He threw money on the bed after our one-night stand.
I threw it back in his face at his own inauguration.
By sundown, we were engaged. By the week's end — married.
Franklin Flemington needed a wife to secure his empire. I needed a miracle to save my family. For two years, we played our parts flawlessly — the golden couple the whole city envied.
Behind closed doors, I was invisible to him.
When the two years were up, I handed him divorce papers without blinking.
He stared at me like I'd lost my mind. "I've given you everything a husband should. What more do you want from me, Octavia?"
I smiled, signed my name, and walked out.
I thought that was the end. I thought I'd finally won.
I forgot one thing — Franklin Flemington has never lost anything in his life. And he has no intention of starting with me.
Game on.

I woke up and checked the clock on the nightstand, it was 5:00 AM.


In the silence of the master suite, the tiny, sharp whimpers of our daughter cutting through the darkness as the baby monitor alerted us.


Beside me, Octavia stirred, a faint, exhausted groan catching in her throat as she instinctively tried to push herself up from the pillows. Her movements were slow, her body still heavily weighed down by the brutal tax of the newborn phase.


"I've got her," I murmured, my voice a low, gravelly rumble in the quiet room.


I placed a large, steady hand on her shoulder, gently pressing her back into the mattress. She didn't argue. She simply closed her eyes and let her head sink back into the pillow, turning her face away from me.


The silence between us was deafening. It wasn't the peaceful quiet of a sleeping house; it was a thick, suffocating wall of unsaid words and bitter resentment.


Chapter 275 - ~ 274