Married To My Husband’s Rival

CHAPTER 15: Ten Minutes

WREN POV

I got there first.

Small coffee place. Three blocks from the penthouse. The kind of spot that had mismatched chairs and handwritten menus and absolutely zero chance of running into anyone from our old life.

I picked the table at the back. Sat with my coffee and my hands flat on the table and waited.

Owen walked in four minutes later.

He looked bad. Not falling apart bad. Just tired. The kind of tired that lived behind the eyes and didn’t go away with sleep. His suit was right but everything else was off. He saw me and came straight over and sat down.

Neither of us said anything for a second.

Then he said “Thank you for coming.”

“You have ten minutes,” I said. “Start talking.”

He nodded. Looked at his hands. Then back up at me.

“I’m sorry Wren.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Not the statement my PR team put out. Not the managed version.” He stopped. Started again. “I handled everything wrong. I should have ended things properly. Quietly. Between us. Before any of it got to that point.” His voice dropped. “What I did at that gala was cruel. It was cowardly. And I have not stopped thinking about that night since it happened.”

I sat there and let him finish.

Every word. I let him get through every single one without cutting him off.

When he went quiet I picked up my cup and took a slow sip.

Then I asked him.

“Did your mother know about Lacey before the gala?”

Owen went very still.

That was the answer.

“She helped arrange things,” he said quietly. “I thought it was help at the time.”

“And now?”

He looked at the table. “I’m less sure of that now.”

I put my cup down. “Did you know your mother introduced Lacey to you deliberately? That she arranged the whole thing from the beginning? Two years ago?”

His head came up fast.

His face did something I had not seen before. Not the performed hurt from the charity dinner. Not the managed grief. This was real. Raw. Like something just rearranged itself behind his eyes and the new shape of it was ugly.

“What?” he said.

“Diane set it up,” I said. “She found Lacey. She made the introduction look accidental. She managed the timeline. The gala announcement was hers too.”

“That’s not.” He stopped. “That’s not possible.”

“It’s documented Owen.”

He stared at me.

I watched it land. Watched him sit with the weight of it. His mother. The woman who raised him and ran his company and told him what to say and when to say it had been building this whole thing from the ground up while he thought he was making his own choices.

I almost felt something for him in that moment.

Almost.

“I didn’t know that,” he said. His voice came out smaller than usual.

“I know you didn’t,” I said.

We sat there for a second. The coffee place had low music playing and two people at the front counter laughing about something and it was all so normal while everything at our table was the opposite of that.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“Talk to my lawyer,” I said. “Same as before.”

“Wren.”

“What Owen?”

“I know I don’t have any right to ask you anything.” He looked at me straight. “But is there any version of this where you and I are okay? Not together. Not that. Just. Okay.”

I looked at him for a long moment.

Four years. His jacket on the couch. Italy with the sun in our eyes. Christmas dinners with Diane smiling at me like she was being polite.

“Ask me again in a year,” I said.

He nodded. Like that was fair. Like he had no room to ask for more than that.

I stood up. Pulled my jacket on.

“I’ll be in touch through my lawyer,” I said.

He didn’t try to stop me.

I walked out.

The air outside was cold and sharp and I pulled my jacket tighter and started walking the three blocks back.

My chest felt strange. Not sad exactly. Not angry either. Just heavy in a way I couldn’t name. Like I had been carrying a version of Owen in my head for weeks and the one sitting in that coffee place was smaller than it.

A weak man managed by a sharp woman.

That didn’t make it okay.

But it was the full picture now.

I turned the corner toward the penthouse building and saw Seth coming from the other direction at the same time.

He wasn’t looking for me. He had a folder under his arm and his phone in his hand and he was clearly coming back from somewhere else entirely.

We reached the lobby doors at the same time.

The doorman opened it. We both walked in.

Seth looked at me. “Where were you?”

“Coffee place on Mercer.”

“Alone?”

The elevator doors opened and we both stepped in.

“I met Owen,” I said.

Seth went still.

Not angry still. Not loud. Just that specific stillness he got when something landed that he needed a second with.

The elevator doors closed.

He looked at the floor number display. His jaw was tight.

“You should have told me” he said quietly.

“I didn’t need your permission.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“It’s what you meant.”

He said nothing.

The numbers went up. Twelve. Fifteen. Eighteen.

“He didn’t know about Diane’s involvement,” I said. “About how she set up Lacey from the beginning. I told him. I watched his face. He genuinely didn’t know.”

Still nothing from Seth.

“That matters,” I said. “For the board vote. If Owen finds out the full extent of what his mother did he may not fight as hard to protect her.”

The elevator stopped. Twenty-third floor.

The doors opened.

Seth walked out first without saying a word.

I stood there.

The doors started to close and I put my hand out and stopped them.

Then I stepped out and followed him.

He was already halfway down the hall and I watched his back and I thought about the elevator and the silence and the way his jaw had gone tight.

He was not angry about Owen.

He was scared.

Not of Owen. Of what I might have walked into alone.

I understood that.

Didn’t mean he got to make my choices.

But I understood it.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​