Suddenly, his hand landed on her neck, firm, deliberate, scorching.

Linsy’s breath faltered. Her heart stood still. The quiet thump in her ears grew louder, rhythmically beating like war drums beneath a blood-red sky. Yet, her face remained serene, carved from marble, as if centuries of composure had been etched into her bones.

His fingers long, cold, impersonal, moved with the precision of a violinist, tracing a path from the slope of her neck, skimming down the delicate ridge of her spine. The slight pressure he applied was not forceful, but chillingly confident. When his thumb brushed the hollow beneath her collarbone, her breath hitched, and a soft flush, pale as the petals of winter-blooming plum, blossomed across her porcelain skin.

His fingers finally came to rest at the third button of her blouse. The pad of his thumb lingered there—not possessively, but as if it had simply found a resting place, indifferent to the chaos it incited beneath her skin.

“The button is fastened the wrong way,” he said. Cold. Detached. Like he was noting a discrepancy in a quarterly report.

Linsy’s gaze dropped, following the line of his wrist like a marionette drawn by invisible strings. Sure enough, the button was crooked, looped through the wrong hole, pulling the collar unevenly. But it wasn’t the button that made her stomach coil like a serpent disturbed in its nest.

It was his touch. The way it had lingered. The way it had branded her like ice drawn across burning skin. The way he withdrew without thought, as if she were nothing but static, forgettable, unimportant.

She slapped his hand away. Too forcefully.

A sharp crack split the air. Skin on skin. The echo hung between them, the silence that followed tenser than steel wire.

Stiffly, mechanically, she corrected the button. Her fingers trembled slightly, but her voice,when it came, was composed, brisk, professional. Almost robotic. “Apologies. It was a mistake in etiquette and appearance. I’ll ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

He recoiled. Not in pain but with disdain. Like she were something distasteful on his sleeve. A speck of dust. An inconvenient error.

Michael turned his back sharply, adjusting his collar as though her touch had soiled him.

“Don’t make such low-level mistakes again,” he said curtly. “You know the standards here.”

Linsy didn’t reply. She couldn’t.

If she moved her face, even slightly, she feared he’d see the war raging beneath her skin. That she’d betray the way her soul had bruised under the weight of his indifference.

So she stared at the pale marble floor.

But her eyes weren’t truly looking. Her vision turned inward into the storm of memory and ache where logic dueled with hope and pain sang lullabies to denial.

Her flesh remembered. How could it not? It was her first time… the first time she had felt something and been made to feel nothing.

Why was she always the one being corrected?

Why did the scales never tilt in her favor?

Why was she expected to be perfect, pliant, invisible?

Why wasn’t he ever wrong?

Her fingers curled inward until her nails bit into her palms, and then she whispered his name one she had never spoken aloud, not in this house. Not in three years of cold war cloaked as marriage.

“Michael Helwart.”

He stopped. At the door.

The name struck the air like a stone against glass. He turned, only slightly. Just enough to glance at her from the corner of his eye.

It sounded foreign on her tongue, too intimate, too old, too real.

She lifted her head. No tears. Not anymore. Just resignation, quiet as snowfall.

“Violet Bento is back.”

His shoulders tensed. His head turned a fraction more, and for a split second, she saw it flicker in his eyes. A storm brewing behind clouds he worked hard to keep still.

She drew in a breath, slow, deliberate.

“We should get a divorce.”

The words hung in the room, heavy and metallic. Like a gun dropped on glass. Like a bell tolling in a cathedral stripped of faith.

Michael didn’t speak.

But his hands, those precise, elegant hands trembled.

His jaw tightened. Veins stood out like cords on the backs of his fists. His breath swallowed, but he masked it quickly.

When he finally spoke, it wasn’t an answer. It was a dismissal.

“It’s working hours. Go do what you’re supposed to do.”

Then he walked away.

No response. No question. No refusal. No plea.

Just a clean, surgical severing of the moment.

His footsteps echoed down the hall, clipped, brisk, final.

Linsy stood still, rooted to the spot. Her lungs screamed for breath, but her body had forgotten how to draw air.

She had hoped foolishly, irrationally that he might stop. That he might say something. Anything. But he didn’t.

He didn’t even look back.

And that broke her more than anything else.

A tear slid down the back of her hand silent, stealthy. She hadn’t felt it fall. But it shimmered like the last of her dignity leaving quietly through the skin.

