Chapter 2

Rory's voice was deep and cool, carrying a chill that seemed to cut even deeper than the snow swirling around them.

Alisha lowered her eyes. "I was just heading home."

Rory glanced at the road behind her, showing no obvious emotion on his face. Yet his gaze was enough to make embarrassment prick sharply at her skin.

As Jason's closest friend, he knew perfectly well that she was driving in the opposite direction from the Bellemont Estate.

He also knew what Jason had been doing with other women all these years and, no doubt, how thoroughly their marriage had become a source of gossip and ridicule among their social circle.

Unwilling to linger any longer in the company of anyone connected to Jason, Alisha glanced at the wrecked cars and said, "Send me the repair bill once you get the estimate. I'll transfer the money."

Rory's eyes moved over the crushed sections of the two vehicles before settling on her face.

The corners of her eyes were still red from crying, and when his gaze dropped lower, he noticed something else: the bare hand hanging at her side, conspicuously missing the wedding ring she had worn for years.

"Get in the car."

The command came so abruptly that Alisha barely had time to react.

Rory had already walked around to the driver's side of her car and slid behind the wheel, while at the same time motioning for his assistant to take the Bentley and leave.

The assistant opened his mouth, presumably to remind Rory about the important client meeting waiting for him, but one look at his boss's rigid jaw was enough to make him swallow the words.

"Get in," Rory repeated, glancing at Alisha through the windshield. "I'll drive you home."

"Thanks, but I don't need a ride," she replied, gesturing for him to step out.

"You honestly think you're in any condition to drive right now?" Rory asked. "What are you planning to do next? Rear-end a Ferrari?"

The freezing wind had already turned the tip of Alisha's nose bright red. She stared at him in disbelief, momentarily speechless that the hot guy could say something so infuriating.

Before she could come up with a response, Rory added flatly, "If you don't get in, I'm leaving without you."

"This is my car!"

"Exactly. That's why I'm telling you to get in."

Alisha surrendered, climbed into the passenger seat, and gave him her address.

Rory acknowledged it with a brief nod and didn't bother turning on the GPS. Apparently, he remembered the way well enough.

Once he started driving, neither of them spoke again. The silence between them remained unbroken all the way to her apartment.

When they finally stopped outside her building, Alisha unfastened her seat belt and reached for the door.

"Forgetting something?" Rory said.

She paused and looked back at him, confused.

"The damage," he explained.

Of course, she had no intention of avoiding the repair bill, but the reminder made her realize that she didn't even have a way to contact him.

"Right." She pulled out her phone. "Let me get your number. Text me the bill when you have the estimate."

Rory handed over his phone without hesitation, and the two of them exchanged contact information.

"Thanks for the ride," Alisha said sincerely. "It would be almost impossible to find a cab in weather like this. You can keep my car for tonight. I'll come pick it up tomorrow."

Rory simply nodded before pulling away and disappearing into the snowy darkness.

...

It wasn't until later that night that her phone lit up with a message from him.

There were no words, only a location pin. Alisha assumed it was the place where he had left her car so she could pick it up the next day.

[Got it. Thanks.]

She sent the reply, then opened the location to check the address. Even under normal weather conditions, the drive would have taken close to an hour.

With the roads buried beneath a raging snowstorm, Rory must have spent considerably longer getting there.

"So, he has just got home?" she mused.

That meant the trip home had taken him three full hours. For someone like Rory, whose time was undoubtedly worth far more than most people's, that was hardly an insignificant sacrifice.

Her gaze lingered on the pitch-black profile picture beside his name, and for a while, she found herself lost in thought.

In truth, Alisha had known Rory long before Jason ever entered her life.

Rory and Jason had been college classmates, but Alisha had known Rory even earlier. They had attended the same high school and, for one entire semester, had even been desk mates.

Back then, Rory had consistently ranked first in their grade and had won first place in the state mathematics competition during his junior year.

He was notoriously quiet and aloof, the sort of person who seemed perfectly content being left alone. Even after sitting beside him for an entire semester, Alisha had rarely managed to exchange more than a handful of words with him.

