The Billionaire Queen He Despised

Eva POV

I sat alone at a table set for two and watched other couples around me laugh over candlelight.

Every table in the restaurant was full that night. Snow fell softly outside the window, and inside, the air smelled like warm bread and wine. A man across the room fed his wife a bite of cake and she laughed with her whole face. Another couple held hands over their empty plates like they had nowhere else to be. A young man two tables over pulled out a small ring box and the whole restaurant seemed to hold its breath with him.

I used to think that was what marriage looked like. Warm. Easy. Wanted. I had believed that once, back when I still let myself believe things about my own life.

The waiter came by again, his tray empty, his smile tired. "Ma'am, should I bring the food out again? It has gone cold twice already."

"No. Leave it. He is coming."

"Of course, ma'am." He hesitated like he wanted to say something else, then thought better of it and walked away.

I did not believe myself anymore, but I said it the way I always said it, out of habit more than hope. I checked my phone. Nothing from Richard. I called him again and it rang until it dropped to silence. Five hours I had been sitting there and it was almost ten at night. My tea had gone cold twice and my feet ached inside my heels, and still his chair across from me sat empty, the napkin folded neat and untouched.

This was our anniversary. Four years married to Richard Brooks, and every one of those years had felt like waiting for a man who was never really there. I used to count the minutes when we were first married. Now I counted the hours instead, and somewhere along the way I had stopped being surprised by how high the number climbed

My phone buzzed on the table and I grabbed it so fast I almost knocked over my glass.

“Running late.”

Two words. No sorry, no explanation, nothing that told me he even remembered what day it was. I set the phone down and stared at it like staring hard enough might make more words appear underneath.

His grandfather Walter had arranged our marriage four years ago from his sickbed, and I still remembered the way the old man had gripped my hand and told me I was the only one worthy of the Brooks name. I had been twenty-two and alone in the world, and I had wanted so badly to believe him. It was the first time in my life anyone had called me worthy of anything.

Richard never forgave either of us for it. He had a fiancée before me, Valerie. He loved her enough to plan a wedding with her, until his grandfather refused to let her into the family. He told me once, in the coldest voice I had ever heard him use, that he would never forgive me for existing. I had married a man who blamed me for a choice I never made, and I had spent four years paying for it anyway.

At eleven ten, the door opened and the whole restaurant turned to look.

Richard walked in like he owned the place, tall and broad in his dark coat with snow still melting on his shoulders. Every head in the room followed him. He had that kind of face people could not help but stare at, sharp and handsome in a way that made even strangers forget their own manners.

He was not alone.

Valerie walked in beside him with her arm looped through his, and the moment she saw me, she smiled.

My stomach dropped.

I stood up before I could stop myself. "Richard. Today is our anniversary. It was meant for the two of us, not a third person."

"I know," he said, and that was all. Two words, flat and cold, with nothing behind them.

Valerie laughed softly, like this was funny to her. "He needed company tonight. He said he could not sit through another silent dinner with you."

"Nobody asked you," I said, my voice louder than I meant it to be.

"Richard did," she said, and smiled wider.

Heat rushed up my neck and into my face. My eyes burned but I would not let myself cry in front of her. Crying here, now, would only make me smaller than I already felt.

"Richard, can we talk? Just for a minute. Alone."

"No." He did not even pause to think about it. "You already embarrassed yourself by waiting six hours for me. Do not make it worse."

The words hit harder than a slap would have.

"I have tried," I said, my voice shaking even though I fought to keep it steady. "Four years, Richard. Four years of regretting the day I let them talk me into marrying you."

"You regret it?" he said, and laughed once, short and humorless. "You have no idea what regret is."

Something moved across his face, but it was not guilt. It looked more like he was tired of the conversation before it had even started.

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small black box.

For one foolish second, my heart lifted. I thought, maybe, after everything, he remembered what today meant and he had brought me something to make up for it.

He opened the box and held it toward me.

My wedding ring sat inside it, the same one he had put on my finger four years ago in front of his whole family but I had stopped wearing it two years into this union.

"This belongs to you," he said. "Take it back."

I could not move.

"If I had a choice four years ago, I never would have married you," he said, loud enough that every table near us went quiet to listen. "I never wanted you. I never will."

He turned and walked out with Valerie on his arm, and the door swung shut behind them, and the cold air that came in with it felt warmer than anything he had just said to me.

The restaurant had gone quiet around me, the kind of serenity that follows a scene nobody wanted to watch but nobody could look away from either. I could feel eyes on my back, some pitying, some curious, and for a moment I wanted to stand up and walk out with whatever dignity I had left. My body would not listen. My hands had gone cold, colder than the room had any right to make them. 

Somewhere behind me a couple whispered to each other. I did not turn around. I kept my eyes on the door Richard had just walked through, half expecting him to come back, half knowing he never would, not tonight, not for me.

I sat back down because my legs would not hold me up any longer. 

The candle between our two untouched plates had almost burned all the way down, the ring sat open in its box in front of me, and I stared at it until it blurred into nothing.

That was when my stomach turned, hard and sudden, nothing like the ache of grief sitting in my chest. It rose fast and sharp, sour at the back of my throat, and I had to press a hand flat against the table to steady myself.

"Ma'am, are you alright?" the waiter asked, appearing beside me again.

"I need to go," I said, already reaching for my coat. "I am sorry. I need to go now."

I made it out to the car before the sickness hit again, and I gripped the steering wheel with both hands, breathing slowly until it passed enough for me to drive. I made it three blocks before I had to pull over the first time, my door open, the cold air the only thing keeping me from being sick right there on the seat. I made it another mile before I had to pull over again, my hands were shaking on the wheel, snow falling steadily through the headlights while I sat there trying to understand what was happening to my own body

By the time I reached the estate, I told myself it was the stress and the humiliation. The hours of waiting and the shock of the ring in its little black box sitting on the seat beside me.

I went straight up to my room and did not wait for any of the staff to know I was home.

I sat on the edge of my bed for a long while, my coat still on, my mind turning over the same private math I had been avoiding for days without letting myself look at it directly. I counted the weeks. I counted them again, certain I had made a mistake.

I had not made a mistake.

I took a test strip from the pack in my wardrobe with shaking hands, and locked myself in my bathroom, sitting on the edge of the tub while I waited for an answer I already knew in my bones.

By the time I was done, two lines appeared. I sat there staring at them until my hands went completely still.