I've been forgotten by my husband again. He forgot the surprise party I threw for him, all because he wanted to be with that woman.

The hands on the clock crawled past 4 a.m. when the front door finally clicked open.

I froze.

Light, feminine laughter, followed by his low, familiar chuckle. A sound I hadn't heard in months.

There they were. Cassian, with his assistant Cassandra.

Her arm was linked possessively through his, her head tilted back as she laughed at something he'd just said.

It twisted in my gut.

Cassian looked up, his eyes finding mine. Surprise, a flicker of something.

"Alessia," he said calmly. "You're still up."

My teeth ground together so hard my jaw screamed in protest.

Cassandra slurred, leaning into him. "So sorry, Alessia. It's just... it's been so long since we had a real reason to celebrate. And I remembered it was his birthday..." She reached up and squeezed Cassian's cheek.

He moved his face away, his eyes darting to me, but the damage was done. "...so we had to stay. It was a double celebration."

A double celebration. His birthday. Their win.

And my utter humiliation.

————————

Alessia

He was late.

My eyes kept flicking to the clock every few minutes, like staring at it long enough would somehow make him appear. I smiled when someone cracked a joke. Or maybe it was a laugh. Whatever it was, it wasn't real.

God, I didn't even know half these people.

What was this guy's name again? The one talking about crypto or golf or something equally soul sucking? Chad? Brad?

Something boring like that.

Not important.

These were all Cassian's people. His clients. His domain. I had curated this entire party for him, so he could work the room and take full advantage.

He was supposed to be here, charming the room, making connections. Networking.

My eyes cut back to the clock.

10:45.

I looked at the door.

Still no sign of him.

I excused myself from ChBrad with a tight smile and began weaving my way toward a quiet corner. It was a slow escape, stopping a dozen times to exchange meaningless pleasantries, my face aching from the effort of holding a smile.

Ugh, I'd forgotten how utterly draining these things were. The constant performance it needed was exhausting.

But this one was important.

This was for Cassian.

He was struggling.

He hadn't told me, of course. He'd never admit it. But I knew him. I'd seen the tension in his shoulders, the way he'd stare at his laptop screen long after it had gone dark.

A few months ago, he'd lost the bid for the landmark resort project in Bali, the biggest deal his company had chased in years. Since then, there has been one setback after another. A flagship property in Milan facing endless delays, whispers about investors getting skittish.

He was always working, barely eating. Running himself into the ground. I could see the exhaustion etched into his face, a little deeper every day.

He didn't even want to celebrate his birthday this year. Not even our usual quiet dinner, just the two of us at that little Italian place he loves.

So I decided to take matters into my own hands.

He didn't ask for my help.

Not yet.

But I knew he eventually would.

So I decided to get ahead of him. To help before he even asked for it.

I fast-forwarded my help.

I decided to throw him a birthday party and invited everyone.

Everyone.

So what if he'd had a major setback? I was handing him a room full of solutions on a silver platter.

All he had to do was be here.

I pulled out my phone and called him.

Again.

I'd probably called him a hundred times by now.

And, of course, straight to voicemail.

Again.

I'd told him about the party. Reminded him. Even spoken to Cassandra-his assistant and secretary-and made sure she added it to his calendar.

When Cassian's company took the hit, he also lost some people from his work and it was then when Cassandra joined his company. As his assistant and secretary.

When Velare Hotels took that massive hit, they had to downsize. A lot of senior staff left, and that's when she was brought in. Cassian and his best friend, Liam, had founded the company together.

Cassandra was Liam's sister.

And a pain in my butt.

The hooker wanted my husband. Plain and simple.

I'd dismissed her before because over the last two years our paths barely crossed, and the few times they did, like at Liam's birthday parties, Cassian never paid her much attention.

Until now.

Now she worked with him.

She was the one managing his schedule, his communications.

"Helping" him.

All while looking at him with undisguised hearts in her eyes.

And I couldn't exactly tell Cassian to fire the sister of his co-founder and best friend, especially when she was supposedly doing such a great job keeping his struggling company afloat. The optics would be terrible, and he'd just think I was being paranoid.

But I wasn't paranoid. I was right.

I called him again, even though I knew I'd just get that infuriatingly calm voicemail greeting.

The beep came. I let out a sigh that was pure frustration. "Hey, it's me. Are you here yet? You're very late. Did something happen?" I paused. Letting the silence stretch for a second. "Call me back when you can."

Sliding my phone back into my clutch, I plastered on a smile and returned to the party.

Even Liam wasn't here.

They were probably working together. Cassian had the weight of the world on his shoulders right now.

So what if he wasn't here?

I could handle this.

I would handle this.

......

For the next few hours, that's exactly what I did.

Smiled at the right times. Until my jaw ached.

I smiled until my jaw ached. I laughed at jokes that weren't funny. I weaved Cassian's name and Velare Hotels into every conversation until the words started to taste like ash in my mouth.

I was his proxy, his stand-in, working the room on his behalf.

But still my eyes kept drifting back to the clock, then to the stubbornly empty front door.

I hope he's okay.

Cassian and I weren't a love match. We weren't even an arranged match.

We met by mistake.

Liam was supposed to be my date that day, for the arranged marriage setup my mother had organized. But Liam, being Liam, misplaced the date and was out of the city when it was supposed to happen. So he sent Cassian in his place. Not as a substitute, just as a messenger. His job was to find me, apologize, and tell me Liam wasn't coming.

But then he stayed. And we talked.

And we kept talking.

For three hours. That was the first time in months I'd actually had fun talking to someone. We didn't discuss anything important, I couldn't even remember half of it now. All I remember was the giddiness, the genuine excitement, the desperate wish for the conversation not to end.

That was how we started.

