Millions of dollars !

CHAPTER ONE

Aysha POV

I woke up to giggling.

Not just any giggling, the kind that's too comfortable, too familiar, the kind that doesn't belong in a married home at this hour.

I sat up slowly, blinking the sleep out of my eyes.

The sound was coming from across the hallway.

Adrian, My husband's study.

I tied my robe and padded toward it, telling myself I was probably imagining things.

"Oh Adrian, you're so funny." The voice said again.

I stopped dead in front of the door.

That's Mira, his personal assistant .

My stomach twisted upon realization .

I pressed my eye to the keyhole, because I wasn't allowed near the study. Adrian made that clear a long time ago.

"That room is for important people and important things," he had said one night, not even looking up from his desk. "Unfortunately, Aysha, you are neither." That felt like a knife to my skin.

I looked through the keyhole and what I saw made my chest cave in.

Mira was sitting on his lap. Right there, comfortable and relaxed, like she owned the place, like she owned him.

Her head was thrown back laughing at something he said, her hand resting on his shoulder. Adrian didn't push her off. He didn't even flinch. He just sat there, smiling, holding her like she was the most natural thing in the world.

"I've never once seen him smile at me like that before." I thought.

I pulled back gently from the door.

My hands were shaking. My throat was tight. I told myself to just walk away, go back to my room, pretend I didn't see anything, because what was I going to do anyway? Nothing.

I turned to leave but then my elbow hit the vase near the door. The sound it made when it hit the floor was the loudest thing I'd ever heard in my life.

Porcelain breaking everywhere, sharp pieces scattering across the floor. I dropped to my knees immediately, hands shaking as I started grabbing the pieces.

"Adrian is so gonna kill me, what I'm I going to do." I kept hoping that maybe there's a tiny chance that he might not have heard it.. but,

"What the hell did you do, woman?" Luck was definitely not on my side.

My whole body froze.

He was already at the door, eyes cold, jaw tight, the way he gets when he's about two seconds away from making my life very difficult.

"Adrian, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, I was just passing and I accidentally.."

"That vase," Mira cut in from behind him, voice sweet and poisonous at the same time, "is worth millions. Sir Adrian won it at a Paris auction and you just shattered it like it was nothing."

She wasn't even talking to me. She was talking at me. Like I was entertainment.

Adrian grabbed me by my hair before I could say another word. I felt the pull first, sharp and sudden, then I was stumbling upward, my knees scraping the floor.

"Adrian, please,"

"That vase is worth more than your entire existence." His voice was low, controlled, which was somehow worse than screaming.

He shoved me back down, hard, and my hand landed directly on a broken piece.

The pain shot up my arm immediately.

"Ow, Adrian!" I cried, grabbing my hand.

Blood was already coming through my fingers, warm and fast. "My hand, look at my hand,"

"You're lucky it's only your hand. Clean every single piece of this up before I'm back." He straightened his shirt, didn't even look at my hand. "Or next time you won't be so lucky."

Mira slipped her arm through his as they walked away. She looked back at me with this slow, satisfied look, and whispered something to him that made him breathe out like a laugh.

I sat on the cold floor, hand bleeding, chest burning, and listened to their footsteps disappear down the hallway.

The silence they left behind was worse than the noise.

I pressed my robe against my hand and looked at the mess around me. Broken pieces everywhere catching the light, sharp little reminders of everything I couldn't fix.

My eyes were stinging, my throat was thick, I kept swallowing against it because I told myself I wasn't going to cry again, I cried last time too and it never helped anything.

But the tears came anyway.

I thought about calling my mother. I picked up my phone, stared at her contact, then put it back down. What was I going to say? What was she going to do from that far away?

Adrian controlled everything here, the house, the money, the way people looked at me when I walked into a room. My mother would just worry herself sick and feel helpless, I couldn't do that to her.

I started picking up the bigger pieces with my good hand, slow and careful.

Mira's laugh kept replaying in my head, the way she looked sitting on him, so comfortable. The way he didn't even try to pretend.

Like I wasn't real enough to perform for. Like I wasn't even worth the lie.

That hurt more than the hand.

I'd gotten used to being ignored. I'd gotten used to being spoken to like I was a staff.

But there was something about tonight, about seeing it with my own eyes, that made something inside me shift into a place it hadn't been before.

Not just hurt. Something else. Something quieter, darker and more dangerous than hurt.

I sat back against the wall, knees pulled up, hand wrapped in my robe, tears drying cold on my face.

I thought about leaving. Somewhere far from this life and everything suffocating me. I thought about someone coming to save me but I know it's nothing more than a fantasy that will never happen.

He'd built a cage so carefully that I hadn't even noticed it being built.

I was still sitting there when I heard footsteps in the hallway.

My whole body stiffened.

I looked down at the floor, still half covered in broken porcelain, my hand still bleeding, my eyes still swollen.

If he'd come back and this wasn't cleaned up he would....

The footsteps stopped right behind me.

My stomach dropped to the floor.

I turned around slowly, holding my breath.

And then a familiar voice spoke.