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Leila

“Did… did I hear you right, Desmond?” My voice trembled, my heartbeat thudding so hard it felt like it was echoing in my ears.

His eyes, those eyes I thought would never lie to me stayed cold and unyielding, “You heard me, Leila.” His tone was calm, “I never loved you, after we got married, I tried God I knew I tried but it just wasn’t working. The harder I forced it, the more I resented myself.”

I stared into his eyes, searching for some hint that this was a cruel joke, a twisted test of my patience. But I had known Desmond Stone long enough to recognize the look on his face, the firm, unyielding expression he wore when he had made up his mind.

Something inside me cracked, my stomach knotted painfully, my legs shook beneath me. My voice came out in a croak. “Why did you marry me, then, if you never loved me?”

His lips tightened. “I’m sorry , I can’t tell you that. I just didn’t want to keep hurting you. If you want out of this marriage, I’ll understand.”

Hot and heavy tears slipped down my cheeks before I could stop them. The reality hit me like a ball, my two years of marriage about to collapse in seconds. My Desmond, the man who once swore he couldn’t live without me was about to throw me away like the women before me.

I remembered the way it began. The day he confessed his “love” for me, just a few weeks into my internship at Oak & Stone Realty, the company his family owned. The most powerful real estate empire in New York. He had charmed me from day one, bringing me coffee, lingering by my desk, making me feel like the only woman in the room.

Two months after our first date, he proposed. I thought it was fast, I told him we were moving too fast but Desmond insisted he couldn’t wait another day to start forever with me. At the time, I believed him, I thought I’d hit the jackpot, a man hopelessly in love, who wanted me enough to throw caution to the wind. I thought I had won the kind of love people wrote novels about. I didn’t realize it was all a lie.

The wedding had been small and intimate, deliberately hidden from the public eye because he wanted to keep our marriage out of any public spectacle. He said he wanted to protect our privacy. I thought it was romantic. Now, I realize it was convenient to hide myself from the world.

The changes came quickly after the vows. No more spontaneous dinners, no surprise flowers, the only events we attended together were family functions, and even then, he kept me close but silent, like a beautiful accessory. He spent less time at home. The office became forbidden territory for me.

When I asked to keep working, if not at his firm then somewhere else, he shot it down. “It would be insulting for a Stone to work for someone else," he said. And so I became a stay-at home wife. I thought I was doing it for love, now see I my world began to shrink to just our house and his absence.

“So all those times you told me you loved me, those were lies? And last month, when you held me… when you made love to me did that mean nothing?”

He looked at me coldly,” They were just words, Leila. Words to get you to marry me, as for making love, I was horny and a little tipsy that night, you remember, don’t you?”

Anger ignited in my chest, my palm connected with his cheek in a sharp slap before I could think, “I can’t believe you’d do this to me. I love you, Desmond, you can’t just throw me away, you can’t just tell me it’s over like it’s some business transaction." My voice was wet with tears, each word more desperate than the last.

“You can stay if you want,” he said coolly. “But I’m in love with someone else now and that’s who I want to be with.”

Then my body went cold. “Kavier? Is it because she is richer? Curvier? Is that why you’re dumping me?”

“I don’t have the strength to argue. I only told you so you won’t be surprised when you see us together.” He turned to leave.

I collapsed to the floor, my sobs tearing out of me. My family had warned me. My mother had told me he didn’t look at me like a man who would give me the moon, no matter how many times he promised it.

And now I know why.

Her name was Kavier. She had come to him as a client, asking for help finding a house. Somehow, between the house tours and the phone calls, they started building something together, something that had no place for me.

There were nights he didn’t come home, claiming work kept him away. Then came the photos of him and Kavier, arm in arm at a private investor’s dinner, looking far too comfortable. He’d told me she didn’t have a date, so he stepped in for appearances. I wanted to believe him.

But then, last night, the truth went viral with a video of Desmond kissing her like she was the center of his universe. The caption read, Billionaire Desmond Stone and his beautiful fiancée.

The world didn’t know he already had a wife. And his beloved Kavier had no idea she was engaged to a married man.

My mother’s warning rang in my head, “Never trust a man whose last name is Stone, men like Desmond Stone don’t look at women like they’d give them the moon. They look at women like they already owned them”.

And here I was shattered and humiliated, my vision became blurry, I tried to get up to settle on the sofa and I collapsed, and everything went blank.