Our marriage hadn’t started with love. It started with a contract. A handshake between two old men in a cigar-filled study. My grandfather and his grandfather, merging empires through blood. I was twenty. He was twenty-two.
I had been terrified. But I had also been secretly thrilled. I had watched Nathan from afar for years at society galas. He was the prince of our social circle—handsome, charismatic, untouchable.
But there was always Danica.
She wasn’t just his secretary then. When her father died, leaving nothing but debt, Nathan’s family took her in while her brother Martin, who is Nathan’s best friend, tried to build their company again. She lived in the guest house. She was always there.
In the early years of our marriage, Nathan was aloof. He was polite, but cold. He treated me like a roommate he was forced to live with. He spent all his time with Danica and her brother. I was the outsider in my own home.
But then, Danica left. She went to Paris for fashion school. And for two glorious years, she was gone.