A Billionaire's Boredom, A Wife's Rise

Eliza Dunlap POV:

That night, for the first time in our three years of marriage, we slept in separate rooms.

I lay in the center of our vast, empty bed, the cool sheets a stark reminder of the space he should have been occupying. I remembered our wedding night, tucked away in a private villa in Santorini. He had held me close and whispered a promise in my ear.

"We will never go to bed angry," he' d said, his voice thick with sincerity. "No matter how big the fight, we solve it. Separate rooms are the beginning of the end. It creates a crack that you can never fully repair."

At the time, his words had felt like the most romantic vow I had ever heard. Now, they were just another broken promise, another piece of the fairytale crumbling to dust.

I turned off the light, plunging the room into a deep, velvety darkness, and resigned myself to a lonely night.

I don't know how long I'd been asleep when I felt a shift in the mattress, a warmth spreading along my back. I tensed, my eyes flying open.

Atticus.

His arm snaked around my waist, pulling me against him. He buried his face in my hair, his warm breath ghosting against my neck.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, his voice a low, pleading murmur. "I was an asshole. Forgive me?"

I didn't answer. I just stared out the window at the sliver of moon hanging in the inky sky. The apology felt hollow, a practiced script he was reciting to restore the peace, to get back to his comfortable, predictable life.

"Why did you come here?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

He tightened his grip. "Because we promised," he said softly. "We don't let things fester. We don't go to bed angry."

He was using our own rules, my own romantic beliefs, as a weapon against me. A single, hot tear escaped and slid down my temple, disappearing into the silk of the pillowcase. It was a tear for the naive girl who had believed those promises so completely.

"I was angry about what happened with Isla," he continued, attempting to explain away his behavior. "She messed up a presentation, and I had to clean up the mess. It put me in a foul mood. I even forgot to pick up the gift I' d ordered for you on the way home."

Another pang, sharp and unwelcome, shot through my chest. A gift. The old Atticus, trying to make a comeback.

"What happened with Isla?" I asked, my voice carefully neutral. I was testing him. Testing myself.

As he started talking about her, a subtle shift occurred. His voice, which had been low and contrite, became more animated. He recounted in detail how she had used the wrong data in a pitch to a major client, how she had cried in his office, how he had spent hours comforting her and fixing her mistake. He was complaining, but underneath the frustration, there was an energy, a vibrancy that was completely absent when he spoke to me.

He was energized by her drama. He thrived on being her hero, her savior.

He must have sensed my silence, because he suddenly stopped. "But that's not your problem," he said, his tone shifting back to cautious and soothing. "I shouldn't have taken it out on you. There's nothing going on between me and Isla, I swear. She's just… a colleague."

I almost laughed. "I understand," I said, a bitter sarcasm coloring my words. "You have to be her knight in shining armor. Meanwhile, I'm just the stable, boring wife waiting at home."

His arm around my waist went rigid. He slowly pulled his hand away, creating a cold space between us.

For a long moment, the only sound in the room was our breathing.

Then, he spoke, his voice so low I almost missed it. "Maybe I shouldn't have married you."

It wasn't a question. It was a statement of regret, a quiet admission of the truth I had been avoiding for months. The words hung in the darkness, final and irrevocable. He hadn' t chosen a life with me; he had simply chosen a life without Isla, and he was beginning to realize what a terrible mistake that had been.