Semua Bab Second Choice: Wife by contract: Bab 101 - Bab 110

For a few seconds after Ethan finishes speaking, nobody moves.Not the investors.Not the servers standing quietly along the wall.Not even Ethan’s father.It’s strange how a room full of powerful people can suddenly look… uncertain.The folder Ethan slid across the table sits between them like it’s radioactive.Someone at the far end adjusts their chair. The sound scrapes across the floor and makes a few heads turn. Another man lifts his wine glass, then sets it back down without drinking.The dinner hasn’t ended.But whatever this evening was supposed to be, it isn’t that anymore.Ethan’s father finally reaches forward and closes the folder without opening it. He does it slowly, like the movement itself requires patience.Then he looks up.“You’ve made this unnecessarily public.”His voice stays smooth. Almost polite.Ethan doesn’t shift beside me.“You invited an audience.”A small ripple moves through the room. Someone coughs quietly.Across the table, one of the older investors f

I don’t really sleep.It’s more like drifting in and out of something that never settles. I close my eyes, but my mind keeps moving. Fragments of last night slide in and out. The table. The way people watched. Ethan’s voice. His father’s.The laptop.That one stays.When I open my eyes again, the room is lighter. Pale morning pushing through the curtains like it’s trying not to disturb anything.For a few seconds, I stay still.Then I turn my head.Ethan is asleep.One arm thrown loosely across the bed, like he reached for me and stopped halfway through it. His face looks softer like this. Less guarded. No tension, no decisions waiting behind his eyes. Just… quiet.I watch him longer than I should.It feels like looking at something I don’t get to keep.That thought comes and settles without asking permission.I sit up slowly, careful not to wake him. The room is cool. The kind of quiet that makes small movements feel louder than they are. My throat closes briefly—just a flicker—befor

Miami keeps moving like nothing happened.The heat hits first. Then the noise. Cars, voices, music from somewhere down the street that doesn’t care if you’re ready to hear it or not.I unlock the café door and step inside.It smells the same. Coffee, sugar, something warm baking in the oven. Clean. Finished. The shelves are full now. The library section looks exactly how I imagined it.I stand there for a second longer than necessary.Just looking.I thought this would feel like… something bigger.It doesn’t.It just feels like a place I built.“Don’t even start,” Mara says.I glance over.She’s behind the counter, arms folded, watching me like she’s been waiting.“Start what?”“That face,” she says. “The ‘I’m fine, everything is fine, nothing to see here’ face.”I drop my bag on the chair.“I am fine.”She doesn’t move.Doesn’t blink.Just… stares.Then she takes a slow sip of her iced coffee like she’s bracing herself.“Okay,” she says. “So we’re skipping denial and going straight t

I don’t open his message.Not the first day.Not the second.By the third, it starts to feel… deliberate. Like I’ve chosen this silence and now I have to live inside it. Like if I open it, something will shift and I won’t be able to put it back where it was.My phone lights up sometimes.Orders. Supplier updates. Mara sending voice notes that are mostly her laughing at her own jokes.Not him.He doesn’t send anything else.He said he’d give me space.And he does.Which is somehow worse than if he didn’t.The silence has weight now. It presses against my ribs when I’m trying to focus, lingers in the quiet moments between customers, follows me home like an uninvited shadow.⸻The café is busy in that steady, predictable way that usually settles me.Cups lining up. Names being called. The low murmur of people talking over books and laptops. Someone tapping too loudly on their keyboard in the corner.I move through it like muscle memory.Take order. Pour. Pass. Smile.Repeat.From the out

Ethan:Miami doesn’t rush you.It just… sits there. Warm. Bright. Like it knows you’ll adjust eventually.I stand by the window a little longer than necessary, looking out at a city that isn’t mine. Not something I built. Not something I understand yet.Temporary.That’s the word that keeps coming up.Behind me, I hear Adriana close her laptop. Soft. Precise.“That’s the last of it,” she says.I turn back, glance at the table. Papers still spread out. Numbers I actually recognize as mine. Clean decisions. No interference.I nod. “Good.”She watches me instead of the documents.“You don’t look like someone who just secured independence,” she says.“I don’t celebrate meetings.”“This wasn’t just a meeting.”“No,” I agree.It wasn’t.She leans back slightly, crossing her legs. Studying me like she’s trying to place something.“You’re doing it,” she says. “Building something without them.”“Yeah.”“And?”I pick up my jacket. Fold it over my arm. Buy myself a second.“And what?”“And you s