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THE ROOM THAT STILL REMEMBERS
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2025-06-15 03:18:51The morning after her return, Anais woke up in a room that didn’t belong to her anymore.
Not that it ever truly had.
The walls were the same soft gray, the bed still wide enough to make even silence feel loud. A velvet armchair sat in the corner like a memory waiting to be acknowledged. The window framed the city in gold morning light.
But it was the closet that made her stomach twist.
Her clothes were still there.
Pressed. Arranged. Waiting.
As if she’d just stepped out for air.
As if three years hadn’t passed since she last walked across this room with a bag on her back and a decision burning in her chest.
She reached for a blouse—deep green, silk, the kind he used to choose for her. Not because she liked it, but because it suited the image. The Wife. The Quiet One. The woman who fit into his world without leaving fingerprints.
She put it back.
The bathroom was spotless, her drawer untouched. Same brush. Same lip balm. Even the faintest trace of the lavender soap she used to use.
It wasn’t a gesture of kindness.
It was a message.
Nothing changed unless he said so.
Cassian was already seated in the dining room when she walked in.
He looked up briefly from his tablet but didn’t greet her. Instead, he gestured toward the seat across from him. A plate sat there—steel-cut oats, berries, sliced banana, black coffee.
Of course he still remembered how she took her breakfast.
Of course she hadn’t asked for it.
Anais sat. Quietly.
“I have a meeting at ten,” he said. “We’ll go together.”
She blinked. “We?”
“You’re my wife again, Anais. Not my ghost.”
She forced a small laugh. “I thought I was just your legal accessory.”
His jaw twitched, but he didn’t rise to the bait.
“I need presence. The board is watching me more closely now.”
“And they care about who you’re sleeping next to?”
Cassian didn’t even look at her. “They care about appearances. Stability. The public image of the company’s future. A married man is easier to trust with a legacy.”
“So this is about inheritance.”
“It’s about control,” he said bluntly. “Which you and I both know is the only thing that’s ever mattered in this family.”
She looked away. He wasn’t lying. But that didn’t make it easier to swallow.
“How long do I have to play dress-up?” she asked.
His gaze slid to hers—sharp, unreadable. “Until I say stop.”
The car ride to ValeCorp was suffocating.
She hadn’t been inside his world for so long that everything felt twice as loud now. The tinted windows, the sleek black interior, the silence broken only by the occasional phone call through his earpiece.
He spoke three languages on one call. French. Mandarin. Russian. None of it phased him. Cassian had always been fluent in power.
She sat quietly beside him, trying not to drown in the familiar scent of his cologne—deep wood and citrus and memory.
When they pulled up to the building, the driver opened the door. Cameras flashed before Anais even placed one foot on the pavement.
Cassian stepped out, buttoned his coat, and held out his hand without looking at her.
It wasn’t romantic.
It was precise. Calculated. Expected.
Anais took it.
For the first time in three years, the world saw them again—Cassian and Anais Vale. The billionaire and his vanished bride.
A story the tabloids never stopped chasing.
A story with no ending.
Until now.
Inside the building, everything smelled of steel and money. The receptionist froze when she saw Anais.
So did the executive assistant.
Whispers followed them down the hallway.
“She’s back?”
“Didn’t she leave him?”
“I heard she had a breakdown…”
Cassian said nothing.
He walked beside her like nothing had happened, like she hadn’t disappeared in the dead of night and shattered whatever illusion of normalcy they’d had.
When they reached his office, he opened the door and let her step in first.
It was still the same.
Minimal. Expensive. Cold.
And sitting in the corner was the only person in the world Anais had once trusted: Irene Galley—Cassian’s personal advisor and the closest thing to a sister Anais had ever known.
But the look Irene gave her wasn’t warm.
It was stunned. And then… tight.
“Anais,” she said slowly. “You’re back.”
Anais nodded. “So it seems.”
Irene stood. She was taller than Anais remembered. Or maybe it was just the way she carried herself now. Sharper. More guarded.
“Does he know?” Irene asked.
Anais froze. “Does who know?”
Cassian turned toward the window, silent.
Irene gave her a long, pointed look.
So much unsaid.
So much known.
Anais’s stomach turned.
What had she walked back into?
That night, Anais wandered the apartment after Cassian left for a business dinner. She should’ve felt relief. Silence, space, time to breathe.
But the walls felt closer now.
The air thicker.
She ended up back in the room. The closet.
And she found it.
A box on the top shelf she hadn’t seen before.
She pulled it down with shaking hands.
Inside were things she’d assumed lost forever. A hairpin. A worn novel with notes in the margins. A photograph of her as a child.
And beneath that, tucked between old letters…
A medical report.
Her name at the top.
Date: Three years ago.
Diagnosis: Pregnancy.
Her breath caught.
She flipped the page, hands shaking.
Another line.
Status: Miscarriage.
She dropped the paper.
No.
No, no, no—
She hadn’t known.
She’d left him without knowing.
Cassian had found out.
He had known all along.
And he said nothing.
Bab terbaru
Twice His Wife EVERYTHING LEFT UNSAID.
