chapter 3
Normally, our work lives were separate.
He had his company.
I had mine.
I was supposed to inherit my father’s business, and lately I had been buried in nonstop overtime when Daniel suddenly called me one night, sounding frantic.
“Mrs. Reed, Mr. Reed said he was going to a bar, but now I can’t get through to him. Could you please go check on him?”
I changed clothes, drove over, got the private room number from the front desk, and headed upstairs.
The door wasn’t fully closed.
Laughter spilled into the hallway.
When I pushed it open, the room fell silent almost instantly.
There were several women inside, all dressed for attention, all stealing glances at Ethan while pretending not to.
He sat in the center of the room with a glass in one hand, looking bored.
One of the men with him laughed and said, “Mr. Reed actually made time for us tonight? What happened? Not staying with your wife?”
Ethan glanced at him lazily.
“Got bored.”
Someone else noticed the ring on his finger.
“If you’re bored, why are you still wearing that wedding ring like it means something?”
Every eye in the room turned to his left hand.
On his ring finger sat a plain silver band.
Ethan looked down at it like he didn’t recognize it.
Then he pulled it off.
And tossed it onto the floor.
The ring spun twice and disappeared under the couch.
“It’s just a cheap ring,” he said. “What’s there to care about?”
The room erupted.
The atmosphere instantly got looser.
A beautiful woman finally gathered the courage to move in beside him, lifting a bottle and pouring him a fresh drink. She held the glass to his lips with a smile that said she thought she’d already won.
“Let me feed you, Mr. Reed.”
That was the moment I walked in.
My eyes swept the room once.
Stopped on the woman leaning close to him.
Then dropped to his empty ring finger.
The private room fell so quiet you could hear breathing.
Someone stammered first.
“S-sis-in-law…”
At once, the entire room sat up straighter.
I walked forward in my heels, unhurried, every click against the floor making the silence sharper.
When I stopped in front of Ethan, I smiled at everyone else first.
“From now on,” I said pleasantly, “you don’t need to call me that anymore.”
The familiar ease vanished from Ethan’s face.
His gaze turned cold.
“Avery Cole,” he said. “What do you mean by that?”
Without answering directly, I reached up and removed the ring from my own finger.
Then I set it down in front of him.
I lowered my eyes, not looking at his face.
“Nothing complicated,” I said softly. “I’m just returning this to you.”
And in that suffocatingly quiet room, I calmly announced the end of us.
“Ethan, let’s get divorced. Let’s end this cleanly.”
I turned and walked out before I could see his expression.
By the time I got home, I had started packing.
Not long after, the front door opened hard.
Ethan strode in, hair disheveled for once, breathing fast like he’d run all the way back.
He crossed the room in seconds and caught my wrist while I was folding clothes into my suitcase.
“Where are you going?”
I didn’t look at him.
“Where do you think?”
His face darkened, but beneath the anger was something else. Something rawer. Sharper. Almost panicked.
“To Noah Parker?” he snapped. “So that’s it? You used me as his substitute, and now you’re done playing house? For a man like that, the great Avery Cole will even throw away her pride?”
I almost laughed from sheer disbelief.
I opened my mouth, but before I could say anything, Mrs. Lane—who had been standing awkwardly nearby this whole time—suddenly spoke up.
She sounded honestly confused.
“Wait a second, sir. Isn’t A-Noah just you?”
Both of us froze.
Mrs. Lane frowned and tried again, piecing it together out loud. “Ma’am only ever calls you that. Who else could she possibly mean?”
Silence.
The room seemed to stop breathing.
Slowly, Ethan loosened his grip on my wrist.
He blinked once.
And I watched something change in his eyes.
The anger was still there.
But underneath it, a tiny, fragile light flickered alive.
“That night,” he said hoarsely, “when you had a fever… you were calling me?”
He stood there waiting.
Tense.
Rigid.
As if all his thorns would disappear the second I nodded yes.
I gave a cold little laugh.
“Didn’t Mr. Reed say he was bored already?” I said. “Whether it was you or not, what difference does it make?”
Then I shoved the suitcase into his hands.
