days. I could still pinpoint the exact moment my feelings turned irreversible—the afternoon a jealous girl lost her temper and hurled a kettle of boiling water in my direction. I hadn’t even had time to scream before Alaric stepped in front of me without thinking. The water splashed across his sleeve instead of my face. I remembered the sharp smell of scorched cloth, the way my heart thundered so loudly it drowned out everything else.
That was more than ten years ago.
And somehow, my feelings hadn’t faded. Not even slightly.
Three years earlier, after Sabrina walked away from him, Alaric unraveled.
The man who never lost control staggered through a smoke-filled bar like a ghost, drinking himself into numbness. The music was loud, the air thick with alcohol and sweat. Everyone else drifted away eventually, uncomfortable with his silence, his anger, his grief.
I stayed.
I watched him drink until his hands shook, listened as his words blurred together, felt the weight of his regret settle over the booth between us.
That night, with unfocused eyes and a voice rough from whiskey, he asked me if I wanted to try being together.
I knew exactly what it was.
A substitute.
A distraction.
A way to hurt the woman who had left him first.
I understood that he didn’t love me.
And still… I said yes.
I told myself a comforting lie—that if I stayed long enough, if I loved him carefully and quietly, one day he would choose me the way I had chosen him.
Now, thinking back, the naïveté of it almost made me smile.
That night, I waited for him.
I sat alone on the couch, watching the clock creep forward inch by inch. Midnight passed. Then one in the morning. The apartment stayed silent, untouched.
It wasn’t until the early hours, when the city lights dimmed, that my phone finally vibrated.
I’ve got a business dinner tonight, the message read. It ran late. Don’t wait up—get some rest.
But I already knew.
Sabrina’s social media glowed on my screen—a photograph of her laughing freely as a man carried her piggyback. The angle was blurry, but the breadth of his shoulders, the familiar slope of his back, were unmistakable.
Her caption felt like a blade pressed directly against my chest:
Still the man I always imagined my future with. I can’t stop crying… should I say yes?
Business dinner?
My fingers tightened around the phone until it hurt.
He hadn’t offered her vague promises or whispered hopes for “someday.” He had given her something concrete. A proposal. A future. The kind of commitment a man like Alaric didn’t make lightly.
I stared at the screen until my eyes burned. It felt achingly familiar—like being young again, watching their story unfold from the sidelines while I remained invisible.
Pain twisted low in my abdomen. I shut the phone off and pressed my palm there instinctively.
I’m leaving anyway, I told myself. Why keep punishing myself?
I stood and began packing.
The extra toothbrush went straight into the trash. The mugs I’d chosen for us. The cushions, the decorations—everything that suggested we were a shared life instead of a temporary arrangement disappeared into black bags.
I was tying one shut when the front door opened.
Alaric walked in.
He surveyed the room briefly, then looked at the bags. “You liked those,” he said mildly. “Why throw them out?”
I didn’t look at him. My hands felt detached, my voice deliberately casual.
“They’re old. I got tired of them.”
A part of me waited. Hoped. That he’d notice the strain in my voice. That he’d ask what was wrong.
He didn’t.
Instead, he moved past me as if everything were normal. He rested his hand over my stomach and spoke gently, almost fondly. “Easy in there,” he murmured. “Your father’s home.”
He looked like every man’s idea of a devoted future patriarch. Once, that sight would’ve broken me.
I used to believe that if he cared so deeply for our child, then somewhere beneath it all, he cared for me too. Maybe he just didn’t know how to express it.
Now I understood the difference.
He loved the child.
Not the woman carrying it.
“You’re still upset, aren’t you?” he asked after a moment. “You shouldn’t be. I didn’t mention Sabrina joining the company because it wasn’t important. She’s between contracts. I offered temporary help. That’s all.”
He hesitated when he noticed I hadn’t taken his coat, hadn’t moved closer like I usually did. That was when it finally registered that something was wrong.
His tone softened, persuasive. “You’re jealous. I get it—but there’s no reason to be. She’s my past. Whatever we had is over. You’re the one I’m with now.”
I nearly laughed.
Instead, I stood still as he leaned in and kissed my cheek—slower, gentler than usual.
If I hadn’t seen you with her.
If I hadn’t heard your voice when you thought I wasn’t listening…
I might have believed you.
But now, every tender word sounded practiced. Every affectionate gesture felt calculated.
It wasn’t love.
It was management.
