When I went to pick Diana Grant up, she just tossed the car keys toward me.

Dangling from the silver ring was a plush white bear pendant. I paused, knowing that she had never kept a keychain or a decorative charm on her keys.

Once I slid into the driver's seat, the entire alignment felt off. The seat had clearly been adjusted.

"Did you let someone else drive your car?" I asked, keeping my voice casual.

Dazed from the alcohol, she offered a dismissive shrug. "Yeah. I lent it to an employee for a quick business trip."

I didn't press further.

The next morning, the chime of the doorbell broke the silence of the house.

When I pulled the door open, a shy, clean-cut young guy was standing on the porch. He blinked, then forced a sheepish smile and handed over a cup of coffee.

"Hi," he stammered. "I'm just here to drop off a fresh coffee for Ms. Grant."

But my attention wasn't on the coffee. My gaze dropped to his left hand.

Twirling lazily around his index finger was a set of keys, and swinging from the metal loop was the same white bear pendant.

I took the coffee cup from his hand and quietly closed the door.

In the room, Diana's phone lit up on the table. A new notification flashed across the lock screen.

It was a message that read: [Diana, I just met your husband. He looks kind of scary. Coffee was delivered safely anyway. Try to drink less alcohol next time, okay?]

I picked up the phone and pulled up the video camera. With the recording running, I held the coffee cup over the kitchen sink and slowly poured the warm liquid down the drain.

Then I uploaded the recorded video to Diana's social media, broadcasting it to her entire social circle.

The caption read: [Thanks for the concern, but she doesn't drink coffee.]

Diana Grant had just woken up when she threw her phone at me, her face flushed with anger.

"Pierre, who gave you the right to touch my phone?" she barked. "That coffee was brought to me with genuine care. Can't you show a little decency?"

In all the years we had spent together, this was the first time she had ever lost her temper with me. All over a cup of coffee.

My eyes drifted to the screen. The top comment under the coffee video was a sad-face emoji from Tyler Bennett.

I turned back to the stove and poured the hangover soup I had been simmering.

My voice remained flat. "The last time you drank coffee, you ended up in the hospital. The doctor warned you that your caffeine allergy is severe. Did you forget?"

Diana blinked, her defensive momentum stalling for a fraction of a second. She swallowed hard, trying to regain her footing. "Even so, you shouldn't go through my phone without permission."

"You gave him our home address," I interrupted, my voice dropping. "You let him drive your car. You even have matching pendants on your keychains. Don't you think you owe me an explanation?"

Her expression shifted, but then, she laughed mockingly. "An explanation? You're getting this paranoid over a cup of coffee?"

Her eyes flickered as she continued, "He's just a barista at the coffee shop. Nothing is happening. Are you happy now?"

She snatched her coat from the sofa, pausing just long enough to deliver a final blow. "At least he has a real job. Unlike you, sitting around the house doing nothing all day."

The front door slammed shut with a force that made my chest physically ache. Her words echoed relentlessly in my mind.

"Doing nothing all day."

For as long as I could remember, Diana had occupied every corner of my existence.

My mother died from complications during childbirth; my father suffered from a severe mental illness and vanished, leaving me as an unwanted, unadoptable orphan.

Then Diana showed up, telling me I would be her big brother and the one she would love forever. As a kid, I didn't comprehend how long "forever" truly was. I only knew that I finally had a family.

For over 20 years, we were inseparable. But everything changed when she inherited her family's conglomerate.

"Pierre, quit your job at the law firm," she had pleaded back then. "Managing the company is exhausting. Can you stay home and take care of things for me?"

For that one request, I threw away my career to manage her daily routine. In return, I became the ultimate target of ridicule among her social circle.

They mocked me behind my back, calling me the gold standard of a kept husband.

My friends used to warn me, "Pierre, you can't surrender your career and identity just to revolve around Diana."

They had been right, but I had chosen to live on a diet of false hope.

By the time I pulled myself out of memories, the hangover soup on the counter had gone cold. Diana hadn't taken a single sip.

I poured the liquid down the drain, pulled out my phone, and looked up the café downstairs from her corporate headquarters. From there, it was easy to find Tyler's personal account.

He had amassed quite a following, and the first video was from three months ago. It was a shot of a cozy dinner with over 100,000 likes.

