Limited Love

I caught the intern trying to sneak a kiss from my husband of convenience.

She dropped to her knees in a frantic scramble, tears welling in her innocent eyes. Mrs. Wyatt, please, please let me go.

In my previous life, I had thrown a massive, hysterical fit and divorced Gideon out of pure spite. As a result, I lost the Wyatt family's protection, ended up entirely alone, and died a miserable death on the rain-slicked pavement while delivering takeout.

Given a second chance at life, I simply stood there.

Gideon cast a careless, lazy glance my way. "What, the great heiress wants to divorce me over this?"

I didn't answer.

Instead, I reached out and gently took the trembling girl's hands. "Sweetheart, I'll be counting on you to help me take good care of him from now on."

"As long as he is happy, I am fine with anything."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw all the color instantly drain from my husband's face.

"What did you just say?"

Gideon turned his head to look at me. His face was a blank mask, but his tone dripped with raw disbelief.

I could not be bothered to answer him.

Releasing Linda's hands, I turned on my heel, fully intending to walk away. But before I could take a step, his fingers locked around my wrist from behind.

"Repeat what you just said."

Before I could even open my mouth, he pressed his lips together and offered an unprompted explanation. "Linda and I are strictly boss and subordinate."

"I got a stain on my tie. She was helping me change it, lost her balance in her heels, and just..."

"I know. I believe you."

I cut him off smoothly.

Gideon choked on his words, staring at me in heavy, loaded silence.

The atmosphere grew suffocatingly tense until Linda suddenly broke it with a pathetic sob. "Mrs. Wyatt, I know you are still angry with me."

"You can yell at me or hit me all you want, but please stop making things so difficult. I am just Mr. Wyatt's secretary. I cannot afford to lose this job."

This was far from her first time provoking me.

When I accompanied Gideon to the annual corporate gala, she had intentionally ordered my custom evening gown in her own measurements instead of mine.

Little heart shaped stickers had mysteriously appeared on Gideon's favorite fountain pen.

And whenever a project manager mistakenly referred to her as Mrs. Wyatt, she would just blush fiercely, offering a shy smile without ever confirming or denying it.

I used to fight with Gideon constantly over these things.

But every single time, he would just furrow his brows, looking at me with exhausted disdain.

"Why are you being so petty with a young girl fresh out of college?"

The memory washed over me, leaving me utterly numb. I looked at Linda with a calm, unreadable expression. "Why would I make things difficult for you?"

"You did not do it on purpose. I completely understand."

Linda froze, her fake tears drying up in sheer confusion.

Beside us, Gideon crossed his arms over his chest and suddenly let out a low, dark laugh. He shook his head, one brow arching in amusement. "This is getting boring."

I frowned at him. "What is?"

"Playing hard to get. It is incredibly boring."

He scoffed, a cruel smirk playing on his lips. "For a second there, I almost thought you actually didn't care."

In my past life, I cared entirely too much.

We were a marriage of corporate convenience, but we had also been childhood sweethearts. He was the golden boy woven through the entirety of my youth. It was precisely because I loved him so deeply that I could not stomach Linda's little manipulative games.

The first time I really noticed her was when I brought Gideon his stomach medication.

He had chronic gastritis. When work piled up, he would routinely skip meals.

When Linda pushed the office door open that day, Gideon was holding me tightly, resting his chin on my shoulder like an overgrown child, whining about his stomach ache and demanding that I comfort him.

Linda stood frozen in the doorway. The rims of her pretty eyes turned a quiet, devastated red.

Later that week, I found a handful of dried shrimp hidden in my catered lunch.

I am severely allergic to seafood. The executive chef knew this and would never make such a fatal error.

Someone had planted it there with malicious intent.

The security cameras had a blind spot right over the pantry, but the footage clearly showed Linda lingering around my lunchbox.

Knowing she came from a struggling household and desperately needed money for her mother's upcoming surgery, I chose not to make a public scene.

