He Loved Her, Not His Wife

sband's mansion. I accepted his coldness, believing

-billion-dollar merger to kneel on a dirty poli

ble to cook for her. He let her destroy my life's work, the

ss from a pool with my bare hands, my blood cloudi

f love. He was just i

was signing a document to get rid of me, she used his legally binding personal seal a

pte

ya

old myself his coldness was just his nature, a side effect of the ruthless genius that

Bella

ouldn' t have done if the world was ending-just to kneel on the dirty floo

had built my life around sha

arriage of convenience, after all, a strategic alliance between the old-money prestige of my family, the Gray

at our wedding, the Michelin-star dinner growing cold on the table, until his assistant calle

the fourth, I didn' t even bother. I just opened a bottle of wine and watched the city l

gn showcase, the culmination of my university degree and the last spark of my own amb

the hospital. He was in the middle of a quarterly earnings call. "Aniya," his voice was flat,

I didn' t want his doct

dn' t quantify, so he ignored it. I accepted this. I made my peace with it. I told myself that his col

athetic comfort, bu

spoke of a social media influencer, Bella Adkins, a girl barely out of her teens with a m

The man who checked stock prices dur

dence becam

to secure a multi-billion dollar semiconductor deal in Taiwan. The re

n, was now filled with gaping holes. He would disappear for entire

y spilled a smoothie on a hundred-million-dollar server prototype in his lab, and Don

ie I knew. The Donnie I knew would have fina

stone-cold husband I shared a roof with. The dissonan

ut I couldn' t live with the uncertainty. The investigation was surprisingly difficult. Donnie' s securit

email arrived. No subject, no

a pho

His arm was wrapped protectively around her, and he was looking at her with an expression of such raw,

e world tilted on its axis, a wave of nausea washing over me. I stum

r starting the engine. All I remember is the blinding g

dark

and a dull, throbbing pain in my head. A priv

wasn' t

n with a face like a clenched f

ngs are best left uninvestigated. Mr. Winters values his privacy. This," he gestured

t my lungs.

... wasn' t

y bones. He had tried to have me killed. Or at the very least, fr

, the man whose icy heart I thought I could m

he agony that ripped through my chest. It fel

ic revelation when my phone, miracul

disturbance at the St. Regis. She' s demanding we call your husband

e I wanted to see her, the wom

Bella was in the middle of the room, mascara running

nd is? When Donnie gets here, he' s going to buy t

hrough the room, a sudden drop in temperature t

nters had

ower that silenced the entire room. His sharp, glacial eyes scanned the area, com

e, his voice a low growl of dism

rm, and went straight to her. The transformation was instantaneous and s

fter than I had ever heard it. He cupped her face i

r dumped over my head. He had never t

ted me! And you didn' t answer my calls! Were you with another woman?

ath hi

urgently, "Mr. Winters, the merger call with Tokyo i

e snapped without lo

. "Sir? This is the ten-bil

attention back to Bella, his expression softening again. "My poor baby. I wasn' t

an to me! And... and my shoe came untied when they pushed me!" She stu

destroyed the last

his legal wife-Donnie Winters, the titan of the tech world, a man wh

grimy floor of t

more than small countries, he gentl

se himself for a pouting child. The humiliation was so pr

t just break. I

tood. He wasn't

incapable