3. Anika
— ? —
Anika
By three in the afternoon, I’d worn a path in the hardwood.
The triplex was too big when I was alone.
Twenty-seven thousand square feet of someone else’s idea of luxury.
The interior designer had been hired before I moved in, and Neil had never thought to ask if I wanted to change anything.
I’d made my studio mine, at least. The rest felt like living in a museum.
Beautiful things everywhere, and none of them really belonging to me.
Stop being dramatic, I told myself. You’re overreacting.
But I kept hearing it. That easy, rolling laugh he’d given Karina at dinner, at breakfast, in the car on the way to the office. The laugh I used to think was mine.
I ended up in his study.
It wasn’t off-limits or anything. Neil didn’t have secrets from me, or at least that’s what I’d always believed.
I just never came in here. It was his space, all dark wood and leather chairs and walls of books he’d probably never read.
The desk was massive, some antique he’d acquired at auction, covered in the controlled chaos of a man who ran an empire.
I sat in his chair. It smelled like him. The leather creaked under my weight, and I imagined him sitting here every night after I went to sleep. Always working.
Get up, I told myself. This is ridiculous. You’re being paranoid.
But my eyes kept drifting. The stack of books on the corner table. The leather portfolio. The…
My heart stopped.
A diary. Dark brown leather, worn at the edges, a ribbon bookmark trailing from between the pages. I recognized it immediately.
I’d given him that diary on our first anniversary.
“Ten minutes a day,” I’d told him, placing it in his hands. “No screens. No meetings. Just you, thinking about yourself. What you want. How you feel. Give yourself that, at least.”
He’d kissed me and promised he would. I’d believed him. And then I’d never seen the journal again. I’d assumed he’d forgotten about it, the way he forgot most things that weren’t tied to Franco Holdings.
But here it was. Worn and used.
I shouldn’t read it.
I stood up and walked away. Made it all the way to the door.
Don’t, I told myself. Whatever’s in there isn’t yours.
But the laugh echoed in my head. Karina’s hand on his arm. The way he’d kissed my forehead, before leaving me alone on our anniversary week celebration.
I walked back and sat down. Opened it.
His handwriting was sharp and angular, the letters slanting forward like they were in a hurry. Even on paper, Neil couldn’t slow down.
The first entry was dated almost two years ago.
A tried to get me to talk about my feelings today. I don’t know what she wants me to say. Everything is fine.
I kept reading.
The entries weren’t regular. Twice a week at most, sometimes with gaps of a month or more. But they were honest in a way Neil never was out loud. Raw thoughts spilled across the pages in that slanting script.
Closed the deal. Should feel good. Doesn’t feel like anything.
Anika painted something new. Said she wanted to show me. I was on a call. She waited forty minutes before giving up.
That one hit like a punch to the chest. I remembered that day.
I’d finished a piece I was actually proud of, something that felt like a breakthrough.
Neil had been on the phone when I came down to show him, holding up one finger, just a minute, and I’d sat on the couch waiting until my excitement curdled into something else.
When he’d finally hung up, I told him it wasn’t important.
He’d believed me.
I turned multiple pages until something caught my eye.
She’s been distant lately. I don’t know when it started. I feel more like myself in a room where people want things from me.
The words swam in my vision. He thought I was distant.
I feel more like myself in a room where people want things from me. Like the board meetings and investor calls and endless networking events filled some hole that I couldn’t reach. Like strangers who wanted his money and his connections were better company than his wife.
Note: her birthday. Have Giovani handle it.
My birthday. The dinner that had been fine but not special.
The gift that was expensive but impersonal, a designer bag I’d never mentioned wanting, still in its box in my closet.
I’d blamed his schedule, told myself it didn’t matter, swallowed the disappointment like medicine.
This whole time, he’d delegated it. He’d written it like I was a calendar item.
Like I was a task to be completed and crossed off.
I don’t know if we’re compatible anymore. I don’t know when that happened, which is probably the answer.
He didn’t think we were compatible. The man who’d looked at me across a crowded restaurant two nights ago and made me feel like the only woman in the world had written in his private journal that he wasn’t sure we fit together anymore.
And somehow, impossibly, he’d decided it was my fault.
She’s been distant, he’d written. Like I was the one who left him at galas to work the room alone. Like I was the one who checked my phone during dinner, during movies, during conversations that mattered. Like I was the one who’d forgotten every small promise while remembering every business deal.
I was shaking.
I didn’t realize it until I tried to turn another page and my fingers wouldn’t cooperate. The journal trembled in my hands, blurring the words I didn’t want to read.
I’d given him this. I’d told him to use it to reflect, to know himself, to carve out space for the man underneath the CEO. And he’d used it to build a case against me.
I closed the journal. Set it carefully back on the corner table, exactly where I’d found it. Stood on legs that didn’t feel connected to my body.
The study door was right there. I could walk out, go to my studio, pretend I’d never come in here.
But I didn’t.
I sat back in his chair and waited.
He came home at seven. I heard the elevator, the beep of the door, his footsteps in the hall. Quick and certain, like always. Neil Franco didn’t hesitate. Neil Franco strode through life like every room was waiting for him to arrive.
“Anika?” His voice carried through the triplex. “I picked up the food you mentioned you were craving the other day from that place you like.”
I didn’t answer. I sat in the dark of his study, the diary in my lap, watching the last of the daylight bleed out of the windows.
His footsteps got closer. Stopped in the doorway.
“Anika. What are you…” He saw what I was holding. The sentence died in his throat.
The silence stretched between us. Long enough for me to watch his face go through shock and something that might have been fear. Then his expression locked down into something careful, controlled. The negotiating face. The face he wore when deals went sideways.
“You went through my things,” he said finally.
“It was on your desk.” My voice came out unrecognizable. “You want to talk about what’s in it, or should I start?”
He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. Even now, even caught, he moved like he owned the space. Like whatever was about to happen, he’d find a way to manage it.
“Start with whatever you want.”