6. Benedict
— ? —
Benedict
I’m standing in our bedroom, watching Christine sleep, and I’m trying to remember how we got here.
She’s curled on her side - the left side, always the left side now, something about blood flow to the baby - with one hand tucked under her pillow and the other resting on her belly.
The early morning light catches the shadows under her eyes, the way her cheekbones have sharpened, the fragility in a face that used to glow with something I can only call joy.
When did she get so thin?
When did the light go out?
You did that, the voice whispers. The one that sounds like my father, the one that never lets me forget my failures. You. With your deals and your meetings and your excuses. You took a woman who loved you and you left her alone until she forgot how to shine.
I almost cancel the trip.
The thought surfaces like a gasp for air - I could stay. Could call Pauline, tell her to handle Budapest without me. Could be here, with my wife, for whatever time we have left before the baby comes. Could try, at least, to start repairing what I’ve broken.
But my phone is already buzzing. Has been buzzing since four in the morning, an endless stream of urgencies I can’t ignore.
Crisis in Budapest. The board is threatening to replace you. Fly out NOW.
Forty thousand jobs. My father’s legacy. The company he spent his whole life building, now hanging by a thread that only I can hold.
If I don’t go, people lose their homes. Their healthcare. Their ability to feed their children.
If I do go-
Christine shifts in her sleep, murmuring something I can’t quite hear.
Her hand moves across her belly in slow circles, soothing the baby even in dreams. She’s due in two weeks.
The doctors say she’s fine. Nobody has told me labor is close, and I have quietly turned that into a guarantee no one actually gave me.
She’ll understand, I tell myself. She always understands.
But the truth tastes like ash on my tongue: she’s stopped understanding. Stopped forgiving. Stopped waiting for me to become the husband I promised to be.
And I’m leaving anyway.
I write the note quickly, before I can change my mind. Before the weight of my choices can crush the air from my lungs.
I’ll be back before the baby. I promise. I love you.
I love you.
When did those words start feeling like an apology instead of a declaration?
I leave the note on my pillow, where she’ll find it the second she reaches across for the empty side of the bed.
I’m careful not to wake her. She needs rest. The baby needs rest. And if I wake her, I’ll have to look into her eyes and see exactly what I’m doing, and I’m not strong enough for that. Not today.
The penthouse is silent as I gather my things.
Passport, laptop, the overnight bag that’s been packed and ready by the door for weeks now.
I pause in the hallway outside the nursery - that room she built alone, with its soft yellow walls and silver stars and a crib assembled from YouTube tutorials because I wasn’t there.
I should have been there.
I should have been a lot of places.
The door closes behind me with a soft click, and I tell myself it’s not a goodbye. I’ll be back. Seventy-two hours, maybe less. I’ll close the deal, save the jobs, and then-
Then I’ll fix this. Fix us.
I’ll make it right.
I have to believe that. Because if I don’t, I’ll have to face what I’m actually doing: choosing an empire over my wife. Again. Still. Always.
***
Pauline meets me at the airport.
She’s already efficient, already prepared, a tablet in one hand and a coffee in the other. Her smile is warm when she sees me - sympathetic, understanding, the smile of someone who knows exactly how much I’m carrying and doesn’t judge me for buckling under the weight.
“You look terrible,” she says, handing me the coffee.
“Thank you for that assessment.”
“I’m serious. Did you sleep at all?”
“I’ll sleep on the plane.”
She shakes her head but doesn’t push. That’s what I appreciate about Pauline - she knows when to press and when to let things go. Christine used to be like that, before. Before I gave her too many things to let go of.
We board the private jet, and she settles into the seat across from me, already pulling up documents on her tablet.
“The board is panicking,” she says. “Mitchell and Torres are threatening to call an emergency vote if you don’t close Budapest by the end of the quarter.”
“Let them threaten.”
“Benedict.” Her voice softens. “This is serious. If they vote-”
“They won’t vote. Because I’m going to close this deal, and then I’m going to spend the next six months reminding them exactly why my name is on the building.”
She studies me for a moment, something unreadable in her expression. Then she nods.
“Christine understood?”
The question lands wrong. Too casual, too careful, like she already knows the answer.
“She will.”
Pauline’s smile is sympathetic. Too sympathetic. She doesn’t say anything else, which is somehow worse.
