Chapter Two: The Wife He Didn't Want
1165 Words
Saturday arrived like a funeral.
Lena woke at 5:00 AM in her cramped studio apartment, the one she could no longer afford. The walls were thin. The radiator clanked. The ceiling had a water stain that looked like a map of a country she would never visit. She had lived here for three years, ever since her mother died and the medical bills started piling up. She had hated every moment of it.
But now, looking around at the chipped paint and the crooked blinds and the stack of unpaid bills on the kitchen counter, she realized she would miss this place. It was small. It was ugly. It was hers.
After today, nothing would be hers again.
She showered until the hot water ran out, scrubbing her skin raw, as if she could wash away the contract, the ring, the life she was about to walk into. She couldn't. The ring was already on her nightstand, waiting. The contract was already in her bag. The life was already waiting.
She put on the dress she had bought from a discount rack three days ago. Cream-colored. Simple. No lace, no train, no veil. It looked like a summer sundress, not a wedding gown. That was intentional. She refused to pretend this was a real wedding.
No flowers. No bridesmaids. No family.
Her father was too sick to attend. She hadn't told him the truth. She had said she was marrying a "kind businessman" who had offered to help with the medical bills.
Kind.
The word tasted like ash in her mouth.
She arrived at the courthouse alone. The building was gray stone, old and imposing, with pillars that reminded her of a mausoleum. Appropriate, she thought. She was burying her old self here.
Damian was already waiting by the judge's chamber. He stood with his lawyer — a sharp-faced woman named Ms. Voss, who looked at Lena like she was something unpleasant on the bottom of her shoe — and his housekeeper, Nadia, who would serve as the second witness.
Nadia was silver-haired, with gentle eyes and a small, sad smile. She was the only person in the room who looked at Lena like she was human.
Damian wore a charcoal suit. No boutonniere. No smile. He looked like he was attending a board meeting, not a wedding. His gray eyes swept over Lena once, briefly, and then moved on. She wasn't worth a second glance.
"You're late," he said.
"The bus was late."
"You don't own a car."
"No. I don't." She lifted her chin. "Not all of us have drivers, Mr. Thorne."
His jaw tightened. That was the only reaction. He didn't apologize. He didn't explain. He just turned and walked into the judge's chamber, expecting her to follow.
She followed.
The ceremony lasted seven minutes.
The judge was a tired-looking woman in her sixties, with gray hair and kind eyes that had seen too many broken things. She read the legal vows in a monotone. Lena repeated them in a voice she didn't recognize — flat, hollow, empty.
"Do you, Lena Park, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?"
"I do."
Two words. Two lies. She did not take him. She endured him. And he was not her husband. He was her captor.
"Do you, Damian Thorne, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?"
"I do."
His voice was colder than hers. He said the words like he was signing a receipt.
No one said "for better or for worse." No one mentioned love. No one pretended this was anything other than what it was — a transaction, a deal, a contract signed in blood and desperation.
When the judge said, "You may kiss the bride," Damian hesitated.
For one second, something flickered across his face. Disgust? Pity? Regret? She couldn't tell. Then he leaned in.
His lips barely brushed hers — cold, clinical, over in less than a second. It was not a kiss. It was an obligation. A checkbox. A task completed.
But Lena felt it anyway.
A spark. A tiny, traitorous spark of warmth in her chest. She crushed it immediately, stomped it out, buried it so deep it could never grow.
You will not fall in love with me.
That won't be a problem.
Damian pulled back. His expression was unchanged — marble, steel, ice.
"Welcome to hell," he murmured, low enough that only she could hear.
Then he turned and walked away. He was already on his phone, already dismissing her from his mind, already moving on to the next deal, the next contract, the next person he could use and discard.
Nadia took Lena's arm. "Don't mind him, dear. He's terrible at beginnings."
"What about endings?" Lena asked.
Nadia's smile faded. "Those, he's very good at."
That night, Lena ate dinner alone in the east wing.
The room was enormous. High ceilings. Antique furniture. A fireplace that hadn't been lit in years. The walls were covered in dark wallpaper, the windows draped in heavy velvet curtains. It was a room designed to be impressive, not comfortable. A room that said wealth but not home.
A single tray of food sat on the dining table: cold salmon, wilted asparagus, a glass of water with a slice of lemon that had already browned at the edges.
She wasn't hungry. She hadn't been hungry in weeks. But she forced herself to take a few bites, chewing mechanically, tasting nothing.
She stared at the empty chair across from her and thought of her father, alone in his hospital room, probably eating Jell-O and watching game shows. She thought of the yellow house with the foreclosure notice. She thought of her mother's grave, cold and quiet under the winter earth. She thought of the contract hidden in her suitcase, twenty-three pages of poison.
She pulled out her phone.
No messages from Damian. No missed calls. No texts asking if she had settled in. No acknowledgment that she existed at all.
She texted her father: I'm married now. He's… quiet. But safe.
Three dots appeared. Then: Is he kind to you?
Lena looked at the cold salmon. At the platinum ring. At the enormous, silent house that smelled like money and loneliness. She heard no footsteps in the hallway. No voice calling her name. No knock on her door.
He doesn't even see me, she thought. I am furniture. I am a transaction. I am nothing.
She typed back: Yes. Very kind.
Lie number two.
She put down the phone and pushed the salmon away. Her eyes burned. Her throat ached. But she didn't cry. She had promised herself she wouldn't cry. Not here. Not in this house. Not in front of ghosts who didn't care.
Instead, she sat in the darkness, alone, and listened to the silence.
And somewhere in the west wing, in a room she would never enter, Damian Thorne sat alone too.
She wondered if he was thinking about her.
She doubted it.
- Writer
