“You’re not walking away from me that easily, Marcelline.”

She blinked once, pen poised above the paper, then set it down with infuriating grace. “Rowan,” she said coolly, as though acknowledging a business associate—not the man she’d spent nine years married to. “Dont be dramatic. It makes you look… desperate.”

His jaw clenched. He said standing upright. “Don’t play with me. You think you can just throw divorce papers at me and vanish into thin air? That after nine years of marriage, you can just, just disappear?”

Marcelline leaned back in her chair, the corner of her lip curving ever so slightly. Not a smile. Not warmth. Something sharper. “We've talked about this. I didn’t vanish. I walked out. You just never thought I would.”

The air between them crackled. His fingers twitched at his side.

“You don’t get to decide when it ends,” he snapped.

Her brows lifted, mocking. “Oh? And you do? Nine years, Rowan. That was our deal. Nine years, and I go. I’ve only kept my end of the bargain.”

His breath hitched, anger flaring hot in his veins at her composure. She said it like their marriage had been nothing. A deal. A business arrangement. Disposable.

“Don’t reduce this to paperwork.” His voice dropped lower, harsher. “You were my wife.”

Marcelline’s gaze sharpened. “Wife?” She stood then, each movement elegant, deliberate, her heels clicking against the marble floor as she came around the desk to face him. “Tell me, Rowan. When exactly did I become your wife? Was it when I cooked for you every morning while you ignored me? When I smiled beside you at banquets while you let Selene drape herself over your arm? When I played hostess in your home while being treated as an intruder in my own marriage?”

Her words cut clean, unflinching, like a surgeon’s scalpel slicing to the bone.

Rowan flinched, but masked it with a scoff. “You endured all that quietly. You never complained.”

“Because I knew it would end.” Her voice softened—not weak, but final. “And now it has.”

She moved to brush past him, but his hand shot out, gripping her wrist. Not hard enough to hurt, but enough to stop her. To make her finally look at him.

The contact jolted through him like fire. Nine years, and she had never felt more distant—and yet, in this moment, he couldn’t let go.

“Why?” His voice cracked—not with rage, but with something he didn’t want to name. “Why do you think you can just leave me like this?”

Marcelline’s eyes lowered to his hand on her wrist. Slowly, she pulled free, her calm unshaken. “Because I realized, Rowan, you never had me to begin with.”

His chest tightened painfully.

Her words hit harder than any boardroom betrayal, any shareholder revolt, any billion-dollar deal gone wrong. She slipped from his grip like smoke through clenched fists—untouchable, elusive, gone before he even realized what he had lost.

“Stop pretending this hurts you,” she continued, her voice steady, unyielding. “You never wanted me. You wanted convenience. A woman who stayed quiet, played house, and didn’t demand your attention. That’s all I ever was to you.”

He staggered back half a step, her words a blow he couldn’t deflect. “That’s not true.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Then tell me, Rowan. What am I to you?”

The question hung in the air, sharp and heavy.

Suddenly Rowan Adair—the man who could command boardrooms with a glance—found himself speechless.

The silence stretched.

Marcelline exhaled softly, almost pitying. “Exactly.”

She turned, gathering a folder from her desk, clearly dismissing him.

But Rowan wasn’t done. He couldn’t be. Something inside him, something long buried under years of control and indifference, roared to life.

“You think this is over,” he ground out, his voice dark, raw, shaking. He stepped forward again, closing the space until his shadow fell across her desk. “But you’re wrong.”

Marcelline paused, then looked up at him, her face unreadable, her composure a blade.

Rowan leaned closer, his breath brushing her ear, his words low, dangerous—but laced with something neither of them expected.

“Then why do I still want you?”

The room froze.

Marcelline’s fingers curled slightly around the folder in her hand. For the briefest moment, barely a flicker, her mask wavered.

But just as quickly, she steadied herself, stepping back to reclaim her distance.

“Want,” she said softly, each syllable deliberate, “isn’t the same as love.”

Rowan’s chest heaved, his fists clenched tight, as she walked past him—her heels clicking steadily against the marble—leaving him alone in the office that suddenly felt too small, too suffocating.

Rowan stayed rooted to the floor, her scent lingering in the air, her words echoing in his head like a curse.

Because you never had me to begin with.

Rowan slams his hand against the desk she had just vacated, whispering to himself, furious, shaken, desperate:

“I had you. I had you. And I’ll get you back.”