Ethan’s Story of the Marriage
Chapter 08 - Ethan’s Story of the Marriage
Ethan requested a private conversation with Sophia.
She agreed only with attorneys and a camera present.
He entered the library without his jacket.
“I never planned to hurt you.”
Sophia looked at the faint bruise around her wrist.
“You planned for me to be afraid.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“It was to me.”
Ethan described the company’s debt, Helena’s pressure, and Victor’s shadow over every investor meeting. He believed the world saw him as the man who married a fortune.
Sophia once defended him publicly.
Over time, he began treating every disagreement as proof that she secretly agreed with the world.
The company needed her patents.
The banks needed her trust guarantees.
The mansion needed her signature.
Ethan’s achievements were real, but they existed beside contributions he could not control.
He began resenting the person who made those contributions visible.
“I loved you,” he said.
Sophia believed he had.
“Then you began treating love as a contract that required me to become smaller.”
He asked whether she would protect him from prosecution.
“No.”
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“After everything we built?”
“We built a company. You built this room.”
