Divorcing The Alpha: My Designer Comeback

Sienna's POV:

The scent of rosemary from the roast leg of lamb hung in the air. It should have been warm and comforting, but all I could smell was the cold, empty space of the Sterling estate-a scent I'd come to know intimately over eight years.

I swirled the mashed potatoes on my plate into a perfect peak, a motion I'd perfected. Another small, useless attempt to fill the cracks in our life with the illusion of order.

Candles flickered along the long mahogany table, their flames dancing against the Manhattan skyline beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows. The city glittered, a universe of light and life. Inside, it was just me.

I glanced at my phone. Blank screen. No messages. He's busy, I told myself. The Alpha King is always busy. The same excuse I'd used for eight years, a worn blanket I kept pulling over my head, hoping it would one day feel warm.

A memory surfaced. Seven years ago, his dark, intense eyes held a spark I'd mistaken for tenderness. A fool's mistake.

The antique grandfather clock in the hall chimed eight. The time he'd promised. At 8:05, I poured him a glass of Cabernet, the deep red swirling with promises the bottle couldn't keep. By 8:15, the food was losing its heat. Just like my heart.

Then the familiar pressure bloomed in my mind. A violation I'd long ago accepted as intimacy. Leo's mind-link.

"Sienna, there's an emergency at the office. I won't be home tonight."

His voice held no emotion. A command, not an apology. My fingers hovered over the mental space where I'd form the usual submissive reply: Okay, be safe. But my mind stalled.

He must have thought he'd severed the connection, but a faint thread remained, like a phone call not properly hung up. Through that thread came a sound that turned the air in my lungs to ice.

A woman's soft laugh. A voice I knew too well. Scarlett Vance.

"Leo, Aiden is already asleep. We should-" Her voice purred with an intimacy he'd never once shown me.

My breath hitched. My body went rigid.

Aiden. My son.

Then the final blow. A sleepy, small voice drifted through the link. "Mommy? I want some water..."

The world stopped. Mommy. Aiden was calling Scarlett Mommy.

Leo's voice came again, wrapped in a tenderness so profound it physically hurt-a warmth I'd starved for, given freely to another. "Okay, baby. Daddy will get it for you."

Sound and color drained from the dining room. The glittering city, the candles, the perfectly plated meal-all dissolved into a gray void. Only their voices echoed in my skull.

The heavy silver fork slipped from my numb fingers and hit the marble floor with a sharp clatter. The sound must have traveled through the fragile link, because a moment later, the connection was severed completely.

Silence.

I stared at the cooling food I'd spent hours preparing. It looked like a cruel joke, and I was the punchline. Eight years of obedience, waiting, telling myself this was enough. The tears I expected didn't come. Instead, a coldness seeped into my bones, an arctic chill that extinguished the last embers of hope. I knew. It was over.

I stood, movements stiff and robotic, picked up the plate, and walked to the kitchen. I scraped the lamb into the trash without a second thought. The perfect potatoes followed. Then the wine, poured slowly down the drain, a ribbon of blood-red failure. Finally, I took the bouquet of white roses-"eternal love" I'd bought for the occasion-and began breaking them one by one. The snap of each stem was a satisfying crack in the facade of my life.

A voice deep inside me, one I hadn't heard in years, whispered a single word: Enough.