LOGINShare
Chapter 2
publish date:
2026-06-28 19:29:11POV: Hazel
"I'm heading out, and I have a dinner meeting later tonight," Julian said to someone in the hallway. "Let Mrs. Lucy know she shouldn't wait for me. She needs her sleep."
I kept my eyes squeezed shut, listening to the heavy thud of his footsteps as he walked back into our bedroom. I didn't move. I didn't breathe. I stayed tucked under the duvet, my face pressed into a pillow that was still damp from the tears I’d shed in the dark. My skin felt tight and itchy from the salt, but I didn't dare wipe it away. I couldn't let him see I was awake.
Usually, our mornings followed a strict routine. I would be up before him, selecting his silk tie and matching his cufflinks to his suit. I’d have his clothes laid out on the bench, perfectly pressed, so he never had to spend a single second thinking about his appearance. It was my way of being useful. It was how I showed him I cared, even if he never said it back.
Today, the closet remained closed. I heard the rustle of fabric and the click of hangers as he navigated the wardrobe himself. It was a small, silent rebellion, but it felt like a mountain between us. Eventually, the door clicked shut, and the house fell into that heavy, expensive silence that always felt like it was crushing me.
I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling. My leg throbbed with a dull, familiar ache. It was a permanent reminder of the night my life split in two.
Before the accident, I was a dancer. I had been at the top of my class at the academy, with a future that felt bright and limitless. Julian had been my secret world since high school. He was the brilliant, popular boy everyone admired. I was just the girl in the art wing, someone who lived in the margins of his world. I never thought he’d even look at me.
Then came that summer. I found him stumbling down the street, reeking of gin and lost in a haze of grief because Penelope Chambers had moved away. I followed him because I was worried. When he stepped into the path of that speeding car, I didn't think. I just pushed.
He survived without a scratch. I ended up with a shattered limb and a career that died on the operating table.
Julian married me out of a sense of duty. He stopped drinking, he became a provider, and he treated me with a gentle, distant kindness that felt worse than anger. He bought me everything I could ever want, but he never gave me the one thing I actually needed. He was grateful, but he wasn't in love.
I reached for my phone on the nightstand. The screen lit up, showing a notification for an email I had read a hundred times since midnight. It was an acceptance letter for a graduate program overseas. Yesterday, I was going to ask him if I could go. I wanted to see if he’d finally let me lead a life outside these four walls.
Now, the question felt pointless. Why ask for permission to leave a man who wasn't even really there?
My alarm went off, signaling the start of my study hour. Since the accident, I’d become a prisoner of my own schedule. I had to fill every minute with something productive to keep from drowning in my own thoughts. I swiped the alarm away and opened a social media app, my fingers moving on autopilot.
The first thing on my feed was a video.
The music was loud, a pulsing beat that hurt my head. The camera was shaky, capturing a group of people in a dimly lit, high-end lounge. A woman with long, flowing hair laughed into the lens. The username at the top of the screen read Penelope.
My heart dropped into my stomach.
"One, two, three! Welcome back, Penelope! Cheers!"
The voice behind the camera was deep and clear. I’d know it anywhere. It was the voice that had whispered that same name in our bed last night. It was Julian.
I watched the video again, my breath hitching. He wasn't at a work dinner. He was with her. He was celebrating her return while I was at home, wondering if I should pack my bags for a university thousands of miles away.
The woman in the video looked vibrant. She looked like she belonged in the light. I looked down at my pale, scarred leg under the covers and felt a wave of cold realization. Five years of playing the perfect, doting wife hadn't changed a thing. I was still the girl in the margins, and she was still his dream.
I sat up, the pain in my leg sharp and biting. I didn't care about the routine anymore. I didn't care about being the grateful, quiet girl who stayed in the house. The countdown hadn't just begun; it was already hitting zero.
I opened my laptop and looked at the acceptance letter. The deadline to respond was forty-eight hours away. My hand trembled as I hovered the cursor over the 'Accept' button.
The front door opened downstairs. I froze. Julian was supposed to be at the office. Why was he back?
I heard his footsteps on the stairs, faster than usual. He didn't knock. He pushed the door open, still wearing the suit he’d picked out himself. He looked at me, then at the phone in my hand, then at the tears I hadn't managed to hide.
"You're awake," he said, his voice dropping an octave.
"I am," I replied, my voice steadier than I expected. "I saw the video, Julian. The one from last night."
He didn't flinch. He didn't even look guilty. He just stood there, tall and untouchable, the same golden boy who had ruined my life without ever trying to.
"It was just a welcome-home drink for an old friend," he said calmly. "Don't make it into something it isn't, Hazel."
"An old friend?" I stood up, leaning heavily on my good leg. "You called her name last night. In this room. In our bed."
The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on. Julian looked at me, his expression unreadable, before he finally spoke.
"Are you going to let me explain, or are you just going to stand there and cry?"
