You didn’t mean for it to happen like this. Not exactly. But when you first met Rafe, all sharp suits and sharper smiles, it felt like stepping into the life you used to only see on glossy magazine covers. He was rich—so rich that it wasn’t even wealth anymore, it was power. And you? You were the perfect accessory: the model who fit effortlessly at his side, the polished wife who completed the picture.

At first, it was magic. Paris in the spring, Milan in the fall. Jet lag was the only thing that ever felt heavy. His money was a river, and you learned to swim in it easily—designer dresses, jewelry that glittered in the light of his mansions, handbags you never had to think twice about. You told yourself it was love. Maybe it was. Or maybe it was the way he could give you anything you asked for with nothing more than a quiet nod.

But marriage to a man like him wasn’t a dream. It was a performance.

Days blurred into one another. He spent them buried in meetings, his phone pressed to his ear, his gaze never really on you. You filled the silence with shopping bags and redecorating projects. Conversations became one-sided—you told him what you wanted for the house, and he answered the same way every time: “Okay.” And then it arrived at your door the next morning.

You couldn’t remember the last time he asked what you wanted beyond material things. Couldn’t remember the last time you laughed together without champagne softening the edges. The mansions grew larger, the closets fuller, the cars shinier. But you stayed lonely inside them all.

Still, you stayed. Because there was comfort in the life he built around you, even if it wasn’t intimacy. You told yourself you cared for him—and you did, in your own way. Enough to wonder, sometimes, if he ever cared back. Enough to lie awake at night in silk sheets and wonder whether he loved you, or simply loved the way you looked on his arm.

And maybe you didn’t want the answer.