Chapter 3

The man' s sudden, aggressive passion didn' t make me swoon. It made me furious.

He could be ambiguous and gentle with Isabella, but with me, his wife, it was all harsh possession? He thought he could stake his claim on me whenever he felt threatened?

"Let go," I said, my voice as cold as the winter wind.

Ethan didn' t move. He leaned in even closer, a strange, almost mocking smile playing on his lips.

"Are you jealous?"

I turned my head away, looking out the window, a stubborn, childish defiance rising in me.

"Fire her," I demanded.

Ethan' s smile vanished instantly. He pulled back, returning to his seat. His face became a stern, familiar mask. He was once again the cold, calculating CEO I knew so well.

"Amelia," he said, taking off his gold-rimmed glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose with a gesture of extreme exasperation. "I told you, you will be the only Mrs. Carter."

He put his glasses back on, the shield firmly in place.

"Besides, she still has to raise Leo."

I turned back to face him, my brow furrowed in frustration. "I didn' t stop you from sending her money. A very generous amount, I' m sure. Why does she have to work in your office, by your side?"

The man sighed, a long, drawn-out sound of impatience. "But Leo needs his father' s company. And if I brought him here to live with us permanently, you and the Hayes family wouldn' t agree."

I was shocked. And deeply upset.

"Are you forcing me to choose?" I asked, my voice dangerously low. "Forcing me to accept her presence in our lives, in our company, or be seen as the wicked stepmother who separates a father from his son?"

Ethan reached out, his dry, warm hand covering my cold ones on the armrest. It was meant to be a comforting gesture, but it felt like a trap.

"I just hope you don' t target her," he said, his voice softening slightly. "I promise you, your position will not be shaken."

Listening to him defend her, to prioritize her comfort and her needs over my own, a wave of powerlessness washed over me.

Did he really think this was all about the title of Mrs. Carter? About a position?

A deep, aching sadness settled in my heart. Perhaps in his eyes, our marriage had never been about anything more than that. It was a contract, an alliance, and my feelings were simply not part of the terms.

Just then, my phone buzzed on the seat between us. I glanced down. An unknown number.

I opened the message.

"Mrs. Carter, Ethan is drunk. He' s allergic to honey, so remember not to use honey when you make him a hangover remedy."

Attached to the message was a photo. It was Ethan, taken just a short while ago at the banquet. He was leaning against a wall in a quiet corner, his collar half-open, a flush on his handsome face. It was an intimate, private moment, captured and sent to me by his ex-fiancée.

A laugh, sharp and bitter, escaped my lips. I tossed the phone into Ethan' s lap.

"What is this?" I asked, my voice dripping with ice. "A challenge? Is she challenging me for my position as your wife?"

Ethan paused, looking down at the phone. He frowned at the message, but his explanation was immediate and practiced.

"She' s my assistant now. Doing these things, taking care of these details, it' s part of her job."

I couldn' t control my anger any longer. It boiled over, hot and fierce.

"Do I need an outsider to remind me of my own husband' s habits? My husband' s allergies? What the hell is she to you, Ethan?!"

"Amelia," he said, opening his car window and lighting a cigarette, a sure sign of his growing impatience. The smoke swirled around his head in the dim light. "You' re losing your composure. Isabella is, after all, my son' s mother. You should have some basic respect for her."

I thought I must have misheard him. I scoffed, a sound of pure, mocking disbelief.

"Respect?" I repeated the word as if it were a foreign object in my mouth. "She doesn' t deserve it."

This time, the coldness in his eyes was so intense it made me freeze.

"Amelia Hayes, watch your words!"

The wind from the open window whipped across my face, stinging my skin. But the sting was nothing compared to the pain of his words. In that single moment, the wind seemed to carry away the last vestiges of my pride.

I turned to him, my voice breaking, a barely perceptible sob catching in my throat.

"Ethan Carter, I am your wife."

My voice was a desperate whisper.

"Why do you keep breaking your own rules for Isabella, time and time again?"

He frowned, a look of genuine confusion on his face.

"The first year of our marriage," I continued, the words tumbling out, a flood of repressed memories and hurts. "I had a fever in the middle of the night. A bad one. I asked you to stay with me. You said you had an important meeting the next day and couldn' t afford to stay up. You left me alone at the hospital. But why? Why could you stay up and play with them, with her and your son, until the middle of the night?"

"You knew her presence would make me uncomfortable, yet you brazenly brought her into the company, kept her by your side as your personal assistant. Wouldn' t sending her money every month have been enough to support them?"

My voice rose, fueled by three years of silent resentment.

"And that night she stayed over! What did you two do? Did those hickeys on her body just appear out of thin air?"

And all the other little things. The tiny cuts, the small betrayals, the thousand little moments of neglect that had stuck in my heart. They were like scattered pieces of broken glass on the floor. When there are too many, it' s exhausting and painful to even try to pick them up.

The wind rushing through the window made my eyes sting with unshed tears. It was so hard to bear, but even harder to put into words.

Ethan looked lost, his fingers gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were white. He seemed genuinely confused, genuinely baffled by my outburst.

"I..." He wanted to explain, but he didn' t seem to know where to start. He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

Soon, we arrived home. The car rolled to a stop in the driveway, and the engine cut out, plunging us into a heavy silence. Neither of us moved.

"It was wrong of me to leave you at the hospital alone," he finally said, his voice strained. "But... didn' t I send my assistant to be with you?"

He sounded almost panicked, trying to grasp at justifications.

"And with Isabella... I just wanted to compensate her. For taking care of Leo all these years by herself."

"And that night," his voice dropped lower. "Nothing happened between her and me. I swear it."

He turned then, reaching out to cup my face in his hands. His touch was hesitant.

"I' m sorry, Amelia. I..."

Before he could finish his sentence, the sound of a child' s crying shattered the night. It came from an upstairs window of the mansion.

"Daddy! Daddy, come down and play with Leo!"