Monster Billionaire Husband, Let Me Go

Chapter 14: Roses and Shackles

I first realized my feelings for Sophia Reynolds in the tea room of the old mansion.

That day, she stood before my grandfather in a plain qipao, softly expressing her desire for a divorce.

Sunlight streamed through the carved window lattice, casting her silhouette like a faded ink painting.

The teacup in my hand suddenly scalded my fingers, yet I barely noticed the hot liquid spilling onto my skin.

"No." The word escaped my lips before I could stop myself, startling even me.

Having witnessed my parents torment each other in their marriage, I had always avoided the very idea of it.

When I was forced to marry her, I had even contemplated countless ways to escape this arrangement.

But when the moment finally arrived, an unprecedented resistance surged through me.

I lied and told her I was merely accustomed to being taken care of.

Then I deliberately invited Emily Thompson to stay in the guest room, praising her new dress to prove I didn't care about Sophia—didn't care about this wife who had been thrust upon me.

Until she was truly gone.

That day, I shattered everything breakable in my study.

When Emily walked in wearing a silk nightgown, the pungent perfume on her made me suddenly recall Sophia's faint jasmine scent.

As Emily reached for my shoulder, I shoved her away, nausea twisting in my gut.

What if it had been Sophia?

The thought struck like lightning through fog.

Frantically, I dug out the stuffed doll she had sewn for me and buried my face in it, inhaling deeply.

The lingering scent of soap on the fabric burned my eyes.

On the day she returned, I stood in the foyer pretending to read the newspaper—except I was holding it upside down.

She had grown thinner, dark circles shadowing her eyes like an exhausted migratory bird.

I wanted to embrace her, but all I managed was a stiff "You're back."

Yet, gradually, I noticed her pulling away.

She handed my medication list to the new caregiver and stopped sewing my shirt buttons herself.

When I coughed deliberately at night, she would simply close the door softly.

I panicked.

I began finding excuses to talk to her, composing songs for her, even confessing childhood wounds.

But she only listened quietly, her gaze hollow as if watching a dull film.

Then one day, I stumbled upon a video of her dancing by a campfire during her travels—her smile radiant, almost blinding.

"Let's go on a trip together," I suggested while she was taking my blood pressure.

Her fingertips trembled imperceptibly.

The grasslands of Ulan Butong were breathtakingly beautiful.

Yet she spent the nights in the tent double-checking my medicine box, waking three times to feel my forehead.

At dawn, I saw her sitting alone on the hillside, her silhouette so frail it seemed ready to dissolve with the wind.

It dawned on me then—it wasn't travel that made her happy.

It was being away from me.

On the flight back, watching her sleeping profile, I made my decision.

The song I had been composing for six months always lacked a final passage.

Now I knew—it needed liberation.

On her birthday, I slid the divorce papers and a check across the table.

Her signature was steady, but her eyes reddened.

I clenched the diamond ring in my pocket until its edges cut into my palm.

My study became my prison.

I revised the song over and over until one predawn morning, I dreamed of her at fifteen.

The girl stood on tiptoe to bandage my wound, her lashes fluttering like butterfly wings.

I woke to find my pillow soaked with tears.

The day "Sophia" was completed, I wept like a child in the recording studio.

The producer, his own eyes red, called it the most heartbreaking love song he'd ever heard.

I gifted her all the rights.

She deserved it—including her freedom.

Now, her social media is my only solace.

In her videos, she gallops on horseback, spreads her arms atop snow-capped peaks, floors the accelerator while racing.

The obedient porcelain doll had always harbored a wild spirit.

Every year on her birthday, I spend three months preparing what to wear when we meet.

She always comes and goes swiftly, carrying unfamiliar perfumes.

Still, I greedily memorize every expression, replaying them for the next three hundred days.

How ironic—the shackles I once fought so hard to escape have become the rose garden I can no longer possess.

On my birthday, the private room was packed with people.

Under the crystal chandelier, the champagne tower shimmered with fractured light.

As I looked around at the sea of smiling faces, I suddenly remembered all those years before I met Percy Sullivan.

Back then, my birthdays were always quiet, lonely affairs.

The moment Percy pushed the door open, the room fell silent.

In his hands was a velvet box—no need to guess, it was surely another priceless piece of jewelry.

Over the years, his gifts had only grown more extravagant.

"Grandfather wants me to ask you," he murmured, leaning in as we cut the cake, his voice low, "if you'd reconsider the idea of remarrying."

The candle flames flickered.

Staring at the dancing light, I recalled the first time I'd seen Percy.

In the university auditorium, he stood as the valedictorian, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up to his elbows, revealing the clean lines of his forearms.

"No," I said with a smile, shaking my head as I handed him the cake knife. "Would you do the honors?"

When his fingers brushed against the back of my hand as he took the knife, the fleeting warmth felt achingly familiar.

At eighteen, I had filled every page of my diary with his name.

At twenty-eight, I had finally learned to close the past gently.

[The End]