She wiped it away quickly.

There was no room for weakness. She still had her duties.

She still had to wear the mask.

And tonight beneath the old photo album where the dust of dead dreams gathered like ash, she would retrieve the divorce agreement she drafted three years ago.

Just in case.

Now, finally, it was time.

Helwart Group – CEO Office

In the glass tower overlooking the city like a sentinel, Michael Helwart sat in silence. Behind him, the skyline glittered in sharp lines and ruthless symmetry, cold and untouched by the human heart.

He leaned forward slightly in his leather chair, fingers steepled, breath uneven. His thoughts were fractured uncharacteristically unmoored.

There was a knock.

Simon stepped inside, clipboard in hand, posture straight as a blade.

“Boss Helwart,” he said. “I’ve completed the investigation you requested.”

Michael lifted his eyes slowly. A flicker of anticipation, though his expression remained unreadable.

Simon cleared his throat. “Ms. Linsy did, in fact, sleep in the office last night. Security footage confirms it.”

Michael’s gaze flickered again. Something in his shoulders uncoiled but only slightly.

“And?” he asked.

Simon hesitated. “Miss Violet Bento visited your hotel. She asked at the front desk. Checked your room number and came right up.”

Michael stilled. The very air around him seemed to freeze.

So she had come back. After all these years.

She had searched for him.

His lips curled into something resembling a smile but it didn’t reach his eyes. Instead, his mind wandered.

To Linsy.

To the sound of her voice low, breaking, but clear when she spoke his name like a stranger.

Michael leaned back in his chair, running a hand over his face.

Why did that echo hurt more than Violet’s return?

The Helwart's ancestral mansion breathed with old secrets, its walls soaked in lineage and pride. Dust motes danced in filtered morning light like memories refusing to settle.

Linsy stepped through the doorway.

The weight of the past fell on her shoulders like an iron cloak.

She hadn’t crossed this threshold in months, She avoided her mother in law like fire and yet every step felt rehearsed. Every corner reeked of judgment.

The voice came sharp as a whip.

“Why don’t you work hard and come back? Our Helwart family doesn’t feed idle hens who can’t lay eggs.” It was her mother -in-law

Nancy Helwart.

The matriarch’s voice was like acid wrapped in pearls dripping disdain beneath faux civility.

Linsy froze, fingers tightening on the handle of her beige tote. The morning light fractured through stained glass above the door, casting kaleidoscopic bruises across her face.

Her eyes, though tired, gleamed with something defiant.

“I only came for the documents Mr. Helwart needs for today’s board meeting,” she said. Her voice was clipped, professional. A mask forged from glass and pride.

Nancy’s silhouette emerged from the living room like a shadow that refused to die. “Important documents, huh? You should’ve packed them already. What, trying to skip work again? Don’t forget you owe the Helwart family ten million! Think you can repay that in ten lifetimes?”

Linsy looked down, jaw tight. The burn behind her eyes returned.

She remembered how could she not?

Her father’s debt.

The price of a wedding ring she never wanted.

A husband who had never truly looked at her.

“I’ll repay it,” she said. “I’m just here for the documents.”

She moved toward the study, but Nancy’s voice lashed out again.

“Who said you could leave? Sit. I’ve got a question.”

Linsy turned slowly. “Yes?”

Nancy’s arms folded like swords drawn. “Have you gone to the hospital this month? Is there movement in your stomach?”

The words struck her like a slap. Her mouth parted, stunned. Shame prickled at her skin.

She replied quietly, “Michael and I have been busy. I’ll try , when there’s time.”

Nancy’s sneer twisted cruelly. “Excuses! If you can’t give my son an heir, divorce him. Let someone else do it properly.”

Her legs weakened beneath her.

She already knew she was unwanted but hearing it, branded so plainly, made her chest cave in.

“Is… is this what he wants?”

Nancy’s expression turned smug.

“What do you think?”

Before Linsy could muster a reply, a syrupy voice floated in from the kitchen.

“Aunt Nancy, your favorite chicken soup is ready, come taste it.”

A figure emerged delicate, elegant, confident.

Wiping her hands on a lavender apron.

Linsy’s heart stopped.

That voice, how can she not remember it? It was that woman…

For real Violet Bento had arrived.

And she hadn’t come empty-handed. She had come for her seat.