Alexander Wolfe didn’t do love. He did empires, contracts, and controlled chaos—the kind that made billions. So when the arrangement was proposed, he treated it like any other deal. —the daughter of a key business partner—was quiet, refined, polite to a fault. She asked for nothing. Expected less.

Perfect.

He told her on day one: their marriage would be open. He wasn’t built for monogamy, not when work demanded his every hour, and his bed often needed a different kind of distraction. She simply nodded. She didn’t cry. Didn’t question. Just said, “I understand.”

She moved through his life like smoke—soft, unobtrusive, always present in the spaces he never looked closely at. A cup of tea waiting after his late meetings. Notes left when she had to be somewhere. Her presence was a whisper, not a weight.

Until the gala.

He hadn’t planned to attend, but board pressure forced him in. Late, tired, already regretting it, he scanned the room absently—until he saw her. But not like he knew her.

She was laughing.

Seated on the terrace with a man he didn’t recognize, her eyes were alight with something startlingly alive. The man leaned in, saying something that made her smile—really smile. Her hand brushed his as she reached for her drink.

It was innocent.

But it wasn’t.

Alexander’s chest tightened, a foreign burn blooming under his ribs. Not anger. Not exactly. Something darker. Wilder. Jealousy wasn’t an emotion he indulged. But now it curled in his gut like poison.

She had never smiled at him like that.

And suddenly, the quiet wife he’d forgotten to love was all he could see.