The next morning, Vega Tower was a cathedral of glass and tension. Its mirrored walls caught the dawn light like a blade, sharp, beautiful, indifferent. The building hummed with the quiet thrum of ambition; phones rang in clipped tones, heels clicked on marble, and beneath it all, whispers slithered like static.
Elena had learned that silence in Vega Tower carried further than sound. It wasn't the words people said that mattered, it was the pauses after. The deliberate lowering of a voice. The half-smile exchanged between colleagues when she walked past.
By now, she knew her place in Adrian Vega's empire. A trophy. A rumor. A distraction nobody dared to name aloud.
Her heels echoed through the glass corridor that led to the top floor. She'd been summoned, no, instructed, to attend the quarterly board meeting. For optics, Adrian had said the night before, his tone clipped, impersonal.
"As your husband, or as your employer?" she'd asked, her voice even.
He hadn't answered. Just adjusted his tie and said, "Both."
Now, standing before the doors of the executive boardroom, Elena drew a slow breath and straightened her posture. The polished steel handles were cold against her palms.
When she stepped inside, the laughter stopped.
The sudden hush pressed against her ears. Twelve men in expensive suits and one woman with sharp crimson nails turned their heads toward her. A few smiled, polite and performative; most simply stared.
At the head of the table sat Adrian. His jacket was off, sleeves rolled up, revealing the lean strength of his forearms. The blue of his shirt made his skin look pale, his expression carved from frost. He didn't look surprised to see her, he had expected her, planned her entrance down to the second.
"Mrs. Vega," he said, his voice even, every syllable precise. "Join us."
She crossed the room, ignoring the faint rustle of whispers that followed her. When she sat beside him, her reflection glimmered faintly on the glass tabletop, composed, contained, perfect. Inside, her pulse was a steady roar.
The meeting began. Adrian spoke of mergers, acquisitions, projections, his tone cool, commanding, efficient. Numbers and names filled the room like smoke, heavy and suffocating.
Elena listened, though half the words meant nothing to her. Her gaze drifted toward the board members, catching the way one man's smirk lingered just a little too long when his eyes brushed over her. Another exchanged a look with his colleague, both leaning slightly away, as if she carried contagion.
She knew what they thought. The charity-case wife. The student-turned-scandal. The debt paid in marriage papers.
She didn't flinch. Not outwardly.
But when one director, a man with graying temples and too much confidence, leaned back and said with a chuckle, "If Mrs. Vega keeps attending, perhaps we should add fashion tips to the agenda," the room rippled with quiet laughter.
For a heartbeat, no one breathed.
Elena's fingers curled on her lap. Heat rose to her neck, hot and fast.
Before she could speak, before pride could push her into a reckless retort, Adrian's pen hit the table with a sharp crack.
The sound sliced through the air like a whip.
The laughter died instantly.
Adrian looked up slowly, his gaze fixed on the man who had spoken. His expression was calm—too calm. The kind of calm that carried the promise of ruin.
"Repeat that," he said quietly.
The director stammered, color draining from his face. "It was just, just a joke..."
"I must've misheard, then," Adrian interrupted, voice low, almost polite. "Because what I did hear sounded unprofessional."
He leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled, eyes glacial. "Let me make something clear. I don't tolerate jokes made at my wife's expense. You'll find that our brand image, our reputation, depends on professionalism. Perhaps you should remember that before the next meeting."
Silence.
He didn't shout. He didn't need to. The weight of his authority filled the room like smoke, thick and inescapable.
He resumed the meeting without missing a beat, flipping to the next page of his report as if nothing had happened.
But the atmosphere had shifted. Every word that followed came laced with restraint, every movement cautious.
Elena sat perfectly still, staring at the man beside her. He didn't look at her, didn't acknowledge what he'd done. His pen moved across the paper with clean, mechanical precision. But the tendons in his wrist were tight, his jaw locked.
He hadn't done it for love. She knew that. Adrian Vega didn't act from sentiment.
And yet…
Her heart betrayed her, stuttering against her ribs as if searching for a rhythm that no longer existed.
When the meeting adjourned, the executives scattered like startled birds, their footsteps quick, voices hushed. A few avoided her gaze altogether. The man who had spoken didn't look back once.
Adrian began gathering his papers. His movements were efficient, detached, though his hand paused for a fraction of a second longer than usual on the folder before him.
"You shouldn't listen to gossip," he said, still not looking up.
Elena stood, smoothing her skirt, her tone measured. "I don't. But it seems you do."
That made him look up.
His mouth twitched, half a smirk, half something else. "I protect my investments, Elena."
Her chest tightened, sharp as glass. "That's all I am, then?"
