Chapter 2

Sienna had a way of keeping Nathan's attention. When he was with her, he rarely checked his phone, and anything I sent him usually went unanswered until the next morning.

I was done waiting.

The HR manager hesitated, but given my position in the company, she placed the call anyway.

"Mr. Sinclair, it's about Mrs. Sinclair. She wants to—"

Nathan cut her off before she could finish, his voice sharp and irritated.

"Whatever she wants, handle it according to protocol. That's your job, isn't it? Do I really need to walk you through your own job?"

It was obvious he was still angry about my comment on Sienna's post.

The HR manager didn't say another word.

Nathan added, "And from now on, if it's not urgent, send a message. Stop calling me."

The line went dead.

But in the split second before he hung up, I heard Sienna's voice in the background, soft and teasing.

"Nathan, you sound so stressed. Was that your wife calling again?"

The HR manager's face tightened, and she looked at me with something close to pity, though her tone stayed carefully neutral.

"You heard him. Take the letter back and we'll pretend this never happened. I won't say a word to anyone."

She didn't believe I was actually resigning. In her mind, this was just another one of my attempts to get Nathan's attention, a way of forcing him to notice me.

And honestly, who could blame her for thinking that? Nathan and I had been married for eight years. We had built Sinclair Group together from the ground up. No one would ever expect me to walk away from it.

I pushed the letter closer to her.

"Please process it according to company policy."

She blinked, clearly startled, and tried to talk me out of it a few more times. When she realized I wasn't backing down, she finally stamped the resignation letter and started the handover process.

Word spread through the office within minutes.

Most people assumed the same thing—that I was using the resignation as leverage and it had backfired.

I didn't bother correcting them. I gathered my things and walked out without looking back.

I hadn't even reached the elevator when the HR manager came running after me, waving her phone.

"Wait—Mr. Sinclair just called. He wants to speak to you."

The hallway went quiet.

Someone nearby whispered, "Who would've thought? Playing hard to get actually worked. He fell for it after all."

I stopped and took the phone from her hand.

The speaker was on. Nathan's voice carried clearly to everyone standing nearby, and his first words were an accusation.

"Why didn't you answer when I called? What if I'd needed something important? Are you planning to take responsibility if something gets missed?"

"Head over to Sienna's place and grab the document off her living room table. She forgot it in her apartment. A client downtown is waiting for it, so take care of it."

Silence fell over the hallway, followed by the quiet ripple of suppressed laughter.

I held the phone loosely in my hand, and for a moment, I felt nothing but cold clarity.

I had known for a long time that Nathan no longer treated me with any real respect, but hearing it like this—in front of everyone—still sent a chill through me.

Not long ago, in order to make it easier for Sienna to give me orders, Nathan had promoted her to a position equal to mine. He called it "collaborative leadership," but in reality, it just meant that any work Sienna didn't feel like doing got dumped on my desk.

Now that news of my resignation had presumably reached him, he was still ordering me around like I was her errand girl.

I let out a quiet, bitter laugh and, for the first time in eight years, I refused to swallow my pride for the sake of keeping this unequal marriage intact.

"Why would it be my responsibility to handle Sienna's work?"

There was a pause on the other end, like the question had caught him off guard.

Before he could recover, I added, "Also, I don't have the time. Whoever forgot the file can go get it themselves."

I hung up and handed the phone back to the HR manager.

Then, as the entire office watched in stunned disbelief, I walked straight out through the front doors.

A short distance past the building's entrance, I stopped and turned back for a moment to look at the office that had been part of my life for eight years.

Through the glass, I could see into Nathan's office on the top floor. The orchid I had given him on our first anniversary sat on the windowsill, brown and dried out. Beside it, a succulent Sienna had brought him last month was thriving, bright and green.

I smiled quietly to myself, pulled out my phone, and made a call.

"That project you mentioned before—I've thought it over."

"I'm in."