Married To My Husband’s Rival

Chapter 3: What Yes Costs

WREN POV

"Forty-eight hours," Seth said.

That was it. No big speech. No are you sure. Just forty-eight hours, like we had already moved past the part where I could change my mind.

"That's it?" I asked.

"That's it."

"You're not going to ask me again if I mean it?"

"You said yes. I heard you."

He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a card. Plain. Matte black. He held it out and I took it.

"There's a car downstairs," he said. "Use it tonight. The number on the back is direct. Call it if you need anything before morning."

I looked at the card. Then back at him.

"And where are you going?"

He looked toward the main hall. "Back in."

Back in. Like the gala was still his room. Like nothing that happened tonight had touched him at all. He straightened his jacket, gave me one last look, and walked away. Not rushing. Just walking. Even and easy, like a man who had somewhere to be and knew exactly how long it would take to get there.

I stood in that corridor and watched him go until he disappeared through the doors.

Then I looked down at the card in my hand.

Then I looked at my shoes. Still in my other hand. I had been holding them this whole time.

The car was a black SUV. The driver did not say anything except "Good evening" and I was grateful for that. I sat in the back with my heels on the seat beside me and my phone face down on my lap and I watched the city pass outside the window the whole way home.

Home.

I almost laughed at that word.

I let myself into the apartment and stood in the doorway for a second before I reached for the light switch. The dark felt safer for that one moment. Like if I didn't turn the lights on I wouldn't have to see it yet.

Then I flicked the switch.

The living room came up bright and familiar and wrong.

His jacket was on the arm of the couch. The one he wore to dinner last Thursday. I had sat across from him at that table and talked about the gala and what he was going to say in his speech and he had listened and nodded and not said a single real thing.

I walked further in.

The photos on the wall. Us at a friend's wedding two years ago. A trip to Italy the year before that, both of us squinting into the sun. A candid one his sister took at Christmas where I was laughing at something and Owen had his arm around me and we looked genuinely happy.

We were. I think we were.

Or I was.

I walked to the bedroom. His side of the wardrobe, right side. Always the right side. I never questioned it, just built my whole routine around leaving him the right side. Five pairs of shoes lined up neat. His watch on the nightstand. A book he had been reading for three months and barely touched.

The apartment smelled like him. That specific cologne he had worn since before I knew him. I had always liked it. Right now it was making it hard to breathe properly.

I sat down on the kitchen floor.

Not because I planned to. My legs just stopped cooperating and the floor was there and it was cold and solid and that felt right somehow. I sat there with my back against the cabinet and the green dress pooling around me and I just stayed.

I thought about his voice at that podium. How it didn't shake. How he looked at Lacey when he said her name. How he did not look at me once.

I sat there for a long time.

My phone rang at some point. I watched it light up and ring out. Then it rang again. I turned it face down.

I did not cry.

I kept waiting to and it kept not happening. Like my body had looked at the size of this thing and decided crying was not going to be enough so it was just not going to bother.

Seth's lawyer called at eight the next morning. I was at the kitchen table by then with coffee I had made mostly to have something to do with my hands.

"Miss Calloway, my name is Daniel Reese. I represent Seth Maren. He asked me to reach out this morning regarding the agreement."

"Already?"

"Mr Maren prefers to move quickly. I'm sending the paperwork through now. You'll have thirty-six hours to review before we'd need a signature."

I pulled the laptop toward me. The email was already there.

I read through it twice. The terms were clean. No hidden language, no traps I could find. The marriage would last until the acquisition was complete. My finances stayed separate and fully mine. We would live together for appearance purposes. There was a section about public conduct, what was expected, what was not. Professional. Like a business partnership with extra steps.

Which was exactly what it was.

I sat with it for a while. Drank the coffee. Read it a third time.

Then I signed it.

Not at the thirty-six hour mark. Way before that. Because I already knew and waiting was just pretending I didn't.

"I'll need to get my things," I told the lawyer when I called him back.

"Mr Maren's driver can assist this afternoon if that works for you."

"Fine."

"Is there anything specific you'll need help with?"

"No," I said. "I don't have that much."

The driver arrived at two. I had one bag packed. I did not take a lot. My clothes. My books. The small framed photo of me and June from three years ago. My mother's ring from the box in the back of the wardrobe.

I left his things exactly where they were. I didn't move anything, didn't rearrange. I just took what was mine and left the rest for him to deal with.

The green dress I laid out on the bed.

I don't know why I did that specifically. It wasn't petty. It wasn't a message. I just didn't want to take it and I didn't want to stuff it in a bin bag. So I laid it out flat and I looked at it for one second and then I picked up my bag and I left.

Seth's building was in Midtown. The kind of building that has a doorman who does not smile because smiling would be beneath the address. The lobby was all marble and low lighting and I felt underdressed walking through it with one bag and no heels on.

The elevator opened straight into the penthouse.

I stepped out and just stopped.

It looked like a showroom. Huge windows, city on every side. Furniture that was expensive in that quiet way where nothing shouts at you. Clean lines, nothing out of place. Beautiful and completely cold and it did not look like anyone actually lived there.

Seth was standing near the far window. He turned when he heard me.

"You packed light," he said.

"I told you. I don't have that much."

He showed me the east wing. My room was bigger than my old living room and had its own bathroom and a window seat that looked out over the east side of the city. He told me Cal would handle anything I needed and that Cal's number was in the contacts he was sending to my phone.

"Who's Cal?" I asked.

"My right hand. He runs things. You can trust him."

I nodded slowly, looking around the room. "This is a lot of space for an arrangement."

"I do things properly or I don't do them."

He walked back toward the main area and I followed because I didn't know what else to do yet. I was still figuring out how to stand in this place like I was allowed to be here.

"There's one more thing," he said. He stopped and turned to face me and his tone had changed. Careful now. Like he was picking his words.

My stomach dipped. "What?"

"Owen called a press conference. For tomorrow morning."

"Okay."

"He didn't wait to find out what you were going to do, Wren. He's already put out his version of the story."

I went still.

"What version?"

Seth looked at me and said nothing for a second and that one second was enough for me to understand that whatever Owen had said, it was not good for me.

"What did he say, Seth."