The military god strikes back!

The silence in the room was thick, only broken by the soft scrape of a wheelchair rolling into the study. The faint but unmistakable sound stirred her from her thoughts, and her eyes darted to the door. There he was, moving across the floor with the usual composure he had perfected, his hands steady on the wheelchair’s armrests. Julia Stone took in the sight, her heart hardening. Before Samuel could speak, she bit out, “Leaving again for a few days?” Her tone was sharp, dripping with sarcasm, her words underscored by an anger she was too tired to mask anymore. He paused, a flicker of something—surprise, perhaps—crossing his face before it settled back into its usual impassive look. “I’ll be back soon,” he replied, his voice low, almost too calm. The answer snapped something in her. She didn’t care to hold back anymore. Without another thought, she hurled the teacup in her hand across the room, and it shattered against his legs. The fragments scattered across the floor, echoing in the silence that had returned. Three years. It had been three long, dragging years since her life had been turned upside down. She had worked tirelessly to build her career, one triumph after another, outpacing her brother and even earning a name for herself among her family’s competitors. But that success had only made her a target within her own family. In her family’s eyes, the achievements of a daughter were secondary, temporary. It was her brother who was supposed to shine, not her, and certainly not in a way that would make his own accomplishments seem lackluster by comparison. That was where her grandmother had stepped in, cunning as ever. With careful, calculated manipulation, the older woman had orchestrated what, at the time, had seemed like an unbelievable series of events. Her family’s preference for male heirs, its aversion to her ambition—all of it had culminated in one painful outcome. They had taken her thriving career and her independence and traded them for a “strategic alliance” that was nothing but a guise for control. The man she was bound to had been found injured, abandoned on the roadside, his body battered and unconscious. To her family, he had been a convenient tool, someone she could be tied to, shackling her potential and securing the family’s resources in favor of her brother. She had watched as her family cloaked their selfish intent in feigned concern, ensuring that she would be isolated and humiliated. Society’s whispers had followed her everywhere, the murmurs of prominent families mocking her as the woman who had married a broken man. They had taken her worth and twisted it, leaving her bound to a man she hardly knew, one who came and went as he pleased. She did not hold him responsible for her family’s cruelty. No, she had long ago accepted that her grandmother’s schemes were out of his hands. But that didn’t erase the resentment that had been building since then. She had been trying to make the best of their forced marriage, to find some semblance of stability, but he had made that impossible. He was a ghost in her life, disappearing without explanation, sometimes for days on end. Each time he vanished, he left her with no word, no way to reach him, and every time he returned, there was a new dent in their already fragile connection. And the money—oh, the expense. Every time he left, tens of thousands were spent, draining their finances with no explanation. She had tried to ignore it, to reason with herself that he had his own life beyond their shared one, but her patience had worn thin. She was tired of carrying a marriage that he seemed so eager to slip away from whenever he could. Every disappearance, every unaccounted dollar, drove her further to the edge. Now, three years later, she was done pretending. He flinched slightly, the movement so brief that she almost missed it as he tried to speak, words of apology or explanation perhaps, but she wasn’t interested. The shattered porcelain at his feet seemed to underline everything she couldn’t voice—the frustration, the anger, and the bitterness that had steeped into her bones. “What are you doing all those days you’re gone?” she demanded, her gaze dropping pointedly to his legs, her voice sharp as steel. “Where are you going, and what is this money being spent on?” For a moment, he looked at her, his expression unreadable, but she caught a flash of something in his eyes—a glint of pain, regret, maybe. He clenched his hands on the wheelchair’s arms, a tension radiating from him that made her waver, but she pushed aside any hesitation. “If you can’t give me an answer, I want a divorce,” she continued. Her voice didn’t tremble; she had rehearsed these words too many times in her mind for them to falter now. He drew a deep breath, but the weariness etched into his features remained. He opened his mouth, but for a moment, no words came. Then he spoke, his tone gentle, placating. “I know… I know I haven’t been here as much as I should. But I didn’t mean to make things harder for you.” Her eyes narrowed. “You think saying that makes up for three years of silence?” He looked away, as if gathering his thoughts, his hands tightening again on the wheelchair’s armrests. “I can’t explain everything. There are things that… require my attention. Things that only I can handle.” “Things?” Her laugh was bitter. “You vanish for days on end, spend thousands each time, and all you can say is ‘things’?” The room fell into silence again, charged and electric. She knew he was struggling with something, and in another life, perhaps she might have cared to dig deeper. But in this life, in this fractured existence, she had nothing left to give to him if he couldn’t even give her honesty in return. “You went to war three years ago, didn’t you?” she asked finally, her voice cold. “You came back with those injuries and left me wondering what happened every time you disappear. But I deserve to know why. I deserve to know what you’re doing, why you won’t let me in on this secret that keeps dragging you away.” His silence told her everything she needed to know, even before he spoke. “It’s complicated,” he said softly, and the words felt like a knife twisting in her heart. She had heard those words too many times, always the same excuse for his endless absences, his continued silence. “Then simplify it,” she shot back, leaning forward, her gaze unyielding. “Either you tell me the truth, or you leave for good. I don’t need half-truths and shadows, not anymore.”