And yet, for reasons she couldn't fully explain, she had once pursued him relentlessly.

Calling Rory "poor" would have been an understatement. Alisha still remembered the rumors that had circulated through their high school.

His father was serving a prison sentence after causing a fatal accident and had been saddled with millions of dollars in court-ordered restitution.

His mother suffered from severe mental illness, while his younger brother, five years his junior, still depended on him. In other words, almost the entire burden of a broken family had fallen onto the shoulders of a teenage boy.

High school had been an ivory tower for Alisha, a place where academic rankings, test scores, and family backgrounds seemed to matter far more than the brutal realities of adulthood.

As a pampered girl born into wealth, she had been too sheltered to understand what Rory was carrying on his shoulders.

Even now, she couldn't say whether she had been drawn to him because she admired his brilliance or simply because she thought he was handsome.

Either way, one evening during the study hall, she had quietly slid a folded note across their shared desk.

[Rory, you're cute. How about I give you a chance to be my boyfriend?]

Rory had never replied.

Before the Poole family went bankrupt and found itself buried beneath tens of millions of dollars in debt, Alisha had been a carefree, fearless princess who had never been taught to hesitate before asking for what she wanted.

She had pursued Rory with the same unabashed confidence she brought to everything else. Until one day, Rory requested a seat change and never gave her so much as a second glance.

After that, they drifted into complete silence. When their paths crossed again years later, Alisha was already Jason's girlfriend.

According to Jason, when he had been pursuing her, he had gone to Rory for advice, asking about her interests and preferences so he could figure out how to win her over.

Jason had always jokingly called Rory the unsung matchmaker who had brought the two of them together. Alisha had never known whether that story was true.

...

The following morning, the snowstorm finally passed, leaving behind a crisp blue sky and brilliant sunlight.

After retrieving her car, Alisha received a phone call from her mother, Susan Melton, inviting her and Jason over for family dinner that weekend.

"Mom, I asked Jason for a divorce," Alisha confessed. "You don't need to invite him anymore."

There was a brief pause before Susan responded in a tone so casual that it made Alisha's chest tighten.

"Just because he was fooling around with another woman?"

The dismissiveness in her mother's voice sent a surge of anger through Alisha, hot and violent enough to feel like a volcano beginning to rumble beneath her ribs.

In everyone's eyes, marrying Jason Wiley had been the greatest stroke of luck in Alisha's life.

His father was a senator, and the Wiley family possessed wealth and influence that the Poole family could only dream of by the time Alisha married him.

Their own business had already been little more than an empty shell, and Jason had swooped in like a savior, rescuing the fallen princess and restoring her to a life of luxury.

Because he had "saved" her, everyone seemed to believe she owed him everything in return. She was supposed to keep yielding, keep stepping back, and keep swallowing whatever humiliation he handed her.

"Divorce isn't something you decide on a whim," Susan continued, her voice taking on the stern practicality Alisha had known all her life.

"You need to think carefully. You're almost 30 now. Forget finding another man with Jason's status. Even an ordinary man might think twice before marrying you.

"Marriage takes work. And with that temper of yours, you can't expect Jason to indulge you forever. Men have their pride. You need to learn when to bend."

The anger inside Alisha surged again, dangerously close to boiling over.

"Mom, I'm not telling you this so you can lecture me!" Her voice rose despite herself, trembling with frustration. "For the five years I've been married to him, I've put his feelings and his interests before my own.

"I've never done a single thing to betray him. And what did I get in return? He treats me like some decorative prop he can keep around when it's convenient, then humiliates me repeatedly with one affair after another."

Her voice cracked as she continued, "Don't I have the right to walk away from a marriage that has become this disgraceful? Or are you just like everyone else? In your eyes, is his money and power the only thing that counts? While my devotion, my sacrifices, and my pain mean nothing?"

For a moment, there was only silence on the other end.

Then Susan spoke. "Well, you chose Jason yourself. Nobody forced you."

The simple sentence struck harder than any angry rebuke could have.