I think about the note I left on the pillow. The look on Christine’s face during our fight - the hurt, the anger, the resignation that scared me more than all the rest combined.
Lucky isn’t the word she’d use.
“She doesn’t understand the pressure you’re under. How could she?” Pauline leans forward slightly, her voice dropping into something almost intimate.
I could push back on that. Christine has given up everything for this life - her career, her friends, her independence - and the least I owe her is to say so.
But I’m so tired. Tired of fighting. Tired of failing. Tired of being the villain in a story I never wanted to write.
“She’ll understand,” I say again. “She always does.”
The words feel hollow. I drink my coffee and pretend not to notice.
***
Christine
I wake up to an empty bed.
For a moment, I don’t register it - the absence is so familiar now that my brain accepts it as normal. Of course he’s not here. He’s never here.
Then I see the note.
White paper on his pillow, folded in half, my name written on the outside in his handwriting. Not an assistant’s. His.
Something cold curls in my stomach as I reach for it.
I’ll be back before the baby. I promise. I love you.
I read it three times.
The first time, I feel hope. He wrote it himself. He said he loved me. He promised to come back.
The second time, I feel anger. He left. Again. Without waking me, without talking to me, without giving me a chance to ask him to stay.
The third time, I feel nothing at all.
That’s the worst part - the nothing. Like something inside me has finally given up, finally accepted that this is who we are now. A woman alone in a penthouse and a man who leaves notes instead of conversations.
I sit up slowly, carefully, one hand bracing my lower back against the ache that never quite goes away anymore. The baby is awake too - I can feel her stretching, pressing against my ribs, reminding me that she’s still here even if he’s not.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” I murmur, rubbing circles on my belly. “Daddy had to go save the world again.”
The words taste bitter.
I reach for my phone to check the time - and freeze.
Twenty-three notifications. Most of them from news alerts, celebrity gossip apps, the digital breadcrumbs of a life I used to find entertaining. But it’s the text from my mother that stops my breath.
Call me. Now.
I call.
“Sweetheart.” Mom’s voice is tight. Controlled. The voice she uses when she’s trying not to panic. “Have you seen the news?”
“What news?”
“Benedict’s flight. It’s all over the - just turn on the TV. Any channel.”
I grab the remote with shaking hands, and the screen flickers to life.
- B-Morgan Industries CEO Benedict Morgan departed early this morning for Budapest, where sources say he’ll be attempting to salvage the failing European division. The billionaire was accompanied by VP Pauline Hartley, seen here boarding the private jet-
The footage shows them walking across the tarmac. Side by side. Pauline’s hand on his arm as they climb the stairs. Him turning to say something to her, a ghost of a smile on his face.
- no word yet on whether Morgan’s wife, Christine, who is reportedly due to give birth any day now, was consulted on the timing of this trip-
The remote slips from my fingers.
Any day now.
The whole world knows I’m about to have a baby, and my husband is on a plane to Budapest with another woman.
“Christine.” Mom’s voice is sharp through the phone. “Christine, talk to me.”
“He left a note.” My voice sounds strange. Distant. Like it’s coming from someone else. “On the pillow. He said he’d be back before the baby.”
“And you believe him?”
I look at the TV, where they’re replaying the footage of Benedict and Pauline boarding the jet. Her hand on his arm. His smile.
“I don’t know what I believe anymore.”
The baby kicks - hard, sudden, a jolt that makes me gasp. I press my palm against the spot and feel her heel drag across my ribs, and I think: she knows. She knows something is wrong.
“I have to go,” I tell my mother. “I need to - I don’t know. I need to think.”
“Call me if you need anything. I mean it, Christine. Anything.”
“I know.”
I hang up.
The penthouse is so quiet. The only sounds are the TV murmuring in the background and my own breathing, ragged and uneven.
I look at the note again, still clutched in my other hand. I’ll be back before the baby. I promise. I love you.
Slowly, deliberately, I tear it in half.
Then in quarters.
Then into pieces so small they drift from my fingers like snow.
“It’s okay, baby,” I whisper to my belly, to my daughter, to myself. “Mommy’s here. Mommy’s always here.”
The pieces of his promise scatter across the bedspread, and I don’t bother to clean them up.