I don’t remember saying I DO

Elara’s POV“Sign the divorce papers, Elara.” Nathan slid the document across the polished mahogany table without meeting my eyes.“You’ve embarrassed the Wilson family enough.”My eyes burned and my throat closed. Would he still throw me out if he knew the truth?In five hours, the man who once swore under fairy lights and champagne to protect me forever would demand I vanish from his life.The kitchen smelled of bleach and lemon polish. Mrs. Martha’s heels clicked across the marble like gunshots“Why are you standing there like a useless statue? The luncheon starts in three hours and this place is still filthy.”I gripped the mop handle. My stomach twisted hard. The ache had been growing for days, but I’d asked for ten minutes to lie down and she’d laughed.I dragged the mop slowly. Sweat beaded on my temples. My vision blurred at the edges.“You lazy thing! Still in one spot!?”She crossed the room in seconds, face twisted. This was the woman who once called me her daughter.I swa

Elara’s povMy hands stilled over the papers as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing.DIVORCE SETTLEMENT.The words blurred at first, then sharpened painfully when I forced my vision to hold. The date sat beneath it like a final insult. Five hours ago.Five hours was all it had taken for everything I knew to be rewritten into something I could no longer recognize.“You’ve embarrassed the Wilson family enough,” Nathan said.His voice was flat, stripped of anything human I could hold onto. Not anger, not hesitation, not even discomfort. Just finality, like I had already been erased and he was only completing the process.The door behind me opened, and I heard the steady rhythm of heels entering the room. Two pairs, unhurried and deliberate, as if the space belonged to them more than it ever had to me.Mrs Martha walked in first and stopped beside me without a glance of acknowledgment. Her expression was sharp and openly contemptuous, as though I had always been beneath her toleran

Elara’s pov“Elara,” he called but I refused to look at him.“I’m sure you want to talk about how I could possibly repay you, then I’m sorry but you should have left me to die,” I said curtly. Finally meeting his gaze.He stood there, a familar air around him as he took me in. I recognized something about him and found myself not shrinking in fear at how cold his eyes were.Or maybe because they weren’t trying to hide anything. Maybe because they were real or maybe because his eyes refracted something…warm.“I didn’t save you because you were bleeding out on the floor. I didn’t save you out of kindness,” he said and found a chair to perch in.My eyes followed his movement as he took a serious pose. I frowned.If it wasn’t out of charity or whatever rich people do, then why bother to save my life?“I saved you because the Elara I know wouldn’t be sitting here pretending not to see what’s right in front of her,” he said and the room went still.Before a small chuckle left my lips.“I se