Chapter 2: The Woman He Chose

The phone rang again.

The high-pitched, cheerful default ringtone sliced through the heavy silence of the dining room.

I didn't even need to look down to know whose name was illuminating the screen.

Ethan.

His name glowed brightly against the glass, pulsing with a regular, mocking rhythm, as if nothing had changed.

As if he hadn’t just stood before a crowd of millions and told the entire country that another woman owned his heart.

As if he hadn't just reduced our seven-year marriage to a worthless piece of paper.

I stood perfectly still, my eyes fixed on the flashing screen until the ringing finally cut out, leaving the room heavy with silence once more.

A second later, the screen lit up again.

The phone vibrated violently against my palm.

Then it rang a third time. And a fourth.

By the fifth consecutive call, my thumb dragged across the screen.

I pressed the phone to my ear.

I didn't do it because I was angry, or because I was desperate for an apology.

I did it because my heart was still desperately fighting the reality of what my eyes had just seen.

I still loved him. God help me, after everything, I still loved him.

A pathetic, broken part of me wanted him to tell me it was all a cruel trick.

“…Claire,” his deep, resonant voice filled the line.

Hearing that specific tone whisper my name tore an ache straight through my chest.

It was the voice that used to soothe me after a hard day, the voice that promised me a beautiful future.

“I can explain,” he said immediately.

His voice was tight, controlled, but there was a rare undercurrent of tension beneath his words.

I turned my head slowly, looking at the untouched anniversary dinner resting under the kitchen warmer.

The white candles on the table were beginning to melt down, the wax pooling like tears onto the cloth.

The steak had gone entirely cold.

“So,” I asked, my voice cracking slightly despite my best efforts to hold it steady, “are congratulations in order?”

Absolute silence met my question.

For several seconds, the only sound on the line was the faint, rhythmic hum of static.

“Claire…” he started again, his voice dropping an octave.

“I watched the interview, Ethan,” I interrupted.

A hot, suffocating wave of pain rose in my throat as I stared at the jagged pieces of the shattered wineglass on the floor.

“I watched the entire broadcast from start to finish.”

Another long, agonizing silence stretched between us.

When he spoke again, his breathing had become noticeably heavier.

“I wasn’t supposed to find out like that. The media ambush wasn't planned.”

“It wasn’t what you think, Claire.”

“It wasn’t what I think?”

A tear finally spilled over my eyelashes, burning a path down my cheek.

“Ethan, I watched you tell another woman she has your heart.”

“I watched you look at her with an expression you haven't given me in years.”

“I watched the entire world cheer for your upcoming wedding.”

“So tell me, Ethan… what exactly am I supposed to think?”

He didn’t answer immediately.

Instead, I heard him exhale a long, frustrated sigh on the other end of the line.

It was the corporate sound he always made when a contract negotiation wasn't going his way.

“I’m coming home right now,” he said, his tone shifting into his commanding executive voice.

“We will talk about this in person.”

“No,” I replied, the word tearing at my throat.

His voice paused, caught off guard by the sudden resistance.

“What?”

“Don’t come back here,” I said, my hand shaking as I gripped the phone.

“I don’t want you in this house tonight. I can't look at you right now, Ethan.”

“Claire, be reasonable—”

“I’ve spent seven years being reasonable, Ethan,” I sobbed.

The emotional dam finally broke as the tears flowed freely.

“I've spent seven years waiting for you to come home to me. I won’t spend tonight doing it.”

Before he could utter another word, before he could deploy another corporate excuse, I brought my thumb down and ended the call.

For the very first time in our entire marriage, I hung up on him.

My phone immediately buzzed with a text from Lily.

Lily: I’m coming over right now. Dad is with me. You shouldn't be alone in that house.

Outside, the sky finally broke.

A sudden, heavy rain began to fall, large droplets striking against the glass windows with a frantic rhythm.

The beautiful, romantic evening I had imagined and meticulously prepared for had completely vanished.

To cope with the agonizing weight in my chest, I forced my body to move.

I systematically walked upstairs, pulled a suitcase from the closet, and began to pack.

I didn't take everything.

I took only my clothes, my private documents, and the things I had owned before Ethan Carter became a billionaire.

But with every shirt I folded, a memory stabbed at me.

