Chương 1
"""The seat beside my husband was occupied by the woman who had spent the last three months learning exactly how far she could push me.
Jasmine Vale looked up from Aaron Prescott’s shoulder with a smile that was too surprised to be real.
She had been feeding him slices of orange from a small crystal container while the private jet waited on the runway, surrounded by executives who had flown in from three different cities for what Aaron called a “company family retreat.”
The phrase had bothered me when he said it.
Not because of the trip.
Not because of the employees.
Because I knew Aaron had not used the word family for me in months.
“Mrs. Prescott,” Jasmine said, quickly pulling her hand away as if she had just noticed something inappropriate. “I didn’t realize this was your seat.”
The lie was gentle.
That was what made it cruel.
She knew.
Everyone on the plane knew.
The seat beside Aaron had always been mine.
For four years, every business trip, every late-night flight, every celebration after a major company milestone, I had sat there with him.
Not because I needed the attention.
Not because I wanted people to see me beside a billionaire.
Because when Aaron had nothing, that seat had been the only place where he still felt like someone believed in him.
The memory came back for half a second, unwanted and sharp.
A small apartment.
A broken coffee machine.
Aaron sitting on the kitchen floor at two in the morning with financial reports spread around him.
“I’m going to lose everything,” he had whispered.
I had sat beside him on that cold tile floor and held his hand.
“You’re not losing everything,” I told him.
He looked at me.
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“How?”
“Because you still have me.”
Back then, he cried.
The man sitting beside Jasmine now would never admit he had once cried in my arms.
Jasmine shifted slightly closer to him.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said again, louder this time.
Then the orange slipped from her fingers.
It landed on Aaron’s expensive suit.
She gasped.
“Oh my God.”
Before anyone could react, she grabbed a napkin and started wiping his jacket.
Aaron didn’t stop her.
That was the part that hurt.
Not Jasmine.
Not the orange.
Not even the seat.
It was the fact that Aaron watched my face while another woman touched him and waited to see what I would do.
“Alyssa,” he said.
His voice carried the same impatience he used when an employee interrupted a meeting.
“Why are you standing there?”
The cabin became quiet.
The executives who had been laughing moments earlier suddenly found their phones fascinating.
I looked around.
People who had once thanked me for helping Aaron build his company now avoided my eyes.
They knew the public version of our story.
Aaron Prescott was the self-made genius who created one of the fastest-growing technology companies in the country.
I was the wealthy wife from an old family who enjoyed luxury and charity events.
The story was simple.
The story was wrong.
“Aaron,” I said carefully, “I believe you’re sitting in my seat.”
He leaned back.
“Jasmine gets severe motion sickness.”
Jasmine lowered her eyes.
A perfect performance.
“I tried to tell him I could sit somewhere else,” she whispered.
“No, you didn’t,” I said.
The words came out before I could stop them.
A few people looked up.
Jasmine blinked.
Aaron’s expression hardened.
“What did you say?”
I looked at her.
She had been working beside him for less than a year.
She knew his coffee order.
She knew his schedule.
She knew which meetings he hated and which investors made him nervous.
She also knew something else.
She knew he never defended me anymore.
“I said you didn’t try to sit somewhere else,” I repeated.
A strange silence filled the cabin.
Then my mother-in-law spoke from the row behind us.
“Alyssa.”
The disappointment in her voice was almost impressive.
She could turn cruelty into concern better than anyone I had ever met.
“Please don’t embarrass yourself.”
I turned.
Eleanor Prescott looked exactly like she always did.
Perfect hair.
Perfect jewelry.
Perfect expression.
She had once told me that people like us could survive anything because we never showed weakness.
I had spent years trying to become someone she would respect.
I finally realized she had only respected my ability to endure.
“Jasmine worked until three in the morning helping Aaron prepare for this trip,” Eleanor continued.
“She has been under enormous pressure.”
I almost laughed.
Almost.
Because there was something absurd about hearing someone defend a woman for doing her job while ignoring the person who had spent years saving the company her son built.
Aaron sighed.
“Alyssa, don’t make this bigger than it is.”
That sentence did something to me.
Not because it was cruel.
Because it was familiar.
Every time he hurt me, he called my reaction the problem.
“You’re overthinking.”
“You’re being emotional.”
“You’re making things complicated.”
For years, I had accepted those words because I loved him.
Love made me explain away things I would have warned someone else about.
I looked at Aaron.
The man I had married was still there somewhere.
I could see pieces of him.
The tired eyes.
The nervous habit of tapping his thumb against his phone.
The slight movement of his jaw when he was stressed.
But the man who once needed me had become someone who resented needing me.
“Alyssa,” he said quietly, “go to row five.”
There it was.
Not a request.
A command.
I looked at the empty seat in row five.
Then I looked at Jasmine sitting where I had spent thousands of hours beside my husband.
Something inside me became strangely calm.
I reached for my handbag.
Everyone expected an argument.
They expected tears.
They expected me to fight.
Instead, I smiled.
“Of course.”
Aaron frowned slightly.
May you like
He had prepared himself for anger.
He didn’t know what to do with peace.
