Chapter 2

Maya’s POV

I stayed until the last possible minute.

Not because there was work left. Because I needed time to rebuild the mask.

By the time I stepped into the executive hallway leading to the private parking garage, my heels clicked with deliberate calm. 

My makeup was fresh, concealer over the red rims of my eyes, lipstick the exact shade of controlled power I’d worn on our wedding day. No one would guess I’d spent the last three hours staring at balance sheets without seeing a single number.

Mason was already there.

He stood beside the glass doors that separated the polished corporate world from the concrete garage below, scrolling through his phone with that bored, impatient flick of his thumb. Black suit, crisp white shirt, cufflinks glinting under the recessed lighting, every inch the untouchable billionaire. Not a hair out of place. Not a flicker of warmth in his posture

He didn’t look up when I approached.

I stopped a few feet away, clutching my leather portfolio like it was armor.

“Mason”

His eyes lifted slowly, the way someone glances at a mildly irritating delay. No smile. No softening. Just the flat, assessing stare he’d perfected over the last eight years.

“What?”

I swallowed the acid rising in my throat. “Do you remember what tomorrow is?”

His brow creased for half a second, genuine confusion before smoothing out again into indifference. He slipped the phone into his pocket.

“Should I?”

The question wasn’t cruel. It was worse. It was careless.

I forced my voice steady. “It’s our eighth wedding anniversary.”

He exhaled through his nose, a short, impatient sound. The sigh of a man who’d already mentally checked out of the conversation before it began.

“Right,” he said, as though I’d reminded him of a minor tax filing deadline. “That.”

No wonder.

No wonder he could kiss Selina in the boardroom like she was oxygen. No wonder he could build an entire future inside her while I stood outside the door like a ghost.

I kept my face blank. The pregnancy stayed locked behind my teeth. He didn’t deserve to know I knew….not yet.

Instead I asked the question that had been clawing at me for years, the one I’d always swallowed because pride is a luxury a convenient wife can’t afford.

“What did I do wrong, Mason?” My voice came out quieter than I intended. “What did I do that made you hate me so much?”

He looked at me then….. Not with anger. Not with pity. With the detached curiosity of someone examining a mildly interesting artifact.

“Nothing,” he said simply. “You didn’t do anything wrong”

The hallway lights buzzed faintly overhead.

“Then why?” I pressed, stepping closer despite every instinct screaming to run. “Why do you look at me like I’m something you’re forced to endure? Why do you touch me like it’s a chore?”

He tilted his head, studying me the way he studied quarterly projections….cold, clinical, searching for the line item that didn’t add up.

“Because this….” he gestured loosely between us, “......was never supposed to be more than what it is. A transaction. Our fathers needed the merger to survive. We were the signature on the contract. That’s all”

My chest tightened until breathing felt optional.

“I know that,” I said. “I’ve always known that. But I thought… I thought if I tried hard enough”

He cut me off with a small, humorless laugh.

“You thought what? That devotion would turn into love? That if you learned every shipping route, charmed every investor, hosted every dinner party with perfect poise, I’d suddenly wake up and feel something for you?” 

He shook his head. “Maya. You’re still thinking like the girl who believed fairy tales have footnotes…”

Heat burned behind my eyes, but I refused to let it spill.

“I gave you everything,” I whispered. “Every part of me. My body, my time, my future. Three miscarriages, Mason. Three times I carried your child and lost it, and every single time I told myself if I just survived it….if I just kept going….you’d see how much I loved you. How much I was willing to bleed for this.”

His expression didn’t change.

“I’m aware,” he said flatly. “And I’m sorry for your losses. I am. But sympathy isn’t love. Gratitude isn’t desire.”

The words landed like open-handed slaps.

“Then what am I to you?” My voice cracked on the last syllable despite my best efforts. “What have I ever been?”

He considered the question for a long moment, as though weighing whether the answer was worth the breath.

“Financial stability,” he said at last. “Security for both families. A name on the letterhead. That’s what you are. That’s what this marriage gave you. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

I stared at him.

Eight years.

Eight years of waking up beside a man who never reached for me in the night unless it was calculated. Eight years of anniversaries marked only by the accountants who filed the joint tax return. Eight years of loving someone who measured affection in quarterly earnings.

And still, I had asked.

I had begged for the truth.

Now I had it.

“You’re boring,” he added, almost as an afterthought, like he was critiquing a restaurant menu. “In conversation. In bed. In every way that matters to a man who actually wants to feel something when he comes home.”

The hallway seemed to shrink around us

I felt the sting of it everywhere, cheeks, throat, chest…like I’d been stripped naked under fluorescent lights.

But beneath the humiliation, something colder was taking root. Something sharp and final.

I lifted my chin.

“So that’s it?” I asked softly. “Eight years, and the verdict is I’m boring?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “You asked.”

I nodded once.

Then I turned and walked toward the elevator without another word.

He didn’t call after me.

Why would he?

The doors slid closed between us, and I watched his silhouette blur and vanish behind frosted glass.

Alone in the metal box, descending into the garage, I pressed my palm flat against the cool wall and let out one long, shuddering breath.

He thought he’d just ended something.

He had no idea he’d only just begun it.

Tomorrow was our anniversary.

Tomorrow I would smile for the cameras if there were any.

Tomorrow I would let him think I was still the same predictable, devoted wife he could discard at his leisure.