Instead, I slid a premium bank card across the table to her. I told her to consider it a loan for the medical bills to solve her immediate crisis. "Resign on your own terms and find another job."

But things did not go as planned.

That night, Gideon came home enveloped in a glacial silence.

Thinking the arrogant board of directors had given him a hard time again, I wrapped my arms and legs around him, murmuring soft comforts into his neck for a long time.

That was until he pulled the very same bank card out of his pocket and tossed it onto the coffee table. His face was devoid of warmth. "Look at what you did."

He raised his eyes, fixing me with a stern, judgmental glare. "Linda is not like you. She clawed her way up from nothing to get here. Her life is incredibly hard."

"Even if you are insanely jealous, you do not use money to humiliate her."

I was stunned into silence.

That was our very first real fight.

Even when I showed him the security footage, he absolutely refused to believe Linda would try to harm me. He genuinely thought I was throwing a pampered heiress tantrum, going out of my way to bully a poor subordinate.

As a punishment, he not only paid for her mother's surgery out of his own pocket but also promoted her to his personal executive assistant.

Spending day and night together in the executive suite, they grew increasingly intimate.

There was a viral artisan ice cream shop I had been begging him to visit for months. He ended up taking Linda instead.

When I confronted him, he brushed it off with a careless shrug. "The kid has a sweet tooth. I was just humoring her."

Linda's birthday wish was to ride the city's grand Ferris wheel at sunset with him.

He agreed to that, too.

They took countless photos together. Linda chose a candid shot of Gideon's handsome side profile and set it as her social media background.

There were times I called my husband, only for Linda's sickly sweet voice to answer.

"Mrs. Wyatt, the CEO is currently changing his clothes."

Her voice purred through the receiver, soft and victorious. "If you need anything, just tell me. I will be sure to pass the message along."

I hung up after seconds of suffocating silence.

But minutes later, Gideon called back, his tone absolutely freezing. "What exactly did you say to Linda?"

"Why is she sobbing her eyes out after taking your call?"

"What will it take for you to believe that there is nothing going on between us? Does bullying a young girl make you feel powerful?"

I listened to his accusations, drained of all energy. The fortress of trust I had built in my heart felt like it was drowning in a silent, violent tide. The wind whistled through the newly carved holes, and the pain was agonizing.

And then came the day I caught Linda stealing that kiss.

On our wedding anniversary, no less.

Months of agonizing, unspoken grievances erupted like a volcano.

Refusing to listen to any more empty excuses, I lost my mind entirely. I tore the place apart, screaming and crying.

I became the crazy, hysterical woman in everyone's eyes.

Gideon watched my meltdown with a deep frown, his eyes chillingly detached. "Are you absolutely insisting on a divorce?"

Eyes bloodshot, I gave a firm nod.

He stood up slowly, a cruel sneer twisting his features. "I have spoiled you far too much."

"When the Vanderbilt family went bankrupt, I took on tens of millions of your parents' toxic debts just to clean up their mess. Without me keeping the wolves at bay these past few years, your family would have been driven to suicide."

"If you insist on walking away, you will be blacklisted by Wyatt Corp. Not a single company in this country will dare to hire you."

Throughout our years of marriage, that was the very first time Gideon wielded his wealth and status to crush me. His face was an emotionless mask, his logic ruthlessly clear.

It was as if he were sitting at a high stakes negotiation table, threatening an enemy into submission.

Perhaps the sight of my silent, broken weeping was too pathetic.

His harsh demeanor softened.

He calmly pulled me into his arms, pressing a gentle kiss to my wet, trembling eyelids. "Stop making a fuss. I was only trying to scare some sense into you."

"Linda and I have always been completely clean. I am not firing her, and you are going to stop making her life miserable."

"As long as you behave from now on and stop acting so paranoid, we can go back to how we used to be. Understood?"

No. I did not understand.

The version of me in that past life loved him too intensely.

That obsessive love rotted into pure, venomous hatred.

I demanded the divorce, fully intending to work my fingers to the bone to pay off those debts myself and sever all ties with him forever.