His eyes darkened. "Don't twist my words."
"I don't have to."
The air between them trembled. She wanted to say something more, to pierce through the cold armor he wore, but the words tangled on her tongue.
He rose slowly, his height an unspoken threat, his voice dropping just above a whisper. "You think I defended you because I care?"
Her throat went dry.
He took a step closer, close enough that she could see the faint pulse at his temple, the subtle tremor beneath his control. "I may hate you," he said, every word deliberate, "but you're my wife."
The words landed like a confession wrapped in a curse.
Her breath caught. The way he said wife, it wasn't tenderness, but possession. Not affection, but something that burned just as deep.
She opened her mouth to respond, but nothing came out. There was too much in the air, too much unsaid.
He turned away first, his gaze finding the skyline through the glass wall. Below, the city stretched in a haze of steel and sunlight. Beautiful. Merciless.
His reflection hovered beside hers in the window, two figures bound by name, not by choice.
She watched him adjust his cufflinks. The motion was habitual, practiced, but his fingers faltered, just slightly, just enough for her to see it. The smallest fracture in the mask he never took off.
And that was the first crack.
The day stretched on, but the moment followed her.
Every corner of Vega Tower seemed to hum with it, the unspoken awareness that the unshakable Adrian Vega had felt something. Defended something. Someone.
In the private elevator, she watched the city slide past below, lights flickering in and out of the glass reflection. She pressed her hand against the metal railing, grounding herself in the coolness of it.
She shouldn't care. Not after everything he'd done. Not after the way he'd looked at her the day he'd forced the ring on her finger, his voice low and unforgiving, You wanted to play with fire, Elena. Now you burn with it.
And yet, the memory of his voice today, steady, protective, unwilling to let anyone touch her name, unraveled her just enough to make her question which version of him was real.
By the time she reached the ground floor, the whispers had started again, softer this time.
"Did you hear? Mr. Vega actually defended her."
"Unbelievable. Maybe she's not just a headline after all."
"Or maybe she's his weakness."
Elena walked past them, expression calm, spine unbending. But inside, the words festered. His weakness.
Was that what this was becoming? A war fought not with shouting or violence, but with glances, silences, and cracks too small for anyone else to see?
When she reached the car, the driver opened the door with his usual, formal nod.
"Home, Mrs. Vega?"
The word home felt foreign. The penthouse was a mausoleum, quiet, immaculate, lifeless. Still, she nodded. "Yes."
By evening, the city outside the penthouse glowed like a galaxy trapped in glass. Elena stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, watching headlights bleed into each other far below.
The reflection that stared back at her was composed but tired, the faintest shadow beneath her eyes betraying how much effort it took to stay unshaken.
Behind her, she heard the low murmur of Adrian's voice, on the phone, likely with one of his directors. His tone was colder now, stripped of any trace of what had happened that morning.
"Reschedule the investor call," he was saying. "And make sure Lawson understands this, he crosses a line again, he's out."
She turned slightly, just enough to see his silhouette in the reflection. Even in the soft amber light, he looked carved from shadow. His tie was loosened, his hand resting against the back of the couch. The power he exuded wasn't loud, it was silent, coiled, like something that could break at any second.
When he ended the call, the silence that followed felt heavier than before.
"You didn't have to do that," she said quietly.
He didn't turn. "Do what?"
"Make an example of him."
He slipped his phone into his pocket, finally meeting her gaze through the reflection. "I did what was necessary."
She gave a humorless laugh. "You mean to protect the company?"
He turned then, his eyes catching the faint light. "To protect you."
The words were so low she almost missed them.
Elena froze. The distance between them felt suddenly smaller, too fragile to pretend anymore.
She wanted to believe it. But believing meant danger, it meant remembering that beneath his cruelty, there had once been warmth. A version of him that had loved her once, before ambition turned love into a weapon.
So she said nothing.
Instead, she turned back to the window. The city lights blurred in her vision until they looked like sparks, fleeting, burning, gone.
Behind her, Adrian's voice came again, quieter. "You shouldn't mistake my actions for kindness."
She smiled faintly, without turning. "I wouldn't dream of it."
But when she caught his reflection again, his eyes weren't cold. They were something else, something she couldn't name yet.
And that night, long after he'd retreated to his study, she found herself awake, staring at the ceiling, hearing again the quiet tremor in his voice.
I may hate her… but she's my wife.
The words played like a confession, soft and dangerous, echoing through the hollow spaces of her heart.
She turned on her side, shutting her eyes, but the memory stayed, warm, confusing, alive.
For the first time, the thought came unbidden, unwanted, unstoppable:
Maybe hate wasn't the opposite of love.
Maybe it was what survived when love refused to die.