Chapter 02

"Is this your new plan to trapping me again?"

Arvan’s voice was colder than before. He laugh short and bitter.

"Clever. Using your child as your instrument now. How low can you sink, Reyna?"

It landed like a stone against my chest.

"This is not something I invented." My voice trembled despite every effort to hold it still. "I just came from the hospital. The doctor already confirmed..."

"I know how you operate, Reyna Valeria." He cut me off. "Four years ago you used my trust to get into my bed. Now you're using Kirana's name to pull me back home." His voice dropped lower, but the cruelty inside it sharpened. "If Kirana really sick as you claim, then consider it your punishment."

The air left my lungs completely.

Punishment.

The word hit harder than it should have. Not because I was unaccustomed to the edges of Arvan's language. But because this time, he had said something terrible about his own daughter. Kirana. The small girl who had fallen asleep that afternoon holding her rabbit, quietly hoping to spend what I now knew was her last birthday with her father.

"I have said you many times. I want a divorce." His tone returned to something flat and final. "That is the only thing I am willing to hear from you. If you are calling for any other reason, do not contact me again."

I looked down at the medical report still held in my left hand. White pages covered in numbers and diagnoses I had never imagined reading in my lifetime. My hands were shaking, not only from suppressed tears, but from an exhaustion that had accumulated for far too long.

Four years I had endured, not for my own sake, but for Kirana's. Hoping that someday Arvan would look at his daughter and love her. I hoped his prejudice against me would melt away when he heard Kirana's laughter.

But I just hope for a door that never opens.

There was nothing left to salvage.

Arvan never wanted me. Had never truly wanted us. And no marriage can be sustained when only one side is still trying.

"I agree to the divorce."

My voice came out steadier than I expected.

A brief silence. Arvan had clearly not anticipated those words from me tonight.

"But I have one condition."

"A condition?" Skepticism sharpened his tone.

"Be there for Kirana's birthday." I swallowed. "Be a real father to her before that day comes. That is all I am asking. After that, I will sign whatever you put in front of me."

A long pause.

"Fine," Arvan said curtly. "Come to my office tomorrow. I will have the papers prepared."

The line went dead.

I set the phone on the table, stared at its dark screen, and remained there for longer than I should have.

---

The following morning, Kirana was still sleeping soundly when I left to meet Arvan. I arrived at the Hargrove Group building at precisely eight o'clock.

The elevator carried me up to the executive floor. I knew this corridor well. I had walked it every day as Arvan's secretary, carrying schedules and documents and a trust I had once believed was mutual.

Four years ago I had entered Hargrove Group as a new employee. An orphan without connections, I had worked with every ounce of discipline I possessed until the promotions came. Arvan, newly installed as CEO at the time, had openly praised my persistence. Gradually we had become something beyond colleagues, something that felt like genuine friendship.

Then that night happened, and everything I had built turned to ash.

Arvan accused me of being a cunning woman who only wanted to increase her social status by climbing into his bed.

"It has been a long time since you two last saw each other. What was it like, seeing Lara again after everything?"

When I reached the door to the CEO's office, I stopped.

Voices were leaking through the gap. Arvan speaking with someone. Not loud, but clear enough.

That voice belonged to Martin. An old friend of Arvan's.

I should have knocked.

But what came next held me in place.

"She is exactly the same," Arvan answered. His tone was nothing like the one I had heard the night before. Softer. More human, as though the voice I had just been speaking to belonged to a different man entirely. "She is here now, with her child. I am not going to let her go again."

"But what about Reyna? She also has your child."

A pause.

"What about her?"

My heart went still.

"A woman like her was never meant for me. Calculating. Always knowing how to turn a situation to her advantage. If she hadn't provoked me that night, I would never have touched her. I married her because my family pressured me into it. Not because I wanted her." His voice was level, the voice of a man stating something he had long since decided was simply fact. "Every time I look at her, I feel repulsed. I cannot wait to be free of her."

My hands closed into fists at my sides.

Inside the room, his friend said nothing. Perhaps there was nothing to say.

I had no words either.

I had heard versions of those words over the past four years—in the way Arvan looked at me, in the tone of his voice, in the distance he always kept. But hearing them spoken so clearly, to another person, felt like something had snapped inside me.

I wiped the tears I had not noticed falling. Drew a slow breath and straightened my back.

Then I knocked.

Arvan looked up when I entered, with the expression I had long since memorized. Cold and faintly revolted, the look of a man confronted with something he wishes were elsewhere.

Martin excused himself shortly after with an uncomfortable nod and left the room.

Arvan's assistant, who had received me at the door, watched me with eyes that were too gentle. A look of quiet pity. She had likely heard as well.

I did not care.

Arvan slid a folder across the desk without speaking. Inside, the divorce agreement had been prepared with meticulous care, complete with clauses on asset division and custody.

I picked it up and skimmed it.

Full custody assigned to the first party. Arvan had not even listed himself as a guardian. He wanted to step out of our lives entirely, without leaving a single trace behind.

"Satisfied?" he asked.

I raised my eyes and looked at him directly.

Once, a moment like this would have had me searching his face for some opening, some sign that beneath all the frost there was still something worth reaching. That perhaps one day Arvan would let go of his certainty about me. That perhaps one day he would truly see Kirana and understand what it meant to be her father.

I had loved Arvan once, with a completeness that humiliated me now to remember. But after hearing his own words this morning, none of that mattered any longer.

Only one thing mattered. Kirana.

Within thirty days, I would do whatever it took to make every single one of them count for her.

Even if that meant signing these papers. Even if that meant standing in the same room as a man who found my existence repulsive.

I would do it without hesitation.

"As long as you can be a real father to Kirana," I said quietly, "I will sign this."

I picked up the folder from the desk.

"After her birthday, I will return this to you."