MasukALICIAAlicia folded another one of Tobey’s small shirts carefully before placing it into the travel bag resting open across the bed, her movements slow and deliberate despite the storm of thoughts pressing endlessly against her mind.The room remained painfully quiet tonight.Not peaceful.Just heavy in the way silence became heavy after too many years spent swallowing words that no longer mattered.Iris’ voice still echoed unpleasantly through her head, no matter how hard she tried to focus elsewhere.Levi loves me. He’s always loved me.And that was true, wasn’t it?She had to admit to herself that she had known the truth long before Iris ever said it aloud.Levi had never loved her.And when she forced herself to look back honestly across the years of their marriage, she could not even blame him entirely for it anymore. Their union had never been built from anything like that to begin with.Still, Alicia had tried.Heaven knew she had tried, in the beginning especially.There had
LEVIThe sharp sound of his office door opening pulled him abruptly from his thoughts.Iris entered without knocking, her expression already tense enough to sour whatever patience remained in him.“You’re still here,” she said as the door shut behind her. “I thought you would’ve gone home by now.”Levi straightened slightly in his chair, immediately sealing away every trace of emotion from his face. “What do you want, Iris?”Her eyes narrowed faintly at his tone before she crossed the office toward him. “I want to know why the divorce process keeps stalling.”Levi’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.The Novaris proposal remained dangerously close to collapse, and until the partnership was finalized, Alicia’s executive position within C-R needed to remain untouched for legal and financial stability. Investors were already nervous about the company’s declining numbers, and if news of the divorce leaked before the merger concluded, the damage would be catastrophic.None of which Iris k
LEVILevi had been staring at the same financial report for nearly ten minutes before he finally realized he had not absorbed a single number on the page.The realization only worsened his irritation.His office remained brightly lit despite the late hour, the floor-to-ceiling windows behind him reflecting fragments of the city skyline against the glass, but the familiar view brought him none of the usual clarity it once did. These days, work no longer felt precise or orderly. It felt noisy. Endless. Burdensome in ways he had never previously noticed, as though some invisible structure beneath the company had weakened.Or perhaps not invisible… but absent.Levi exhaled slowly and reached for the pen resting beside the report, intending to sign off on the revised projections before the board meeting tomorrow morning, but the moment his fingers tightened properly around it, a sharp sting shot through his palm and forced him to loosen his grip almost immediately. The pain was not unbeara
ALICIAThe house was quiet in the peculiar way large homes became quiet at night.More hollow than peaceful.Alicia sat alone at the small table near the window in her room, slowly finishing the soup Marissa had insisted she eat before taking her medication. The steam had long faded from the bowl, and so had her appetite.The hospital smell still clung faintly to her skin.Her doctor had refused to discharge her immediately after the collapse. Severe stress, dehydration, exhaustion - all spoken in careful professional tones that somehow made everything sound smaller than it felt.She’d spent three entire days in that hospital room, and Levi had not come once.Not a single call or a message, not even through Elias.But that didn’t faze her. Not even a little. In fact, it would have scared her if he had shown up.She leaned back slowly in her chair, fingertips brushing the rim of the spoon.Her mind drifted unwillingly toward Theodore again.Toward the strange stillness she always felt
THEODOREThe hospital room was quiet except for the monitors.Steady beeping filled the silence in slow intervals while pale evening light filtered weakly through the blinds, washing everything in muted gray.Theodore sat beside Alicia’s bed without moving. His gaze rested on Alicia’s bruised neck again, then on the faint discolouration near her jaw, then on the IV attached carefully to her arm.Every mark sharpened something dark and quiet inside him.The soft shift of movement against the hospital sheets pulled him from his thoughts.Alicia stirred weakly before her eyes slowly opened.Disorientation crossed her face first as she struggled to register the unfamiliar ceiling above her. Then her gaze shifted sideways and landed on him.For a second, she simply stared.“Teddy…?”Her voice came out small and rough with exhaustion.“Is that really…?”“Yes.” Theodore immediately leaned closer, taking her hand carefully into both of his before pressing a soft kiss against her fingers. “It’
ALICIABy the time Levi returned home that evening, Alicia looked better.She didn’t exactly look healthy or rested, but she was strong enough to disguise the damage beneath the surface.She sat curled into the corner of one of the smaller upstairs living rooms, the television casting soft, shifting light across the walls while quiet dialogue from an old romance movie filled the otherwise peaceful space. The room itself was warmer than most parts of the house emotionally, despite the cool air circulating gently from the built-in vent system above. Dark leather sofas framed the space neatly, shelves lined with books and decorative pieces, softening what would otherwise have looked too polished to live in.A mug of hot cocoa rested between Alicia’s hands, and half a plate of cookies sat untouched beside her.Wrapped around her small frame was the oversized gray sweater that still smelled faintly unfamiliar in the most distracting way possible.She had not realized how comforting warmth







