Twice His Wife

till 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

amily." 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