Chapter 5

Quinn's POV

I don’t know why I opened the bottom drawer of his desk. We’ve been married eight months, and I have never touched his things without asking first. But something felt off: he had been coming home later each night, his tie loose as if he had been pulling at it—the way he does when he’s hiding something significant.

I had gone to his quiet office to retrieve the folder of design specs for tomorrow’s meeting. Rain streaked down the windows, and his laptop sat open to a spreadsheet. Still, my eyes kept drifting to that drawer, the one with a scratch on its edge, as though it had been forced open before.

I pulled the handle and it opened easily. At first, there were just manila folders – nothing strange.

But under them, wrapped in tissue paper, were dozens of photos. One showed Leander and Wren laughing in a park he’d told me about; his arm was around her, and she looked up at him like he was a diamond. Another looked like a wedding shot – not ours, with her hand on his chest, both smiling like they shared a secret. The dates on the backs ranged from ten years ago to last month.

Last month, when he said he was at a board meeting in Chicago.

My hands were shaking shake as I lift the photos. Under them are letters tied with thin blue ribbon. I pulled one out and look it carefully. The writing isn’t his, but it says: To my Leander. I didn't read all of it, just parts about “the life we almost had” and “never should have been pulled apart.” I dropped the letter and it hits the floor with a loud sound.

Then the front door suddenly opened. I heard his keys clatter in the bowl by the entryway.

“Quinn? Are you awake? I brought your favorite lemon-filled donuts from Main Street.”

I didn’t answer. I stood there, pressing the photos to my chest like a shield even though they hurt me badly.

He walked into the office and his face went pale the second he saw what I am holding.

“Quinn, let me explain.”

“Explain what?” My voice cracked. I was about to burst out because of the pain in my heart but I stay calmed, “That you’ve been meeting her this whole time? That you’ve been keeping pictures of her hidden in your desk while we’ve been sharing a bed?”

“It’s not what you think.” He stoop forward, but I stopped him.

“Then what is it? Because from where I stand, it's like you have two wives, one for your image and the other one is the you value the most, where am I in that, Leander?"

“That’s not true," he said, “We were talking business. Her family works with our oldest investors – ones my grandfather dealt with long before I was born. I had to make sure everything was solid for the merger vote.” He responded

"Fuck that business, Leander!! What am I to you, huh?" I laughed harshly.

“Business meetings don’t need love letters from ten years ago, Leander. They don’t need photos taken last month when you said you were out of town.”

“I was out of town,” he said, and now his voice is tight too. “She was there for the same conference. We ran into each other by accident. I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d get the wrong idea –”

“The wrong idea?” I dropped the photos and they scattered on the floor “What other idea am I supposed to get? You married me to save my family’s firm from going down. I get that, we both agree and signed the papers, we both knew what this was supposed to be. But I thought at least we were being honest with each other.”

I walked past him to the kitchen. On the counter sits the folder of partnership documents – the ones we spent weeks drafting together. They were supposed to give my family a real share in Ivanov Industries, not just a handout. I picked it up, my fingers are touching the pages we initialed line by line.

“I want this over,” I said, my voice is steady now.

“I’ll sign whatever you need. We’ll split everything as we agreed. I just want out.” I am just wondering, how long will he lie? Maybe it's about time to leave this relationship because no matter what I do, saving it, he still manage to lie in front of me.

He followed me and grabbed the papers out of my hand before I can tear them like I want to. “No, not this time."

Why does he making everything so hard for me?

“Not now?” I stared at him, unable to believe what I’m hearing. “Do you think after this after I find out you’ve been hiding everything, you get to decide when we will end this?”

“I got to make sure we’re not making a mistake because of lies,” he said, and for the first time since I found the photos, his voice is firm.

"But you're already making a mistake, Leander! Can't you understand it?"

“There’s more going on here than either of us knows. My grandfather wasn’t just doing business with her family there’s something he never told me, something that goes back to when the company started. I need time to find out what it is.”

“How much time?” I asked while crossing my arms over my chest.

“Three months, that's all I am asking. By then, I’ll have answers about her family, about my grandfather, about everything we don’t know. If we still want to end things after that, fine. I’ll sign every piece of paper you put in front of me. But I’m not letting you walk away because of half-truths and old pictures.”

I looked at him, the new lines around his eyes, how he held the papers like they were all that tied us together. Part of me wanted to say yes, pack up and go back to my old place where I didn’t worry about secrets. But another part wondered if he was telling the truth – the part that worked with him for weeks, that saw how he looked at my mother’s sketches.

“You’re prioritizing her before me,” I said. “Over us, over the things that we agreed to build up."

“I’m prioritizing the truth,” he said, and his eyes meet mine, really meet them since I confronted him. “I know I messed up, I know I should have told you she was back. But I won’t let lies destroy something that could be real. Even if you don’t see it yet.”

I don’t have an answer for that. I just took the papers back from him, fold them carefully, and set them in the drawer of the kitchen. “Three months,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “That’s all you get. After that, no more excuses." He nodded.