All Chapters of The Wife he Never loved : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

25 Chapters

MAKADI STREET 185

Michael drove home immediately after the incident.His hands stayed tight on the steering wheel.The words wouldn’t leave him.ENJOY THE SHOW.YOU'RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME.SHE'S NEXT.They stayed behind his eyes like a stain he couldn't wipe away. When he arrived at the mansion, the first thing he noticed,silence. Too much of it. Jessica wasn’t there.He called her name once. No answer. Her room was empty, Her phone went straight to voicemail.Michael stood still for a moment, then picked up his phone again, No response. Something tightened in his chest.*******Back at the office, the situation was still unfolding.Security reviewed the hallway footage again and again.Something about it didn’t sit right. Michael running,Smoke spreading. Broken glass. But the angles, too clean.Too controlled.Like someone knew exactly where the blind spots were.The corridor still smelled faintly of smoke, security tape. Stretched across one end of the hall.Officers moved in slow, controlled steps, a

THE PACKAGE

“I lost her.”Michael didn’t respond immediately.Silence.Then_“What do you mean you lost her?”The bodyguard hesitated.“Only for a few seconds… she was there, then gone.”Michael’s grip tightened.Michael's thumb stopped against the edge of the desk.The bodyguard knew better than to lose sight of her.Especially today.Michael hadn’t sat yet when his phone rang again.MotherHe already knew before looking.He answered.“ You haven’t been picking up my calls.”He leaned back.“I’ve been busy.”A pause.“Busy?” Her voice sharpened. “Or ignoring responsibility?”His jaw tightened.“I’m handling it.”Silence.Then—“Fix this mess, Michael.”His hand stopped on the table.“The company is already under heat after the office incident.”Another pause.“Don’t make it worse.”“You have a meeting.”She added firmly “ Don't be late”.Click.Michael lowered the phone slowly, for a moment he didn't move. The silence in the room felt heavier than the conversation; his eyes drifted back to the pa

THE ADDRESS

The line went dead.Michael kept the phone against his ear for another second.Nothing. Only silence. Slowly, he lowered it.The package lay open on the desk.The photograph stared back at him.Jessica.Unaware.One hand tightened around the strap of her bag as she waited for the traffic light.His eyes dropped to the typed sentence beneath it.YOU WERE LOOKING AT THE ADDRESS AGAIN, WEREN'T YOU?He adjusted the watch on his wrist before reaching for his phone. The call connected almost immediately."I need everything on Makadi Street. Number one eighty-five."The man on the other end hesitated."Tonight, sir?"Michael's voice remained even."Now.""...Understood."The call ended.Michael slipped the photograph inside his jacket.By the time he reached the door, his car keys were already in his hand.---Across the city, Sarah sat curled into one corner of her apartment.The television played to an empty room.A burst of laughter spilled from the speakers. She picked up the remote.Mute

STILL HERE

The alarm went off at five forty-five.Jessica reached over and pressed it before the second ring.She lay still for a moment after that.The ceiling was the same. The room was the same.Everything looked exactly the same as it did yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that.She sat up slowly.Her hand pressed against the mattress for a second, steadying herself before she stood.It had become a habit she hadn't noticed until now.[THE BATHROOM]Cold water first. Always cold.She stood over the sink and let it run, watching it circle the drain without really seeing it.Her reflection caught the light.She looked away before it could catch her back.In the mirror she looked fine. That was the problem with fine. Nobody questioned it.Nobody looked twice.She got dressed the same way she always did. Quietly. Efficiently. Everything in its place. Uniform. Lanyard. Badge.She tucked the badge into her pocket and sat on the edge of the bed.Her hand moved before she told i

WHAT HE NOTICED

MICHAELHe noticed the cup first.It was on the counter when he came downstairs. Rinsed. Upside down. Left exactly where she always left it before she went to work.She had been gone forty minutes before he found it.He stood there longer than made sense.Looking at a cup as though it were trying to tell him something.He had started noticing things about her the way you notice a sound you can't name—gradually, then all at once.The way she moved through the house like she was trying not to disturb the air.The way she answered questions with exactly as many words as they required and never one more.The way she ate alone. Read alone. Sat alone in a house that wasn't empty but somehow always felt like it was.He had told himself in the beginning that the distance was right. Necessary. That was the arrangement. No feelings. No complications.He hadn't expected her silence to become something he listened for.[THE OFFICE]The meeting ran long.Michael sat at the head of the table and sp