I left every piece of designer jewelry and luxury clothing he had ever bought me inside the Wyatt mansion. I walked out with nothing.

Driven to the absolute brink of poverty, I chose to hustle on a delivery bike rather than beg Gideon for a single dime.

The final chapter of my story ended with me slipping and crashing my bike on a rain battered street.

A speeding car ran over me in the next heartbeat, leaving my face a crushed, bloody ruin.

Through the curtain of fine drizzle, a luxury Maybach rolled past. The tinted window lowered smoothly, revealing Gideon's striking, deeply set eyes.

He cast one indifferent, passing glance at my mangled body before looking away. He reached over to cover Linda's eyes, his voice dripping with gentle protection. "Don't look."

"It's gruesome."

He dipped his head to comfort her, a soft smile on his lips, exactly as one would coax a frightened child.

Some mistakes only need to be made once in a lifetime.

If Gideon liked Linda that much, I had no reason to play the wicked witch trying to tear them apart.

There was even less reason to force a bitter divorce, make an enemy out of a billionaire, and bring needless suffering upon myself.

The next day, I ran into Linda at the corporate headquarters.

I offered her a polite, breezy smile. "Linda, you will be accompanying Gideon on his business trip to Chicago again, right?"

Her eyes darted nervously away. "Yes, I am..."

I chuckled, leaning in close to whisper in her ear. "His hotel suite number is 1081."

Linda's eyes widened in sheer shock. "You..."

If this were the old me, I would have been sick with anxiety at the thought of them traveling alone.

Not only would I have demanded they stay in completely different hotels, but I would have required Gideon to check in with me every single hour.

"Relax. I am not tagging along this time, and I am not checking up on him either."

I patted her stiff shoulder affectionately. "What I said yesterday stands forever."

"If Gideon truly has feelings for you, I couldn't stop him even if I tried. I might as well step aside and give you both my blessing."

"Who knows, if he really falls madly in love with you and wants to make you his legal wife, he will have to pay me a massive divorce settlement."

I squeezed her cold hand, winking at her. "I have arranged everything with the hotel staff. Have a wonderful, unforgettable night."

I watched her scurry away, letting out a long, satisfying exhale before turning around.

Only to crash straight into Gideon's dark, indecipherable gaze. "What were you two whispering about?"

"Just telling her to take good care of you while you are away."

Remembering something, I offered a helpful reminder. "Oh, and she is giving up her weekend to fly out with you. It is a lot of hard work, so do not forget to pay her double overtime."

The air in the hallway went dead silent the moment the words left my mouth.

I stood there with my arms crossed, fully expecting him to praise me for finally being a rational, accommodating wife.

Instead, he let out a cold, sharp breath that sounded suspiciously like a sneer.

He leaned lazily against the doorframe and pulled out a cigarette, lighting it with a silver lighter. "Putting on this little show of getting along with Linda... was that entirely for my benefit?"

I blinked, genuinely amused by his ego.

I used to keep him on a suffocatingly tight leash.

Especially after my family went bankrupt, the glaring power imbalance between us turned me into an insecure, neurotic mess.

In the beginning, he actually tried his best to soothe my anxiety.

"Why do you let your imagination run wild? Who else would want to deal with me besides you?"

"Alright, alright. If it makes you feel secure, you have total clearance to inspect my phone and my schedule whenever you want."

But after Linda entered the picture, he gradually turned cold and defensive.

"Am I not allowed any basic privacy?"

"Can you not give me an ounce of goddamn trust?"

Pulling myself out of the memories, I looked him dead in the eye with utter sincerity. "Didn't you always beg me to give you some freedom? Well, I am finally giving it to you."

Gideon stared me down for a few agonizing seconds before scoffing under his breath. "This little trick of yours... it is honestly pathetic."

With that, he tossed his half smoked cigarette into the nearby receptacle and walked away without looking back.

By the third day of the Chicago trip, the aura surrounding Gideon was still dangerously dark.