The caption read: [My sweet Diana learned how to cook just for me.]

The words hit me in the gut.

Diana had always been dependent on me. Because I took care of everything, she never stepped foot in the kitchen, let alone wore an apron.

She used to whine for ten minutes just to get me to peel an apple for her.

My fingers tightened around my phone as a memory from three months ago flashed in my mind. Diana had wrapped her arms around my waist when I was preparing dinner.

"Honey, teach me how to cook," she had cooed. "I don't want you to be so tired every day."

It hadn't been for me at all.

I closed the app and shut off the screen, a suffocating tightness blooming in my chest. I had lived under the assumption that while her life was full of endless possibilities, my life only had room for her.

I had been wrong from the very beginning.

Diana didn't come home for three days. We had officially entered a suffocating cold war, our communication completely dead.

That silence broke when her secretary sent me a text, telling me that Diana's chronic gastritis was flaring up and that she had been breaking out in cold sweats during the board meeting.

I stared at the message for a long time.

Diana's stomach issues were severe. For years, I had been the one meticulously managing her diet. Every time she had an attack, I would spend hours standing over the stove to simmer stomach-soothing soup.

In the clash between my fading dignity and 20 years of deep-rooted devotion, habit won. I spent the afternoon cooking, packed the warm soup into a thermos, and drove straight to her office.

The moment I stepped off the elevator onto the executive floor, the atmosphere shifted. The employees avoided my eyes, some catching their breath as if they wanted to warn me about something, only to swallow their words and look away.

When my hand touched the doorknob of Diana's office, the sound of bright, unfiltered laughter drifted through the wood. Looking through the gaps in the blinds, I saw her sitting remarkably close to another person.

As soon as I pushed the door open, the two snapped their heads toward the entrance. Diana immediately pulled back, clearing her throat awkwardly. "Pierre? What brings you here?"

I didn't answer, my gaze landing straight on the nervous man. Up close, Tyler looked young, barely 19, while Diana was more than a decade his senior.

The guy was sunny and sharp.

My gaze dropped to the desk where sat a bowl of seafood oatmeal.

Diana was an incredibly picky eater who despised seafood—a visceral aversion that hadn't changed once in the two decades I had known her. Yet, she had already eaten a significant portion of the bowl he brought.

The sight hurt me deeply, but I kept my expression neutral as I walked over, picked up the bowl, and dropped it into the trash can.

Diana's face fell instantly, while Tyler pressed his lips together in a display of silent grievance.

"How long has this been going on?" I asked, placing my thermos on the desk.

My tone was casual, as if I were talking about the weather.

"Pierre, what is wrong with you?" Diana snapped, surging to her feet.

Tyler waved his hands frantically. "Sir, you've misunderstood! Diana helped me out in the past. When I heard her stomach was killing her today, I just wanted to return the favor. I didn't mean to..."

"You have a cat?" I cut him off, my voice flat. "We don't keep pets because of my rhinitis. Yet, lately, I've been picking cat hairs off the cuffs of her clothes while doing the laundry.

"And I looked up that white bear pendant on her keys. It's a couple's set. And yesterday, I found a stray lighter wedged down the side of her passenger seat. I don't smoke."

A sharp crack echoed through the office, cutting my words short.

A sharp, burning pain exploded across my cheek. I ran my tongue against the inside of my lip, the metallic taste of blood immediately filling my mouth.

Diana's chest heaved with ragged breaths. She yanked Tyler behind her back, her voice pitching into a defensive shriek.

"Are you done?" she glared. "My family took you in. We fed and sheltered you! Do you honestly think you've earned the right to act like my keeper?

"I already told you nothing is going on. Tyler is just a friend, but you just won't stop pushing!"

In her blind, escalating fury, she grabbed the thermos and hurled the contents at me. The scalding liquid splattered across my forearms and hands.

Painful blisters rose on my skin within seconds. I clenched my fists, the physical agony of the burns blurring into the emotional wreckage of her words.

I couldn't tell which part of me was hurting worse.

The loud shattering of the thermos and the shouting brought the outside office to a dead halt. Dozens of employees were now staring through the glass partition.

Diana froze, a flash of sudden regret crossing her face as she instinctively reached toward her desk drawer for burn ointment.

