Part 2No Room For Your Bitter Regret

I left my phone on the table and picked up the remote, flipping channels blindly.

A late-night talk show was on, celebrities throwing their heads back in exaggerated, booming laughter. I sank into the cushions, struck by the sudden, suffocating absurdity of my existence.

Here I was, sitting in a multi-million dollar mansion, guarding a hollow marriage, waiting for a wife who would never prioritize me.

And she was out with her first love. Openly. Righteously.

Because on the day we signed our marriage license, she had made it crystal clear: If it weren't for you, we wouldn't be in this mess.

In her eyes, I was the villain. I was the one who had driven a wedge between her and Patrick. I had used my family's power to strong-arm her into a gilded cage.

But what was the actual truth?

The truth was, my father’s real estate empire had over-leveraged, and the cash flow had completely dried up. Her family’s tech firm had been caught in an ugly, potentially devastating federal probe, and they desperately needed my father’s political leverage to quash it.

The patriarchs of our two families sat down over dry martinis and thick steaks, and our lives were traded like poker chips.

No one asked me if I wanted to marry her.

No one asked her if she wanted to be my wife.

To the rest of the world, it was a perfectly balanced equation. Her family provided the capital, mine provided the shield. A flawless corporate merger.

But Patrick became the casualty of our merger.

Viola genuinely believed I had stolen his rightful place. I had demoted him from the man she was meant to marry to the dirty little secret she had to hide. And so, she gave every ounce of her guilt and devotion to Patrick, and reserved all her coldness for me.

On our wedding night, she drank heavily at the reception. When someone finally helped her up to the master bedroom, I reached out to help her out of her heavy, beaded gown.

She gripped my wrist. Her grip was terrifyingly strong.

"Wesley Callahan," she whispered, her voice rough with champagne and venom. "You know exactly what this marriage is. I don't love you. I will never love you. If you know what's good for you, you'll play your part, go to work, and stay out of my way. We live our own lives."

She dropped my arm, stumbled out the door, and locked herself in the guest suite.

We had slept in separate rooms ever since. She took the guest room; I took the master.

Now that I thought about it, in three years, she had only crossed the threshold of the master bedroom twice.

The first was that wedding night.

The second was last winter, when my fever spiked to 103 degrees. I was delirious, shivering violently under the heavy down comforter. Marta, our housekeeper, had called her in a panic.

Viola showed up two hours later. She stood in the doorway, her tailored trench coat still on, looked at my sweating, trembling form, and told Marta to call an Uber to take me to urgent care.

Then she left again. She said Patrick had a gallery opening he was nervous about, and she had to be there to support him.

She didn't come home that night.

When I woke up at 7:00 AM, throat feeling like broken glass, I checked my phone. Not a single notification.

I washed up and walked slowly downstairs. Marta was already at the stove. When she saw me walk in alone, she stopped, her mouth opening and closing before she finally settled on a quiet, "Mr. Callahan, what can I make for you this morning?"

"Just some toast and black coffee, Marta. Thanks."

I sat at the vast, empty granite island. My phone lit up.

A text from Viola.

"Patrick had too much to drink last night. I stayed over to make sure he was okay. I have a board meeting all morning, won't be back."

I set the phone face down and took a sip of my bitter coffee.

"Marta," I said softly. "Could you pick up some cardboard moving boxes for me when you go to the store today?"

She froze, the dish towel slipping from her hands. "You're... moving, sir?"

"Yeah. In a few days."

She opened her mouth, her eyes welling with questions she didn't dare ask. But reading the absolute exhaustion on my face, she swallowed them down. She had worked in this house for three years. She had seen the quiet indignities. She knew.

"Of course, Mr. Callahan."