Chapter 2

Ryan caught up to us just as I was buckling Sophie into her car seat.

He wasn't running out of concern. He was walking with that stiff, irritated stride he used when a subordinate messed up at work.

"What exactly are you doing?" he demanded, his hand gripping the edge of the car door. "You're making a scene in front of Vanessa's friends."

I didn't look at him. I just smoothed Sophie's hair, my voice dead and hollow. "I'm taking Sophie home to pack. I want a divorce, Ryan."

Ryan froze. The annoyance on his face turned into blank shock.

Before he could process it, Harper trotted up behind him, holding Vanessa's designer purse. Her eyes lit up with absolute thrill.

"Good! Let her go, Dad!" Harper sneered, not even trying to hide her smirk. "She doesn't belong here anyway. She's basically just the nanny. Now Mom can finally move back in and we can be a real family again!"

Basically just the nanny.

I had been married to this man for seven years, and his daughter still referred to me as "the help." And Ryan? He didn't even flinch.

He just gave Harper a mild look. "Harper, go back inside to your mother. Let the adults talk."

No scolding. No correcting her. Just a gentle tap on the wrist.

Harper rolled her eyes but happily skipped back toward the club, humming to herself.

Ryan sighed. He pinched the bridge of his nose and dropped his voice into that calm, reasonable tone he always used when he was about to gaslight me.

"Are we really doing this, Chloe? Over a bowl of fruit?"

I finally looked up at him. I didn't speak.

My silence only made him more certain that he was right. "Harper was just playing around, and Sophie ruined her dress. You're the adult here. Instead of teaching Sophie how to share and compromise, you're storming off and throwing the 'divorce' word around? I revoke your app access for ten minutes to cool you down, and you lose your mind?"

A cold, heavy stone sank to the bottom of my stomach.

When Harper screamed for the raspberries, she had already eaten her own dessert. She just couldn't stand seeing Sophie have the very last one. And when she snatched it, she spilled the juice.

But in Ryan's eyes, Sophie was the villain, and I was the hysterical wife.

"You know how sensitive Harper is," his voice hardened, shifting the blame entirely onto me. "We share custody. You're supposed to treat her like your own. But it's been seven years, Chloe, and you still blatantly favor Sophie. If you gave Harper half the patience you give your own daughter, this wouldn't have happened."

Favoritism.

The word made me sick to my stomach.

When I first married him, Harper was three. She had severe night terrors. Vanessa refused to take her calls after 8 PM, claiming she needed her "beauty sleep." I was the one who sat on the floor by Harper's bed, night after night, rubbing her back and singing her to sleep until my throat was raw.

When Sophie was barely a year old, Harper caught a severe stomach bug. Ryan was on a weekend golf trip with his buddies. Vanessa was at a spa retreat and turned her phone off.

I was the one who drove Harper to the ER at 2:00 AM. I left my own crying baby with a teenage neighbor so I could sit in a plastic hospital chair holding Harper's vomit bucket for twelve hours.

And now, according to them, I was the selfish stepmother who "never treated her like my own."

Ryan saw I still wasn't arguing back. He thought I was yielding. His tone softened, offering his usual toxic mercy.

"Look, let's not blow this out of proportion," he said, checking his watch. "Take a breath. Bring Sophie back inside. Have her apologize to Harper. A real apology. Make sure Vanessa sees it."

"If she behaves for the rest of the week, I'll go into the system and upgrade your status back to Admin. We can put this behind us."

I stared into his eyes. The same eyes that, seven years ago, had looked at me with such warmth and promised to protect me.

My own mother had warned me on the night before my wedding:

"If you insist on marrying him, Chloe, you do it entirely on his terms. You are forbidden from revealing our family's background. You will not touch a single cent of your grandmother's trust fund."

"I want you to see exactly who this man is when he thinks you have absolutely nothing. He will show his true colors eventually."

I thought my love could fix his broken family, and when Sophie came a year later, I thought we had finally built a safe home for her.

Instead, I spent seven years as a wife on permanent probation, constantly earning my right to unlock my own front door.

"Ryan," I said, my voice eerily calm. "In your heart, is this even my home?"

He blinked, genuinely confused. "Of course it is, Chloe. What are you talking about?"

"If it is," I cut him off, "then why can I be downgraded to a 'Visitor' with the push of a button?"

His brow furrowed in frustration. "Because you always overreact! But we always fix it. You calm down, you apologize to the girls, and I give you the code back. It's how we keep the peace."

Keep the peace. By crushing my dignity. Because he knew I loved him too much to leave.

"This is the 100th time, Ryan," I said, my voice cracking but my eyes completely dry. "Every time Vanessa wants to mark her territory, you lock me out of my own house."

I gripped the edge of the car door, looking dead into his eyes.

"You've been divorced for eight years. Yet Vanessa's thumbprint still unlocks our front door. She still has the Master Passcode to the alarm."

"So tell me, Ryan. Who exactly is the wife here?"