But Tyler chose that exact moment to bow deeply. "I'm so sorry, sir. This is all my fault. Diana and I are completely innocent. Please, don't ruin your marriage over me."

With that single sentence, the guilt in Diana's eyes evaporated, instantly replaced by a cold, protective anger. She stopped looking for the medicine and pointed a shaking finger at the door.

"Get out!" she hissed. "This is a place of business, not your stage."

My face throbbed, and my hands burned like fire. I walked out of the building in a daze, the judgmental whispers of her staff following me with every step.

Diana's secretary caught up with me, her expression a mask of forced corporate formality.

"Ms. Grant just issued an official directive. Moving forward, you are prohibited from entering the corporate property without her authorization. Your facial recognition profile and digital keycards have already been wiped from the security database."

Diana didn't come home until well after ten o'clock that night.

She stood in the entryway for a long, heavy moment before unceremoniously dropping an assortment of shopping bags onto the floor. Among the designer logos, she carried a box of my favorite blueberry cake.

I sat motionless on the sofa, keeping my eyes fixed straight ahead.

Diana approached, holding a tube of burn cream. She crouched down in front of me, dabbing the ointment onto my hand with extreme care.

I stayed silent. Every time we fought, she did exactly this. She would buy the things I loved, convinced that throwing money at a conflict would fix it.

For over 20 years, that tactic had never failed her. I had forgiven her every single time.

This time, I simply yanked my hand back. She froze mid-motion, her fingers suspended in the air.

"I'm going to start looking for a job tomorrow," I said evenly. "I won't be staying here anymore."

She raised an eyebrow, her gaze finally shifting past me to notice the suitcase propped against the door.

"Pierre, are you seriously throwing a tantrum right now?" she scoffed, pushing herself to her feet. "Looking for a job? Do you have any clue how many years it's been since you last touched a legal file?

Her sharp taunts cut through the room. "Eight years. You've been out of the game for eight whole years. Do you seriously think you can just waltz back into a firm? You're joking. You probably can't even remember half the state bar rules."

She wasn't worried for a second, completely writing off my decision as a ridiculous bluff. But she wasn't wrong.

Eight years was a lifetime in this field. I'd drifted too far from my career.

"Don't bother. I've got my plans," I said, letting out a dry laugh. "Might as well clear the way for your little boyfriend. That way, he doesn't have to hide in the shadows anymore."

Diana gritted her teeth, pinning me with a sharp, freezing stare.

"Don't bother? Pierre, don't you dare forget who you are. Without me and my family, you'd still be a homeless orphan living on the streets. Your father was an institutionalized schizophrenic. Did you finally inherit his crazy genes?"

The words hit me like a bucket of ice water, freezing me to the core.

My mother was dead, and my father was broken. That stigma had been glued to me since the day I was born. In the orphanage, everyone had kept their distance from me, as if trauma were contagious.

The girl I grew up with had protected me from that past. I had almost forgotten it existed. But now, she was slapping that same degrading label back on me without a second thought.

I lifted my head and looked her in the eye. "You think I'm crazy too?"

My voice wavered, thick with a sudden rush of emotion.

She took a deep breath, then tossed the tube of burn cream into the trash can.

"I've been sick of this for years," she spat, unleashing a torrent of built-up resentment. "Ever since we were kids, you've been breathing down my neck, controlling every little thing I do. Who the hell do you think you are?

"I let you have your way half the time, but can you just leave me alone already? I'm exhausted. Sometimes, I think the gossip was right. No wonder you were abandoned. Who could put up with a jinx like you?"

A wave of intense nausea rolled through my empty stomach, a bitter lump forming in my throat. I couldn't throw up or swallow it.

The ten-year-old Diana, the 17-year-old Diana... I had spent years trying to fuse all those cherished versions of her into the woman standing before me.

But she felt like a total stranger. The way she looked at me held no affection—only deep annoyance and indifference.

"Is this because of Tyler?" I asked, my hands trembling. "Is that why you're saying all this?"

We'd been together longer than we'd been apart, but now the last illusions were popping like soap bubbles.

Diana looked down at me, her expression entirely cold. "Tyler and I are exactly what you think we are. I need some excitement in my life, Pierre. If you can't handle that, we can get a divorce."

She paused, a slow, cruel smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. "But let's be real. Can you give up this perfect, luxurious life? What could you amount to without me?"