Chapter 2

Valeria couldn't remember how she had gotten to the apartment Alexander had assigned her after the wedding. The city streets passed by in a blur through the taxi windows, while tears continued to fall uncontrollably down her cheeks. The driver looked at her through the rearview mirror a couple of times, but didn't dare to ask.

Upon entering the luxurious 28th-floor apartment, the silence hit her like a slap. Everything was impeccable, cold, soulless. Just like the man who had just thrown her out of his life. She took off her heels and threw them angrily against the wall. The dull thud echoed in the emptiness.

"How could I be so stupid?" she whispered, dropping onto the white sofa.

Three years. Three damn years loving him in secret, enduring his contempt, his absences, his nights where he took her with savage passion only to treat her as if she were invisible afterward. She remembered the first time Alexander touched her. It was after signing the marriage contract. He had been drinking, furious over a failed meeting, and she was simply there. That night he had kissed her with urgency, tearing her clothes off as if they were a nuisance. His large hands roaming her body, his demanding lips, his deep and possessive thrusts that made her scream his name through tears of pleasure and pain.

Valeria hugged her knees, still feeling the ghost of those caresses. She had loved him so much. Even when he humiliated her in front of his partners, calling her "the little woman I had to buy." Even when Sophia slept under the same roof at the parties they hosted.

Valeria had barely closed the apartment door when the doorbell rang loudly. Her heart skipped a beat. Still with a tear-stained face, she opened it without looking. There they were.

Alexander Blackwood, imposing in his black suit, and Sophia hanging on his arm like a shiny trophy. The model smiled with pure malice upon seeing her shattered.

"What are you doing here?" Valeria asked with a broken voice. "You already signed the papers. You were supposed to leave me alone."

Alexander entered without asking permission, pushing the door open with his shoulder. Sophia followed him, looking at the place as if it belonged to her.

"I came to make sure you were really leaving," he said with an icy voice. "I don't trust you, Valeria. You were always an opportunist. Three years pretending to be the perfect wife while you were only after my money and my last name."

Sophia let out a cruel laugh and stepped closer, looking her up and down.

"Look at yourself. Pathetic. Did you really believe Alexander would love you? You were just a contract. A mediocre secretary who spread her legs at the right moment. Even I felt secondhand embarrassment every time I saw you trying to get his attention like a stray dog."

Valeria stepped back, feeling every word like a stab wound. The nausea from the last few weeks intensified, but she ignored it.

"Alexander... please," she begged in a whisper. "Don't humiliate me anymore. Just let me gather my things and leave."

He laughed coldly. He walked up to her and grabbed her chin forcefully, forcing her to look at him. His gray eyes were filled with contempt.

"Humiliate you? You humiliated yourself. Every night I fucked you it was only because I was drunk or stressed. You never meant anything. Sophia is right: you're a cheap opportunist. Tomorrow I will have this apartment cleared of all your trash."

Sophia opened the closet and started throwing Valeria's clothes onto the floor with disdain.

"This is what you deserve. Get out of here like the nobody you are. Do you think anyone will believe you if you speak ill of him? Everyone knows you married for profit. The press has already been notified."

Valeria felt her world collapsing. She tried to gather her clothes, but Alexander grabbed her arm tightly and dragged her toward the door.

"Out," he ordered. "I don't want to see you for another second. Gather what you can and disappear. If I ever see you near me or my company again, I will destroy you completely."

He pushed her into the hallway. Valeria stumbled and fell to her knees on the cold marble. Tears fell uncontrollably as she tried to get up. Some neighbors opened their doors, murmuring.

"Alexander..." she pleaded one last time.

"To me you are already dead, Valeria Montenegro. You're worthless."

Sophia slammed the door in her face with a burst of laughter. Valeria stayed there, sitting on the hallway floor, instinctively hugging her belly. She didn't know yet that a life was growing inside her. She only felt a deep pain in her soul and a weariness that went beyond the physical.

She gathered the little she could fit into a suitcase she left at the entrance and went down to the lobby. The doorman, following orders, wouldn't even let her wait for a taxi inside the building. They forced her out into the street under the fine night rain.

There, soaked and broken, Valeria walked for several blocks until she found a cheap hotel. That same night, in the miserable room, she took the pregnancy test with trembling hands. Two pink lines glowed on the display.

Pregnant.

She touched her belly with fear and rage.

"I won't let them hurt you," she whispered. "Your father doesn't deserve you."

The next day, all the magazine covers and social networks exploded:

"Alexander Blackwood humiliates and kicks his wife out onto the street like a nobody"

"Valeria Montenegro, the opportunist who tried to snare the most powerful billionaire in the country, finally discarded"

The headlines were ruthless. Photos of her crying in the street, gathering her suitcase in the rain. Anonymous interviews from "close sources" calling her calculating, a social climber, and a liar. No one mentioned the years of contempt she had endured. No one knew about the pregnancy.

Alexander read the headlines in his office while Sophia sat on his lap, kissing his neck.

"Perfect," he said with a cold smile. "Let the whole world know what kind of woman she was."

Valeria, from her hotel room, watched the news and clenched her fists. The pain slowly transformed into something darker and stronger.

This humiliation would not be in vain.