Latest chapter
RECLAIMING MY LIFE FROM THE UNTOUCHABLE CEO chapter 150
(Hazel's POV)"You have your mother's eyes, Hazel, and your father's stubborn refusal to look away from things that frighten you." Vincent's voice was calm, almost gentle, nothing like the cold calculation I had braced myself to face when I finally stepped into the quiet hotel suite Diane had insisted on securing for this meeting.He was older than I expected, silver haired and thin, seated by the window with the careful stillness of a man who had spent thirty years perfecting patience, the late afternoon light catching the sharp angles of his face in a way that made him look almost harmless. Julian waited just outside the door, close enough to reach me instantly, far enough to let me face this final name entirely on my own terms, exactly the way I had asked him to."You funded Marcus," I said, refusing to let his gentle tone soften the accusation, my voice steadier than I expected it to be after everything that had happened over the past few days. "You funded the sabotage at the gala
RECLAIMING MY LIFE FROM THE UNTOUCHABLE CEO chapter 149
(Hazel's POV)"Say the name again, Nathaniel, slowly, because I want to be absolutely certain I heard you correctly." Diane's voice, replayed through the recording on her phone the next morning, carried a tension I had rarely heard from her in all our years of friendship.Julian and I sat together at the kitchen table, his arm still bandaged, both of us leaning close to hear the crackling audio clearly over the quiet morning sounds of the children playing in the next room, their laughter drifting in through the doorway like it belonged to some entirely separate, untouched world."Eleanor's brother," Nathaniel's recorded voice answered, weary and resigned. "Vincent. He never forgave Julian's father for cutting him out of the company decades ago. He has been funding Marcus quietly from overseas for years, waiting for the right opportunity to finally bring the whole family down."I sat back slowly, my mind reeling, the coffee in front of me growing cold and forgotten. "Eleanor never once
RECLAIMING MY LIFE FROM THE UNTOUCHABLE CEO chapter 148
(Hazel's POV)"The man in the video is not Marcus, and he is not a stranger either, Hazel. You already know his face." Diane's words hit me the moment I stepped out of Julian's hospital room, exhausted and hollow after hours of waiting through stitches and scans and careful reassurances that he would fully recover."What do you mean I already know him," I asked, my mind racing through every face from the gala, every possible enemy still left standing after everything we had already survived together, my body too tired to properly brace itself for whatever answer was coming.Diane turned her tablet toward me, pausing the security footage on a clear, unmistakable frame. My breath caught painfully in my throat, the hospital hallway suddenly narrowing around me until it felt like the only thing left in the world."That is Nathaniel," I whispered, staring at the face of the man Eleanor had once let take the fall for smaller crimes, the same man Desmond had mentioned only weeks earlier duri
RECLAIMING MY LIFE FROM THE UNTOUCHABLE CEO chapter 147
(Hazel's POV)"Get down, Hazel, now," Julian's voice cracked through the sudden darkness like a whip, his arm slamming across my chest and pulling me hard against him a half second before the first crash of shattering glass echoed through the ballroom.The lights had failed completely, plunging six hundred guests into screaming, stumbling chaos, the emergency exit signs casting the only dim red glow across the panicked crowd. I clung to Julian's jacket, my heart hammering so violently I could barely hear my own thoughts, the smell of dust and burnt wiring suddenly thick in the air around us."The rigging above the stage," someone shouted from somewhere near the wings. "It is coming loose."Julian pulled me backward just as a section of decorative scaffolding tore free from the ceiling directly above where I had been standing only seconds earlier, crashing down in a shower of splintered wood and twisted metal exactly where my podium had stood only moments before, close enough that I fe
RECLAIMING MY LIFE FROM THE UNTOUCHABLE CEO chapter 146
(Hazel's POV)"They are already seated, Mrs. Daniel, all six hundred of them, and Marcus Chambers just walked in through the east entrance." The event coordinator's whisper carried more warning than she probably intended, and my stomach dropped straight to the floor of the small dressing room.I studied my reflection in the mirror one final time, the deep blue gown Julian had chosen catching the light exactly the way he promised it would, my hair swept back in a style that no longer tried to hide anything at all, no scarves, no careful angles, nothing between me and the room I was about to walk into. Behind me, Julian adjusted his cufflinks with steady, practiced hands, though I noticed the faint tremor betraying the calm he worked so hard to project."You do not have to do this alone," he reminded me quietly, meeting my eyes in the mirror."I know," I said. "But I want to walk out there on my own first. You can join me once I have said what I need to say."Julian studied me for a lon
RECLAIMING MY LIFE FROM THE UNTOUCHABLE CEO chapter 145
(Hazel's POV)"You want me to do what, exactly," I asked, certain I had misheard Julian across the quiet of his study, the folder Corinne had given us still spread open between us on the desk, the lamp light catching the edges of the pages like a warning."I want you to speak first at the gala," Julian repeated, his voice steady despite the enormity of what he was proposing. "Before Marcus can release anything. I want you to tell the truth about the accident yourself, in your own words, before he ever gets the chance to twist it into a weapon.""That is not protecting me, Julian, that is handing me directly to him," I said, my pulse climbing at the thought of standing in front of hundreds of people and revealing the worst night of my life on my own terms, in real time, with no way to take it back once the words left my mouth."It is the opposite of handing you to him," Julian said, coming around the desk to kneel in front of where I sat, taking both my hands firmly in his, his eyes lo
You may also like
A Dangerous Atrophy
Qi River's Old Stream783.9K viewsThe Breaking Point of Love
Cloudsearcher4.3M viewsThe Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins
Artemis Z.Y.758.8K viewsBillionaire's Match
Tangy Candy4.0M viewsThe Devil’s Contract
Ashley Sheeks67 viewsOops! I Am My Bully's Bride
Chloe Jewels 75 viewsThe Billionaire’s Wife Does Not Exist
Aveline Kryss110 viewsSold To The Billionaire Who Ruined Me
JayKnight 86 views