Our master bedroom smiled back at me through our silver-framed wedding photo on the bedside table.

I walked over and picked it up, my chest heaving as a fresh wave of grief washed over me.

We looked so incredibly young in that picture.

So genuinely, deeply in love.

How could that love just disappear? Where did it go?

Back then, Ethan wasn’t a billionaire tycoon with a cold stare.

He was simply an ambitious, passionate young man with impossible dreams and holes in his shoes.

We had met at university.

He was so broke back then that he couldn’t even afford a proper lunch most days.

I had used my own meager scholarship money to buy food for both of us, sharing half-sandwiches on the campus benches.

When his first startup company nearly collapsed under a mountain of debt, I didn't hesitate.

I sold the vintage gold jewelry my late mother had left me—the only physical connection I had left to her—just to pay his employees' salaries for another month.

He had cried in my arms that night, swearing he would spend the rest of his life making it up to me.

I had believed him.

I had invested my entire youth, my sacrifices, and my mother's inheritance into his dreams.

I still loved the man who had cried in my arms.

But that man felt entirely dead, replaced by the clinical stranger on the television screen.

A sudden knock echoed from downstairs.

Three sharp, heavy knocks against the front door.

I wiped my face quickly and walked downstairs.

When I pulled the heavy door open, Lily and my father stepped inside, their umbrellas dripping onto the foyer floor.

The moment Lily saw my tear-stained face, her own eyes filled with furious sorrow.

“Oh, Claire…” she choked out, throwing her arms around my neck.

My father stood behind her, his face lined with deep worry and a heavy, helpless anger.

He placed a gentle, grounding hand on my shoulder.

“We saw the news broadcast, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.”

Lily stepped back, wiping her wet face.

She bit her lower lip, looking guiltily at our father before looking back at me.

“Claire… I should’ve told you sooner. God, I should’ve told you weeks ago.”

I looked at her, a cold sensation suddenly knotting in my stomach.

“Told me what, Lily?”

She lowered her eyes.

“I’ve seen them together before tonight. I didn't want to believe it.”

“I saw them having dinner together at a private restaurant downtown twice.”

“And last month, I saw them leaving his office building together late at night. Her hand was on his arm.”

“I prayed I was just being paranoid. I wanted so badly to believe she was just a client.”

Each sentence she uttered felt like a physical blow to my ribs.

“How long, Lily? How long has this been going on?”

My father sighed heavily, looking away, as Lily whispered the truth.

“From what people in the industry are saying… it’s been almost a year.”

A year.

A whole year.

While I was sitting home alone making excuses for his absence, he was out making memories with someone else.

The missed birthdays. The canceled anniversary trips.

The subtle scent of unfamiliar perfume lingering in his car.

The faint smudge of lipstick on his collar that he had smoothly blamed on a crowded corporate event.

I hadn't been crazy.

I had simply refused to see the ugly truth because losing him was the most terrifying thing I could imagine.

Even now, with the betrayal laid bare, the thought of walking away from our seven years ripped at my soul.

“What are you going to do now, Claire?” my father asked quietly.

His eyes drifted to the packed suitcase sitting at the bottom of the stairs.

I looked past them toward the dark dining room.

The white candles had finally burned down to nothing, their wicks drowning in their own wax.

Only a tiny, fading wisp of grey smoke remained, dissolving into the air.

I loved him, but I could not survive a life where I was invisible.

I could not stay with a man who had already cast me aside to the entire world.

“I’m leaving in the morning,” I said, my voice trembling but certain.

“I’m going to stay at the old house with you and Dad for a while.”

Lily nodded quickly, wiping her tears, while my father gave my shoulder a supportive squeeze.

“Your room is exactly how you left it, Claire. We aren't going anywhere tonight. We will stay right here with you until the sun comes up.”

Before we turned in for the night, I reached down and touched the platinum wedding ring on my left hand.

It had rested securely on my finger for seven years.

It was an emotional severance, a private boundary drawn in the dark.

I knew the grueling legal reality of a billionaire's divorce still loomed heavily ahead of us.

I twisted it slowly.

It slid off my finger, leaving a faint, pale mark behind.

I walked over to the dining table and placed the platinum band gently onto the white cloth.

It sat right beside the cold, ruined anniversary dinner.

The marriage was emotionally dead.

Now, it was time to face the morning.