Chapter 4
1180 Words
Aria
“I want a divorce.”
The words left my mouth quietly, but they still cut through the room like glass.
Lucien finally looked at me fully.
And for the first time since waking up… his expression changed.
He looked genuinely confused like pigs had started to fly.
The room fell silent around us. The soft ticking of the clock on the wall suddenly sounded louder.
Lucien stood near the fireplace, one hand tucked into the pocket of his black trousers, the other holding a document he’d stopped reading the second I spoke.
His gaze stayed on me now sharp, unreadable.
I held his stare anyway.
As I stared into Lucien’s cold gray eyes, the conversation from the phone call came rushing back into my head all over again.
“I’ll handle it.”
A pause.
Lucien’s voice was low and clipped through the phone.
Then:
“She lost her memory,” he continued calmly. “That changes nothing.”
Something about the way he said it made my stomach tighten faintly.
Then a woman’s voice drifted through the phone softly.
“Lucien… memory loss changes everything.”
“No,” he replied immediately.
Cold, calculated, not concerned.
I looked down at my hands slowly.
He continued speaking, his voice reduced to muffled tones I no longer cared to fully understand.
“All I need is the heir.”
My breath caught faintly.
The heir?
My throat felt suddenly dry, like the air itself had turned sharp. I forced my fingers to stay still, even though they wanted to curl inward.
I stayed perfectly still.
The woman sighed softly through the speaker. “You’re still obsessing over compatibility reports?”
“You saw the results yourself,” Lucien answered flatly. “Her genetic profile is the only viable match strong enough to carry a healthy Vaughn heir.I married her because I had no other choice.”
For some weird reason I heard everything he said vividly despite his low tone.
The words settled strangely in my chest while something in me quietly shut down.
The air conditioner hummed faintly overhead. I could hear my own heartbeat now slow and uneven inside my chest.
“She became attached,” the woman continued softly. “You should’ve ended it earlier.”
Lucien exhaled quietly through his nose.
“She hasn't served her purpose.”
The words didn’t shock me the way they should have.
Somewhere deep inside, my heart already knew I had never been loved here.
“You just woke up from the hospital,” he said calmly. “You’re not thinking clearly.”
His voice jolted me back to reality and my fingers instinctively tightened slightly around the edge of the armchair beside me.
“There it is again,” I said softly.
His brows lowered faintly. “What?”
“That tone.” My throat tightened, but I didn’t look away. “Like you’ve already decided what I should think.”
“Aria—”
“No.” I shook my head immediately. “Don’t do that.”
His jaw tightened slightly.
I could feel my own heartbeat now fast but steady.
Maybe because this was the first decision I’d made since waking up that actually felt like mine.
“I don’t remember you,” I said.
“I don’t remember loving you. I don’t remember choosing this marriage.”
My eyes searched his face again, trying to force something to surface inside me.
Nothing did. Just a burning need to get far away from this sham of a marriage and a man standing across from me looking more inconvenienced than afraid to lose me.
“You’re overwhelmed,” he replied. “The doctors already explained that memory loss can affect emotional response.”
I almost laughed.
The problem wasn’t that I felt nothing.
The problem was that my instincts screamed every time he got too close.
My gaze drifted around the office, dark shelves, clean lines, everything perfectly controlled.
Lucien walked toward me slowly, his shoes brushing softly against the floor.
“You need time,” he said. “And you need honesty.”
The words came out faster this time.
His steps stopped.
A strange tension settled heavily between us.
I swallowed slowly before speaking again. “When I woke up in that hospital, you didn’t look relieved.” My voice softened. “You looked prepared.”
His expression hardened slightly.
Prepared for what?
The question sat heavily inside my chest.
Outside, thunder rumbled faintly across the sky.
Lucien exhaled slowly through his nose. “You’re creating conclusions based on emotions you can’t fully understand yet.”
“Maybe.” I nodded once. “But I still want a divorce.”
The room went quiet again.
I could hear the faint crackling of the fire behind him now. Smell the smoke curling softly through the air.
Lucien studied me for a long moment.
“Fine.”
The answer came too easily.
Something sharp twisted briefly in my chest before disappearing just as fast.
Fine?
That was it?
No hesitation.
Not even curiosity.
For some reason, that hurt more than it should have.
Lucien moved back toward his desk calmly, reaching for a pen.
“I’ll have the papers prepared.”
Lucien’s assistant Damian entered quietly a few minutes later. Tall, calm in a dark suit. His eyes briefly met mine before settling on Lucien.
“We found new footage from the highway,” he said carefully.
Lucien’s expression darkened instantly.
“Later,” he said coldly. But I didn’t miss the tension that suddenly filled the room.
Damian hesitated briefly, like there was something else he wanted to say. Then he gave a small nod and stepped back out of the room quietly.
The scratch of ink against paper filled the silence.
I stared at him, suddenly aware of how cold the room felt despite the fire burning only a few feet away.
Was this man really my husband?
A strange ache rose inside me not because I loved him.
But because some version of me clearly had and she had loved a man who could let her go this easily.
My fingers curled tightly at my sides.
A flicker came again, me standing by a window, checking my phone for his message. One ring, one reply, one word from him had once been enough to change my entire day.
The memory disappeared as quickly as it came. And I wasn’t sure if I missed her… or pitied her.
No.
Not her anymore.
For the first time since waking up, my chest didn’t feel heavy.
It felt clear.
I turned toward the door.
My steps felt heavier than they should have, each one swallowed by the thick silence behind me.
“Aria.”
I stopped instinctively.
His voice was lower this time.
I looked back over my shoulder.
Lucien’s gray eye
s rested on me steadily. “You should stay here until you recover fully.”
There it was again.
Control wrapped carefully as concern.
“I’ll leave once the divorce is finalized,” I replied.
- Writer