“Oh, right. I packed yours too. This house is in my name. You can leave.”
Back when we got married, Ethan had transferred half his assets to me, including this house.
He had told me then, smiling as he tucked my hair behind my ear, that if we ever fought, he should be the one sleeping outside, not me walking out of my own home.
I had never imagined we’d actually end up here.
But there was no time to sit in heartbreak.
Because the villain from the original plot had shown up inside my husband’s body.
And if I wanted to understand what was happening, I needed to look at the original leads.
So when the heroine, Sophie Bennett, invited me to dinner at an upscale restaurant, I agreed immediately.
When I arrived, Noah Parker was there too.
And so was Ethan.
The second I walked in, Ethan straightened in his seat like a wire had snapped tight inside him.
Beside him, Sophie was holding out a beautifully wrapped gift box.
He didn’t take it.
Instead, he stood up abruptly and stepped away from her, almost like he was trying to clear his name before I even said a word.
“I only came to get something,” he said quickly. “That’s all.”
Sophie didn’t notice anything strange. She just ran over and hugged me.
“Avery! You finally made it. Sit, sit.”
I sat down beside her.
Noah slid a file toward me across the table.
Before he could speak, Ethan snatched it right out of his hand.
He looked like an alley cat with every hair standing up.
“What exactly are you trying to do?” he asked coldly.
Noah blinked, then said, “Those are the documents on the company competing with the Cole Group.”
“Oh,” Ethan said.
And sat back down.
Sophie leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Has your husband taken too much medicine today?”
I whispered back, “He’s sick. I’m planning to divorce him.”
Her eyes widened so much it almost made me smile despite everything.
“What? If you two split up, who am I supposed to ship now?”
I couldn’t explain it to her.
How was I supposed to say the Ethan sitting there wasn’t really the Ethan I knew?
So I let it go.
After dinner, I said goodbye to Sophie and Noah and headed out.
Ethan followed me.
In the quiet outside the restaurant, he called my name.
When I turned, he opened his hand.
Resting in his damp palm were two silver rings.
“I found them,” he said.
His voice was rough.
He looked almost… nervous.
When I didn’t answer, he reached for my hand, trying to slide one of the rings back onto my finger.
I pulled away.
He went still.
“What do you want, Ethan?”
He lowered his voice, and for the first time since the accident, I heard something shaking underneath it.
“I was wrong before. I shouldn’t have said those things. I was an asshole.”
He looked at me with something dangerously close to pleading.
“Put it back on. Okay?”
“No.”
I smiled faintly.
“It’s dirty now.”
He flinched.
“I don’t want it anymore.”
Then I stepped around him and started to leave.
He caught my wrist again in a rush and lifted the small gift box Sophie had handed him earlier.
Inside was a stunning blue gemstone necklace.
I remembered offhandedly admiring it once at an auction preview. Ethan must have heard and asked Sophie to help secure it.
He opened the box like an offering.
Like a man laying down a weapon.
“Do you like it?” he asked quietly.
And for one brief, dangerous moment, looking at the way he held it out to me, I remembered the Ethan I had raised.
The boy who had always looked at me like a wet-eyed puppy whenever he wanted me to forgive him.
The future villain in the original story had grown up alone, unwanted, abandoned by the whole world. The book said he became obsessed with the heroine only because she once casually gave him food.
That was how starved he had been for warmth.
Now that same villain stood in front of me holding a gemstone with careful fingers, asking if I liked it.
His eyes lowered when he went quiet.
In stillness, he looked unexpectedly gentle.
Unexpectedly harmless.
His voice turned restless.
Unsteady.
“You love me, don’t you?”
Pain shot through my shoulder where he gripped me, snapping me back to myself.
I looked at him.
His expression changed instantly, like he regretted asking the question the second it left his mouth.
He hurried to cover it up.
“It doesn’t matter,” he muttered. “Forget it.”
But I spoke anyway.
My voice was soft.
And cruel.
“You’re not him.”
One sentence.
That was all it took.
He went completely still.
His lashes trembled.
His eyes reddened.
And I turned away from him and walked off into the night.