THE PHOTOGRAPH SPREAD

Jessica saw it on a phone.Not her own.She was passing the nurses' station when she caught the screen. A gossip blog. One of the local ones.the kind that moved fast and cared nothing for accuracy.Her throat suddenly felt dry. The photograph was clear.Her. Outside the hospital. Bag on her shoulder. Mid-step. The angle was from across the street, steady enough to suggest a camera, not a phone. Patient enough to suggest purpose.The headline beneath it read:WHO IS THE WOMAN MICHAEL CARTER IS HIDING?Her name wasn't printed. But her face was.And the ring on her finger was visible if you looked closely enough.The nurse holding the phone looked up. Then her eyes went wide."Oh — Jessica, I didn't —""It's fine."Her voice came out steady. She didn't know how.She handed the phone back and kept walking.THE BATHROOMThree minutes.She gave herself three minutes inside the locked stall.She didn't cry. She stood with her back against the cubicle wall and breathed.slow and deliberate,

THE WRONG WARMTH

Willows Café smelled the same as it always did.Coffee. Something baked that had been warm a while ago.The low sound of other people's conversations, close enough to feel like company, far enough not to demand anything.Jessica had come because Maya had suggested it. She hadn't had the energy to choose anywhere else.They sat at the window table. Outside the afternoon moved past the glass like it always did. Unbothered.Maya wrapped both hands around her cup. "You need to eat something that isn't hospital food.""I eat hospital food every day.""That's what I said."Jessica picked up the menu. She wasn't reading it.She was thinking about the photograph. About the headline.About waking up and finding her own face on a stranger's screen. About the fact that somewhere out there, someone had been watching her walk to work, and she had been completely unaware.She set the menu down."Stop thinking," Maya said without looking up from her cup."I'm not.""Jessica.""I'm looking at the men

THE PATTERN

She noticed the calls first. Not because she was looking.Because they kept happening at the wrong moments.Dinner. His phone would light up beside his plate. He would glance at it ust once, just briefly . and then turn it face-down without a word.She couldn't help wondering why he always turned the phone face-down. As though the name on the screen mattered.She said nothing. Just reached for her glass. Took a sip. Set it down again.The food was warm. The kitchen was quiet. The space between them was the same size it always was.Nothing had changed. Except that now she was counting.The next evening it happened again.Different call. Same movement. Phone face-down. Voice dropping slightly as he stepped out of the room.She was reading on the sofa when it happened. She didn't look up from the page. Her eyes moved across the same sentence three times without reading it.She turned the page anyway.He came back seven minutes later. She knew because she had been counting those too. wit

THE WAITING ROOM

She had been sitting there for forty minutes.The chairs were the padded kind that looked comfortable and weren't. She had shifted twice already—once to the left, once back to centre—and given up on finding a position that felt right.Around her the waiting room did what waiting rooms did.Murmured. Rustled. Breathed.A couple near the window sat close together, the man's hand on the woman's knee, both of them looking at something on his phone and laughing quietly at whatever it was. An older woman across from Sarah was knitting — the needles clicking in a steady rhythm that should have been irritating and somehow wasn't. A young woman near the door kept checking her watch.Sarah looked at her phone.No messages.She had texted Michael two days ago about this appointment. He had read it. Hadn't replied.She put the phone face-down on her lap.Looked at the door to the clinic.Still closed.Still three names ahead of hers on the board.She exhaled slowly and leaned back in the chair

THE LISTENER

Her phone lit up one evening with a message from a number she didn't recognise.How's the baby?She stared at it. Her thumb hovered. She locked the screen.Set the phone face-down on the coffee table.Sat very still. She didn't reply.Two days later her phone rang.A different number this time. One she had saved. Sam. From the clinic. She stared at it for a moment.Then answered."I hope I'm not calling at a bad time," he said."No." She shifted on the sofa. "It's fine.""I was thinking about what you said. At the clinic. That it's a lot sometimes." A pause. "I wondered if you'd want to talk. Properly. Over coffee. Public place. No pressure."She should have said no. She knew that.But Michael wasn't talking.And silence had become harder to live with than uncertainty."Okay," she said.He had chosen the café himself.Quiet. Out of the way. The kind of place nobody from the company would wander into on a lunch break.Sarah arrived first.She always did.It was a habit she couldn't sha

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