That afternoon, Graham sent me to the seventeenth floor with documents. The upper floors of Asteria were quiet, carpeted, almost sacred. When I passed a conference room, I froze.

Inside stood a man with Rowan’s profile.

Standing.

Not seated.

Not in a wheelchair.

Standing in a dark suit at the head of the table while executives listened like his words were law.

My breath caught.

Impossible.

Rowan was at home.

Rowan was disabled.

Rowan owed Asteria one hundred million.

Before I could look longer, a colleague appeared and hurried me away.

Back at my desk, doubt gnawed at me all afternoon.

I texted Rowan.

No answer.

Then he called.

“Do you miss me?” he asked after I claimed I was “just checking.”

My face burned.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “For now, I’ll be home waiting for you.”

The words made my heart trip over itself.

Maybe I had imagined the man in the conference room.

Maybe hope had made me foolish again.

After work, I bought Rowan a burgundy outfit. At the mall, I ran into Grant and Tessa.

Grant’s eyes softened when he saw the shopping bag.

“You remembered my birthday,” he said. “I forgive your tantrum. Come back with me.”

For a moment, I was too stunned to answer.

Then I laughed.

“Grant, are you an idiot? I bought this for my husband.”

His face hardened.

“You’re not married.”

“I am.”

“Everyone knows you’ll only marry me.”

The arrogance was almost impressive.

When he tried to grab my arm, I raised my voice.

“Don’t touch me. I have a husband. This man is harassing me because I’m alone.”

People turned.

Tessa rushed to defend him, but the crowd had already understood enough.

“So he cheated first and now wants her back?”

“Security!”

Grant shouted that I was his girlfriend.

I looked at the nearest guard.

“I don’t know this man.”

They were escorted out under the weight of public disgust.

A few older women stopped to warn me not to forgive a man like that.

Their kindness warmed something small and tired inside me.

No one had protected me like that when I was a girl.

When Rowan called and learned I was still out after dark, he came himself.

The luxury car pulled to the curb. Girls nearby whispered about how handsome the man inside was. When I got in, Rowan had a laptop on his lap and his face turned slightly away, as if he had not just crossed half the city to pick me up.

“Is there a problem with me picking up my wife?” he asked.

“No,” I said, trying not to smile.

On the ride home, the car braked suddenly for a stray cat. I fell forward, and Rowan caught me around the waist with one strong arm.

For one breath, I was against him.

He smelled like cold cedar and winter air.

“Careful,” he said.

The driver raised the partition without a word.

“Last night,” Rowan said after a while, “you were bolder than this.”

My face flamed.

“What did I do?”

He looked at me with wicked calm.

“You tried to undress me.”

“I did not.”

“You did.”

I nearly died of embarrassment in the back seat.

After that, Rowan forbade me from drinking around anyone else.

I nodded obediently.

Not because I liked being ordered around.

Because, somehow, the order sounded like concern.

At the Blackwell family banquet, I learned what kind of wolves had raised him.

They looked at Rowan’s wheelchair before they looked at his face. They spoke over him. They mocked the marriage. They dismissed me as a desperate orphan who had married a crippled outcast for shelter.

Then Grant and Tessa appeared, trying to turn the crowd against me.

It should have humiliated me.

Instead, it revealed them.

Grant’s lies fell apart in public. Tessa’s sweet mask cracked under pressure. A relative named Victor Lane grabbed my wrist too hard, and Rowan’s hand closed over his like iron.

Victor screamed.

The room went silent.

Rowan’s voice was quiet.

“Touch my wife again, and I’ll make sure that hand remembers me forever.”

By the time we left, no one was laughing.

That night, I saw the cost of Rowan’s life more clearly. The chair was not the only prison. His family had used his pain as proof that he no longer mattered. The city had repeated the story until even he half-believed it.

But I had seen him protect me.

And I knew this: broken people can still be dangerous when someone they love is threatened.

A few days later, while working late on a difficult client project, I was kidnapped.

One moment, I was outside Asteria, calling a cab beneath broken streetlights.

The next, a cloth covered my mouth.

I woke in an abandoned warehouse, soaked with cold water, tied to a chair. Grant was there. So was Victor. Their faces carried the ugly desperation of men who had lost control and decided cruelty would win it back.

They demanded I leave Rowan.

They wanted leverage.

They wanted revenge.

I was terrified, but fear did not make me weak. It sharpened everything—the sound of dripping pipes, the smell of rust and dust, the way Grant’s hand shook when he held the knife.

When Rowan arrived, the air changed.

He did not shout.

He did not plead.

He looked at the men who had tied up his wife and became someone even the darkness seemed to fear.

By the time the police came, Grant had confessed to enough to destroy himself, and Victor was arrested beside him. Rowan carried me out as if my weight meant nothing.

At the hospital, when the nurse told him my wounds needed ointment, he insisted on doing it himself.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said softly. “I’ll be gentle.”

His hands were careful.

So careful it hurt.

I asked later whether he had arranged Grant’s confession.

Rowan only said, “I sent him to the police station. The rest belongs to the police.”

I knew he was not telling the whole truth.

I did not press.

At Asteria, my work continued. Mrs. Adeline Greer, a notoriously difficult client with ties to the company’s hidden founder, rejected everyone—until I went to see her myself and spoke only of design, not gossip. She gave me the project.

Selene tried to sabotage me again by accusing me of plagiarism.

This time, I was ready.

I brought timestamps, cloud backups, every revision, every sketch, every note. Her fake evidence collapsed under the weight of my records. When security escorted her out, she glared at Kira Bellamy—the glamorous superstar who had recently inserted herself into Rowan’s life.

Kira had arrived at our villa with paparazzi stories and old familiarity. She claimed she and Rowan had grown up together. She knew his preferences. His allergies. The small details I was still learning.

I hated how much that hurt.

Then she smiled at me in the kitchen and “accidentally” spilled hot soup over my hand.

At dinner, she threw herself into Rowan’s arms and cried about being targeted by a powerful man named Gorman.

For one terrible moment, I was back at the church entrance, watching Grant choose another woman’s tears over mine.

I ran into the garden and cried where no one could see.

Rowan found me.

I was so angry I bit his arm hard enough to draw blood.

He only smiled, pained and tender.

“Feel better?”

“Why didn’t you push her away?”