At the time, he and Liam had only just started their hotel chain. It was little more than a dream and a single, struggling property. But Cassian... he built an empire from that dream. He made it this big, this fast, through sheer, brutal force of will.

He is the most hardworking person I have ever met.

We got married soon after we met, and it's been two years of blissfulness.

Fine. Not complete blissfulness.

There were obviously problems.

So his mother wasn't very fond of me. Big deal. What marriage doesn't have an in-law problem?

So others thought Cassian was cold and unapproachable, the last man on earth to fall in love.

They were wrong.

They didn't know him. They didn't live with him. They didn't see the man who, after a long day, would still remember I liked having my evening tea on the balcony. He'd never just make one cup; it was always two, carried carefully outside so we could sit together in the quiet.

He was the one who, without me ever asking, would sneak into the bedroom five minutes before me to warm my side of the bed in the winter because I was always cold.

Sure, he never actually said the words "I love you." But some people can't say it. That's okay.

As long as they show it in their actions.

And he did. Every single day.

He had become distant these last few months, barely home, but that was only because he was drowning in his work. It was a temporary storm. As soon as the crisis was solved, he would come back to me.

He had to.

By the time the last guest left, my feet were screaming, my jaw had locked into a permanent, painful smile, and a throbbing headache had taken root behind my eyes.

The headache wasn't from the champagne. It was from dodging a hundred variations of "And where is the man of the hour?" and the wave of pitying looks that followed my bright, "Oh, he's just swamped with a work emergency, you know how he is." I made sure to spin it, to paint him as the dedicated, relentless visionary, working even on his birthday.

After the silence settled, I went and brought out the cake. The one I'd baked from scratch. He was so picky, so I'd measured, tasted, and adjusted until it was perfect. Exactly how he liked it. I sat alone at the long dining table in the eerie quiet, the single candle I'd kept ready sitting unlit.

The hands on the clock crawled past 4 a.m. when the front door finally clicked open.

I shot to my feet, relief and anger warring in my chest. Then I froze.

Laughter.

Light, feminine laughter, followed by his low, familiar chuckle. A sound I hadn't heard in months.

I walked slowly toward the foyer, my heart hammering a sick rhythm against my ribs. I stopped dead.

There they were. Cassian, with her.

With Cassandra.

Her arm was linked possessively through his, her head tilted back as she laughed at something he'd just said. They were wrapped up in a bubble of shared amusement, an inside joke I wasn't part of.

My eyes were glued to his face.

He was laughing. Really laughing. The crinkles around his eyes that I loved, the easy, relaxed set of his shoulders, I hadn't seen any of it in so long. He barely had time for a five-minute conversation with me, but here he was, at 4 a.m., looking more alive and carefree than he had in almost a year.

With her.

In a dizzying, nauseating flash, the entire night played back in my mind. But this time, I saw it from the outside. I saw myself-a lone figure working the room, smiling until my face cracked, singing his praises to a room full of strangers. All to help him. All to support his empire.

And he wasn't working. He wasn't struggling.

He was with her.

Something inside of me, the last fragile thread of denial, the hope I'd been clinging to, finally snapped. The blindfold I'd tied on myself, the one that let me believe his distance was about work, was ripped away.

And I finally, truly, opened my eyes.

The sound of their laughter was a physical thing, a shard of glass twisting in my gut. I didn't make a sound. I just stood there, a statue in the shadows of the hallway, watching the scene in our foyer, frozen and unable to move.

Cassian looked up, his eyes finding mine. Surprise, a flicker of something that looked like guilt flashed across his face before his usual, impenetrable mask slid back into place.

"Alessia," he said, his voice even, giving nothing away. "You're still up."

My gaze slid from him to her, and I felt my eyes harden.

Cassian followed my line of sight. It stopped on her. His eyes found mine again. "Work ran late. We landed the Aethelstan deal. The team wanted to celebrate. She had too much to drink, was in no shape to drive. So I brought her here."

My eyes refused to move from her.

"Liam?"

That's all I said. One word, laced with a question so sharp it hung in the air between us.

Why isn't her own brother dealing with this?

Cassian's answer was ready. "He'd left already."

And you didn't.

I didn't say it. I let the accusation blaze in my eyes, in the rigid set of my shoulders.

"One of us," he said, his voice dropping into the tone he used to justify a difficult business decision, "had to be there with the team. They wanted to celebrate a win after so many losses, Alessia."

Did he really just use that tone with me?

With me?

The cold, analytical, boardroom dismissal tone. And then it hit me, the cold, hard certainty that this wasn't the first time.

A memory, sharp and unwelcome, flashed behind my eyes.

Last month. I found him in his study at 2 a.m., his head in his hands.

"Just take a day," I pleaded, my hand on his tense shoulder. "One day. We could go to the coast, just drive. It'll help, I promise."

He didn't yell. He didn't even look at me. He just let out a weary sigh and used that tone.

"Alessia, you don't understand the pressure. I can't afford to take a break. Not even for a day."

That was the moment. The moment I decided to throw this party. To fix it for him.

The memory vanished, replaced by the nauseating present. Cassandra stumbled a little, a theatrical sway, and Cassian's arm shot out to steady her, his hand firm on her waist.

My teeth ground together so hard my jaw screamed in protest.

Cassandra slurred, leaning into him. "So sorry, Alessia. We got a little out of control." She gave a giggle that made my skin crawl. "It's just... it's been so long since we had a real reason to celebrate. And then we remembered it was this one's birthday..." She reached up and squeezed Cassian's cheek, a gesture of sickening familiarity. He moved his face away, his eyes darting to me, but the damage was done. "...so we had to stay. It was a double celebration."

A double celebration. His birthday. Their win.

And my utter humiliation.