Ever since Serena had caught him in the dressing room that day, a suffocating tightness in his chest simply refused to dissipate.

Part of it was irritation at himself. He had knocked back a few drinks at the gala, his reflexes had dulled, and he had failed to dodge Linda's inappropriate closeness in time.

But the vast majority of his frustration was directed entirely at Serena.

She was entirely too calm.

Those beautiful, historically expressive eyes of hers were now completely vacant, and it was causing a strange, crawling panic to settle in his gut.

In the past, every single emotion she felt was vividly broadcasted in her eyes. She never hid a single thing from him.

Like that one winter dawn when he had worked straight through the night and failed to come home.

Sick with worry, she threw a coat over her pajamas and drove straight to the corporate tower to find him.

The building happened to be suffering a localized power outage.

She was terrified of the dark, yet she blindly fumbled her way through the pitch black executive floor for nearly twenty minutes.

Even though her teeth were physically chattering in fear, she kept calling out his name.

When he finally found her and scooped her up into his arms, she was so overwhelmed with relief that she buried her face in his neck, sobbing uncontrollably.

Every time Gideon recalled that memory, his cold heart would involuntarily melt into a puddle.

Yet now, Serena had not asked to check his phone in weeks.

The last time he stayed out drinking all night and returned at dawn, she did not ask a single question.

She seemed to have become perfectly obedient.

Her attitude toward him was significantly better than before.

But something about it felt incredibly, horribly wrong.

It made his skin crawl.

Gideon eventually chalked it all up to one of her dramatic little phases.

She loved him entirely too much. This was definitely just a new, twisted strategy to capture his undivided attention.

She had pulled similar stunts in the past.

Once, she had literally kicked him out of their penthouse, blazing with fury. "Since you love taking private business trips with Linda so much, why don't you just go live at her apartment? I am certainly not stopping you."

Gideon had simply squatted by the stairwell door with a cigarette hanging from his lips, not moving a single inch.

He just snapped a photo of his packed suitcase and texted it to Linda, instructing her to post it on her social media feed.

Ten minutes later, he was watching Serena push open the stairwell door. Her eyes were bloodshot, her face streaked with fresh tears.

She looked absolutely ready to catch him in the act of cheating.

He had burst out laughing, wrapping one arm around her waist and hauling her effortlessly back inside their home.

Serena could never bear to actually leave him.

Her recent icy treatment was nothing more than playing hard to get.

The second he showed even a fraction of interest in Linda, Serena would instantly panic and come begging for his attention again.

Satisfied with his own logic, the heavy knot between his brows finally smoothed out as he swiped his keycard and pushed open the door to his penthouse suite.

He had not been intimate with Serena in days.

Leaning against the marble wet bar, his throat felt suddenly dry. He casually poured himself a glass of whiskey.

After downing half of it, a heavy, unfamiliar heat began pooling low in his stomach.

He glanced at the crystal decanter, his brow arching in surprise. An aphrodisiac blend?

Did the hotel concierge arrange this?

Impossible.

A faint sound of running water echoed from the master bathroom.

A slow, wicked smile spread across Gideon's face as he gently set the crystal glass down on the counter.

It had to be Serena's doing.

She was the only one who knew his private suite number.

Just as he predicted, she was terrified of losing him to another woman and had secretly flown all the way to Chicago to beg for his forgiveness in bed.

She was still utterly addicted to him.

The corners of his lips curved upward as he pushed open the frosted glass door of the bathroom.

The next second, a slender figure wrapped only in a white towel threw herself straight into his chest. Her breathing was ragged, her body trembling with anticipation.

His heart flared with heat.

He dipped his head, pressing his lips into her damp hair, his voice dropping into a husky, reassuring murmur. "You are the only woman I will ever have."

"I have never looked twice at anyone else, and I never want to divorce you."

"Everything I said back there was just to make you jealous."

The woman in his arms continued to tremble, whispering back, "Mr. Wyatt..."

The air in the bathroom instantly froze.

It felt as though a bucket of ice water had been dumped directly over his head.