The air inside the study thickened like it was soaked in secrets.Anais didn’t speak. Couldn’t.Because the woman standing in the doorway wasn’t a ghost, or a hallucination.It was her mother.Alive.Alive, and real, and staring at her like nothing had ever gone wrong.She hadn’t aged like time expected her to. Her hair was darker than Anais remembered. Her eyes—still that steel-blue shade—narrowed as they took her in, like she was assessing her own reflection years removed.“Hello, Anais,” she said calmly.Julien stood beside her, smug and untouched, as if this had been the plan all along.“You’re supposed to be dead,” Anais managed.Her mother’s lips twitched, not quite a smile. “A lot of things are supposed to be. Doesn’t mean they are.”Julien moved to the sideboard and poured two glasses of dark amber liquid, handing one to her mother. “She kept the right people close. Paid off the wrong ones.”“Why?” Anais asked. Her voice cracked. “Why would you fake your death? Let me think yo
Twice His Wife PAPER CUTS AND WOUNDS YOU CAN’T SEE.
There’s a silence Anais had never heard before. Not the absence of noise, but the space between expectation and collapse. It’s the silence before something breaks.That’s what the morning felt like.She sat alone in her office at Vale Holdings, the light outside too still, too bright. Her phone buzzed, screen flashing with a number she didn’t recognize. She let it ring.Then it rang again.Same number.Something in her chest stirred.She picked up on the third try.“Anais Vale?” a deep voice asked.“Yes?”“This is Detective Moore, NYPD.”She froze.“There’s been a development in the Fallpoint investigation. We’d like you to come in.”Anais blinked slowly. “That was a sealed case.”“There’s new evidence.”She gripped the desk. “What kind of evidence?”The voice didn’t answer directly. “We’ll explain when you arrive.”Click.By the time Anais reached the station, Cassian was already there, pacing.He looked up when she entered—something dark and tight around his eyes.“You didn’t tell m
Twice His Wife THE WOMAN WITH THE BRIEF CASE.
Juliet Hale looked like a ghost no one had invited back.Her silver hair was tied in a smooth twist at the base of her neck, her long dark coat tailored so sharply it looked like it could slice through glass. She stood in the Vale Holdings lobby like it belonged to her—and maybe, at some point, it almost had.Anais watched from the security feed, frozen in the hallway.Julien and Dahlia flanked her like two lieutenants. Too smug. Too confident.Juliet lifted her chin and handed something to the front desk.A folder.Irene whispered beside Anais, “She’s requesting a board room. Immediate access.”“Under what grounds?”Irene looked at the screen again. “A clause from the original merger agreement—your father’s company and Vale Holdings.”Anais’s breath caught.That clause had been buried years ago. Sealed. Forgotten.But not erased.Juliet hadn’t come for a meeting.She’d come to take the floor.Cassian entered the hallway a moment later, tension carved into his shoulders.“She invoked
Twice His Wife THE QUIET BEFORE THE COLLAPSE.
Anais didn’t cry.She didn’t scream, or tear up the papers, or demand that Cassian leave the apartment.She just… walked.Out of the vault, past the main hallway, through the quiet marble silence of a penthouse that had always felt too clean. Like a museum built to preserve something dead.She left the door open behind her.Cassian didn’t follow.Maybe he understood that for the first time, she wasn’t trying to hurt him.She just needed distance to survive him.She took the elevator to the street and started walking. No driver. No guard. No plan.Just her.The city had never looked so bright and aimless.At first, she didn’t know where she was going. But her feet remembered something her mind hadn’t caught up to yet.When she finally stopped, she was standing outside a bookstore tucked between two worn cafés on the Lower East Side. The glass was fogged, the sign crooked. She hadn’t been here since college.Inside, it smelled like old paper and nostalgia.She walked the aisles, running
Twice His Wife TERMS OF RESURRECTION..
It was after midnight when Anais called Irene.She hadn’t moved from the sofa in hours, the image of Julien and Dahlia stepping into that building with Harlan Quinn frozen on her phone screen. The soft blue glow of it had become the only light in the room.“I need to know where they went,” she said without preamble.Irene didn’t ask what had changed. “Already tracing.”Anais stared ahead, throat tight. “Do it quietly.”She hung up before Irene could respond.Cassian entered the room a minute later, his sleeves pushed up, hair slightly mussed. He looked at her the way people look at old war zones—half memory, half dread.“What happened?” he asked.She didn’t hand him the phone.Just said, “Julien and Dahlia are back. And they’re working with Harlan Quinn.”Cassian’s expression didn’t change. But she saw his hands stiffen by his sides.He walked to the fireplace and stood there silently for a long moment.“I should’ve buried them deeper,” he murmured.Anais stood slowly. “This isn’t jus
Twice His Wife A NAME NO ONE SPOKE.
Cassian watched Anais from the doorway.She was standing in front of the window in the study again, exactly where she’d stood the night Julien and Dahlia were thrown out. But today, her stance was different. Not just still—grounded. Like she had finally stepped fully into her skin.She wasn’t afraid of him anymore.And that realization sat heavier than any boardroom betrayal ever had.He leaned against the doorframe, silent.She didn’t turn to acknowledge him. She knew he was there.Finally, he spoke.“You haven’t asked me what’s going to happen next.”Anais lifted her chin, eyes still on the street below. “Because I’m not waiting on your answer anymore.”There was no bitterness in her voice. Just calm certainty.Cassian stepped in slowly, closing the door behind him.“You’ve changed.”She didn’t move. “No. I’m just not performing anymore.”He sat in the leather chair by the fireplace. A long pause settled between them.“I miss the way you used to look at me,” he said.She blinked onc
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