Danara poured wine into her glass and held it until the stem pressed hard against her palm. Her hand shook, but she forced her grip steady as her eyes locked on the CCTV footage playing on her laptop.
The screen showed her husband Kael sitting comfortably beside Natalia. Around them sat their closest circle of friends, gathered in her own restaurant. They laughed and leaned across the table as if they owned the place. They celebrated something openly as if mocking her, daring her to watch.
Her lips curved into a bitter smile. She raised the glass and let the wine touch her tongue, but it turned sour the moment it hit her throat. The laughter on the recording swelled, and each sound cut her open.
"You two look perfect together," Margareth said, raising her glass toward Kael and Natalia, her smile wide and cruel. "You already behave like husband and wife. The only thing missing is the paper. Kael does not belong with someone like Danara. Everyone can see it. It has been obvious for months. Everyone is tired of pretending she fits into his life."
The word perfect ripped through her. It felt like her body was shaking as she discovered the truth.
Kael wrapped his arm around Natalia's waist. Natalia leaned into him without hesitation, her head resting against his shoulder like it was her rightful place. Kael kissed Natalia without hesitation.
Danara's chest tightened. The kiss was not private. Everyone knew about their relationship except her. They had humiliated her when she was not around and made her their laughingstock.
"Be patient, Natalia," Margareth continued, her tone thick with mockery. "You are already his in everything but name. Soon you will have that too, and we can all stop pretending his marriage is real. She has no claim on him. It is only a matter of time before everyone knows she never mattered."
Natalia brushed her fingers along Kael's chest, tilting her face toward him with practiced ease. Her laugh was soft but filled with certainty. "I am not worried. She is only keeping the seat warm for me. She holds the title now, but I am the one he comes home to. I am the one he wants beside him. She can cling as much as she wants, but it will not change the truth. She is already forgotten the moment she leaves the room."
Danara's nails cut into her palm until her skin burned.
"Poor Danara," Denise, Kael's secretary, said with a sharp smirk. She leaned back in her chair, her eyes gleaming with cruelty. "She still walks around pretending to be a wife, but she has no idea how ridiculous she looks. She cannot keep his attention because she has no presence. She spends all her energy acting like a man in the office, thinking it will make her strong. What use is her money or her status if Kael is lying in another woman's bed while she pretends to run the world?"
The table burst into laughter.
"She spends her nights at the office, buried in numbers and contracts," Denise went on, shaking her head. "No man wants to come home to a cold bed, to a woman who offers nothing but tension and stress. She has no softness. She is incapable of giving him the comfort or warmth a man needs. She fails in everything that makes a marriage work."
Danara scoffed as she heard Kael's secretary speak so ill of her.
Lala leaned forward on her elbow, her voice dripping with false pity. "Did you all see her at the gala last month? She clung to Kael's arm like a child who knew her toy was about to be taken away. She looked desperate and pathetic. Everyone noticed it. Everyone whispered about it. She was the joke of the night, the one everyone talked about behind her back."
Margareth clapped her hands together and laughed loudly. "Exactly. Kael deserves a woman who elevates him, not drags him down. Natalia is everything Danara is not. She is beautiful, gracious, and soft-spoken. She carries herself in a way that makes a man proud to bring her anywhere. Danara cannot even begin to compare."
Denise raised her glass again, her voice cutting through the laughter. "And the worst part is that Danara actually believed she was the prize. She convinced herself Kael loved her. In truth she was only convenient. She was useful. A stepping stone. The wife on paper and nothing more. She had no importance beyond what she provided for him."
Their words overlapped, feeding each other's cruelty, louder and sharper with every exchange.
Kael sat through it all, his silence louder than their insults. He did not stop them and did not defend her. He let them strip his wife apart in public as if she was nothing. His stillness was worse than their words because it meant he agreed.
She remembered how Natalia had once looked soft, innocent, incapable of cruelty. But that softness had been a mask. She had shattered Danara's world with deliberate precision.
She had welcomed Natalia like a sister. She had opened her home. She had defended her. And now Natalia sat wearing her life like a stolen dress.
Her voice cracked as she whispered, "I trusted you, Natalia. I thought you were different from your mother but you are the same."
On the recording, Kael leaned back with one arm draped over Natalia's shoulders. His expression was calm and smug. His voice carried a steady finality. "Once the Cordova and Lucs merger is secured, I will file the annulment. The paperwork is already moving forward. She will be out of the picture soon."
The words broke Danara completely.
"So I was only your ticket to save your company," she muttered, her eyes icy. "I was nothing but the tool that kept your empire standing."
Her arm moved before her mind caught up. The glass shattered against the floor, shards scattering as the wine spread into the carpet like blood.
Kael's voice carried on in the recording, but Danara snapped the laptop shut. She could not endure another word.
The door burst open. Levi, her secretary, stopped in the doorway, his eyes scanning the broken glass and the red stain spreading across the floor.
"Ma'am Danara," he said carefully, waiting.
"Call my legal team and my financial advisor. Do it now." Her voice was flat, stripped of all warmth, but her eyes blazed with fury.
Levi nodded and left without hesitation.
Danara walked to the floor-to-ceiling glass wall and stared at the city. The sky was sinking into night, buildings flickering alive with light. The city moved, but she stood frozen, heavy with grief and rage.
The realization came to her. Kael did not love her.
Kael meeting her had all been staged by Natalia.
She remembered the night Natalia insisted she attend a party she had no interest in. She remembered how Kael appeared, how he pretended to find her missing necklace, how Charlotte's invitations followed in perfect timing. Back then it had seemed like coincidence. Now she saw the plan in every step.
It had not even been a year since the wedding, yet Kael had already turned cold. Even in their bed he pulled away as if she were no longer worth touching. That quiet rejection had been carving into her for months, but tonight it cut her to the bone.
Her tears blurred the city lights. The pain was not new. It was the same wound she carried from her father, who had abandoned her mother for another woman. Her mother had died because of heart disease, but until her last breath it was only her father whom she loved.
Danara wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. Her breath steadied, her trembling slowed. Her eyes hardened.
Danara had never been a weak woman. She had been strong, unlike her mother who chose to die for her father.
"Lala, Denise, Natalia, Kael," she said their names through gritted teeth. "And Margareth, you have never seen a wise woman get wiser, have you?"