Gideon stood paralyzed for three agonizing seconds before violently shoving her away. His voice cracked like a whip. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"How did you get my room number?"

She must have bribed someone or used her administrative access to find out.

And that laced drink was not Serena's romantic trap; it was hers.

Gideon glared at the woman collapsed on the wet tiles. Murderous rage flashed in his eyes, and he opened his mouth to tell her to get the hell out.

Until he heard Linda's whimpering, terrified voice. "It was... your wife. She gave me your room number."

Late into the night, I lay in bed and tapped open my social media feed.

The very first post on my timeline belonged to Linda.

It was a dimly lit photo of two hands tightly intertwined against crisp, snow white hotel sheets.

The man's wrist bore a distinct, dark mole.

It was unmistakably Gideon's.

In my previous life, after Gideon and I had finalized our vicious divorce, Linda had used every connection she had to make sure their intimate bedroom photos crossed my screen.

Back then, I was still holding onto a pathetic shred of hope regarding him. Seeing him physically with another woman completely shattered my sanity.

That night, I had called him dozens of times in a manic frenzy.

He finally picked up, his voice dripping with icy contempt. "You are interrupting me and my girlfriend."

"Do you want to beg for a reconciliation? Well, you will have to start by getting in line as my mistress."

"After all, you were the one who practically begged for the divorce."

I developed severe insomnia after that, lying awake for nights on end, staring blankly at the ceiling.

I kept praying it was all a horrific nightmare. I thought if I just closed my eyes tight enough, I would wake up and everything would be exactly as it used to be.

But my reality truly devolved into a living nightmare.

And Gideon was the sole architect of my hell.

To punish me for leaving him, he leveraged his empire to force me into repaying tens of millions in inherited debt.

At his unspoken command, every reputable firm in the financial district blacklisted my resume.

I was reduced to selling my physical labor just to afford a single meal.

I delivered food in torrential rain, scrubbed restaurant grease traps, and cleaned public restrooms.

It was that extreme, bone deep exhaustion that ultimately led to the fatal traffic accident.

But in this life, I had not stood in the way of their grand romance.

I had practically gift wrapped Linda and delivered her straight to his bed.

Gideon had to be thrilled, right?

I tossed my phone onto the nightstand, closed my eyes, and fell into the most beautifully peaceful sleep I had enjoyed in years.

That was until the rapid, violent ringing of my phone cut through the dead of night like a thunderclap.

It was Gideon.

His voice sounded incredibly rough, almost ragged. "Were you asleep?"

I nodded against my pillow, my voice thick with grogginess. "Is there an emergency?"

"Did you"

He hesitated, a sharp intake of breath echoing through the speaker. "Did you check your social media feed tonight?"

My guard instantly went up. "No."

His tone darkened, heavy with suspicion. "You always scroll through your feed before you sleep."

I paused, playing the perfect fool. "I was just too exhausted tonight."

Dead silence fell over the line.

After what felt like an eternity, Gideon spoke, his voice completely hollow. "Linda somehow found her way into my private suite tonight."

Wow.

Why on earth was he telling me this?

Was the guilt of post-coital clarity hitting him?

I let out an indifferent 'oh'. "She must have gotten the floor numbers mixed up."

"She must have been terrified, poor thing. Make sure you comfort her properly."

"Was that all you called to tell me?"

Gideon's breathing through the receiver grew visibly ragged and strained.

I sighed, entirely dismissive. "Look, whatever you want me to say to make you feel better, just tell me and I will say it."

More agonizing silence.

If this were the old me, I would have been frantic, bombarding him with a million questions, begging to know if he was okay.

I probably would have thrown on a coat and booked the next red-eye flight to Chicago.

But right now, all I wanted was to go back to sleep.

"Gideon, do you need anything else? If you don't have a point to make, I am hanging up."

I squeezed my eyes shut. "I am genuinely, physically exhausted."

And without waiting for the billionaire CEO on the other end to formulate a response, I ruthlessly ended the call.