Not the woman who had screamed another man’s name half a day ago.
I found the arrival gate and positioned myself near a glass barrier. I spotted him before he saw me. My husband. Tall. Lean. Wearing an expensive suit. He was not my type.
Clinging to his arm was a woman. Young. Pale. And unmistakably—conspicuously—pregnant. Her hand slid over her stomach like she was showing it off.
Alastair looked up, saw me, and a triumphant smirk—the kind he wore after closing a deal his father had handed him—flickered across his mouth. He thought this was a grand, devastating reveal. His goal was to shock me; he lived for reactions.
I didn’t blink. I felt nothing.
Him getting his mistress pregnant wasn’t a problem. It was leverage.
I headed in their direction. I’d thought I would have to pretend at this marriage when he came back, but with a bastard heir on the way, I finally had the key to my own cage.
“Elara,” he blurted, stepping forward. “I—”
I ignored Alastair entirely and offered the pregnant woman a polite, distant smile.
“Welcome to the city,” I said.
Alastair’s face crumpled slightly. He’d prepared for pushback—maybe even jealousy. He’d get none. I hadn’t liked him since I was fourteen. Beyond our wedding day, we’d never kissed, let alone fucked.
But he operated in contradictions when it came to me. I say left, he says right. I don’t care about him, he imagines I love him. I understood why.
Alastair and I were built out of the same tragedy—just on opposite sides of the door. His father had been my mother’s closest friend. The night she died, the Ashworths opened their home to me before my parents’ bodies were even cold. I’d been folded into their world—I got everything he got and more because I worked harder. I earned it.
Absurdly, Alastair never forgave me for that. He hated that I excelled at everything they reprimanded him for failing. I was the golden child; he was the biological disappointment. He hated me for being better, smarter, and more composed—but he was drawn to me because of it.
Attraction was never enough for him, though. He wanted control.
When his parents arranged our marriage, he thought he’d finally found a way to own me.
He figured out he couldn’t the night I went to the office instead of consummating the marriage. He left the country the next day.
“You’ll need to explain this to your parents,” I said, keeping my voice as smooth as chilled wine. “I won’t be the one telling them about your mistress.”
He opened and closed his mouth, useless as ever. Behind him, his parents approached—his father walking with a heavy, aristocratic stride, his mother already smiling at me. I didn’t bother to warn him.
His father saw the woman first. Then the belly. Then his son.
The slap landed so hard the crack echoed through the terminal. Alastair staggered. I almost laughed.
“You have a wife,” his father snarled. “A wife we chose. A daughter we raised. And this”—he gestured toward the girl—“this is what you bring home?”
The girl flinched, shrinking behind Alastair like a kicked puppy. Alastair rubbed his face, his rage finally boiling over.
“Then I’ll divorce her!”
The words should’ve hurt. They didn’t. I had to suppress a triumphant smile.He said it.
I stepped forward, calm and decisive, meeting my godfather’s furious eyes.
“Yes. I agree. Your grandchild should be born with his family intact.”
Relief bloomed in my chest—soft and dangerous, like wine on an empty heart.
His mother gasped. His father stared at me like I’d committedtreason. I knew they expected me to keep playing along with their sham of a marriage.
But I was tired.
