Chapter 1- Alone
The digital clock on the nightstand glowed a cold, mocking 3:00 AM
Seraphina sat alone on the velvet sofa in the center of their cavernous living room, her legs pulled tightly against her chest. A knitted blanket was wrapped around her shoulders, but it did nothing to stop the deep, aching chill that had settled into her bones over the last six months.
On the mahogany coffee table sat a beautiful, untouched dinner for two. The steak had long since congealed into a cold, unappetizing gray, and the expensive bottle of wine Ethan loved remained unopened.
It was their third wedding anniversary. And, once again, she was celebrating it with a ghost.
Seraphina stared out the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. Outside, a relentless storm was battering the city, rain streaking down the glass like heavy tears. Every few minutes, headlights from luxury cars would cut through the dark street below, making her heart leap with a foolish, desperate hope—only for the vehicle to pass by, leaving her in darkness again.
Where are you, Ethan?* she whispered into the empty room.
She picked up her phone for the twentieth time that night. Her thumb hovered over his contact name: My Husband.
Three years ago, she had given up everything to marry Ethan Vance. She had walked away from a life of unimaginable wealth, stripped herself of her real family name, and lied to him, claiming she was just a penniless, struggling orphan. She wanted to be certain that the man she loved wanted her for “her”, not the zillion-dollar empire attached to her bloodline.
When they first married, Ethan was a hardworking, passionate man. He held her tight, swore that her lack of a family didn't matter to him, and promised to build a kingdom just for the two of them.
And he did. His company skyrocketed, turning him into a billionaire CEO almost overnight. But somewhere along the line, as the money poured in and his status grew, the man she loved began to slip through her fingers.
Suddenly, her phone vibrated in her hand.
Seraphina answered it on the very first ring, her voice tight with anxiety. "Ethan? Are you okay? Where are you? The storm is getting worse—"
"Seraphina, stop suffocating me," Ethan’s voice cut through the line, sharp and dripping with exhaustion. There was a strange, echoing silence in his background, followed by the faint rustle of what sounded like fabric.
Seraphina's chest tightened. "I’m not trying to suffocate you, Ethan. It’s past three in the morning. It’s our anniversary. You said you’d be home by seven."
A heavy sigh came from the other end of the line, followed by the familiar, rehearsed tone he always used lately. "A last-minute crisis came up at the office. A major overseas acquisition is falling through. If I don't stay here and fix this with the board, the company loses millions. I'm doing this for us, Seraphina."
For us.
It was always the same excuse. The company, the meetings, the emergency board dinners.
"Can't it wait until morning?" she pleaded softly, hating how small and pathetic she sounded. "Just come home. We don't even have to eat the dinner I made. I just... I just want to see you."
"Don't be selfish," Ethan snapped, his patience completely evaporating. "You don't understand how the business world works. You've never had to run a conglomerate, so you don't get to tell me when a crisis can wait. Go to sleep. I’m staying at a hotel near the office tonight so I can be back at my desk by six."
"Ethan, wait—"
The line went dead.
Seraphina lowered the phone, staring at the black screen as a solitary tear finally spilled over her lashes.
A hotel near the office.
She looked down at her hands. Her fingers were raw from spending hours in the kitchen preparing his favorite meal, a meal she had painstakingly learned to cook just to please his demanding, elitist mother, who never lost an opportunity to remind Seraphina that a "poor orphan" didn't deserve her son.
Seraphina wanted to believe him. She truly did. She blamed herself for being paranoid, forcing herself to believe that his sudden coldness was just the stress of being a billionaire CEO.
But a wife’s instinct is a terrifying thing.
She knew something was wrong. She knew the man who used to drive across the state just to bring her a hot cup of soup when she had a cold wouldn't leave his wife alone in a dark house during a violent storm just because of a business meeting. He didn't even wish her a happy anniversary.
What Seraphina didn't know—what she couldn't possibly guess as she sat alone in her cold living room—was that Ethan wasn't at a hotel near his office.
At that exact moment, miles away in a private luxury hospital suite, Ethan Vance was sitting at the edge of a bed, gently holding the hand of a pale, beautiful woman who had just returned to the country.
The woman who had broken his heart years ago.
As the rain poured down on the city, Seraphina pulled the blanket tighter around herself, unaware that the countdown to her one-hundredth heartbreak had already begun.
