My Billionaire Husband Neglected Me (Billionaire Marriage in Crisis #25)

1. Ysabelle

— ? —

Ysabelle

The flour bin knows all my secrets.

I’ve been hiding love notes in it for seven years, folded into tight squares and tucked beneath the surface where Pietro will find them when he measures out his morning portion.

Scooping the flour for my first bake was the one kitchen job he ever claimed, back when he still came down early to watch me work, and that habit held longer than anything else did.

Little confessions written on receipt paper, napkin scraps, the backs of grocery lists.

You’re the reason I believe in tomorrow.

The future tastes sweet because you’re in it.

I choose you, even when you forget to choose me back.

That last one I wrote three months ago. He never mentioned finding it.

I push my hands deeper into the cool powder, feeling for yesterday’s note. My fingers close around the familiar square, and I pull it out, brushing flour dust from the folds. Still sealed, still unread.

I love the way you hum off-key when you think no one’s listening.

Seven years of notes. Hundreds of tiny declarations. And lately, they’ve started coming back to me unopened.

The kitchen is quiet except for the hiss of the gas burner and the distant sound of Pietro’s shower running upstairs.

Dawn light filters through the windows, turning everything soft and gold, and I try to hold onto this feeling.

This is my favorite part of the day, before the world rushes in, when I can pretend we’re still the people we used to be.

I fold the unread note into my apron pocket with the others and turn back to my dough.

Focaccia. Nonna Fe’s recipe, the one she carried from Sicily when she was sixteen and too stubborn to let anyone tell her she couldn’t make a life in New York.

The ratio is sacred: three parts flour to one part fine semolina, a whisper of good salt, and enough love to make the dough rise even when the yeast is tired.

She taught me in her cramped kitchen when I was twelve, her hands guiding mine through the kneading, her voice sharp with instruction.

Feel the dough, tesoro. It’ll tell you when it’s ready. You just have to listen.

I’m listening now. My palms press and fold, press and fold, and the dough responds with the particular elasticity that means I’ve done it right. Nonna Fe would approve. She might even say so, if she were here, though probably not without adding that my technique still needs work.

The shower shuts off upstairs.

I shape the dough on the baking sheet, then slide the tray into the oven. The kitchen fills with the warm, yeasty smell of bread becoming itself, and I close my eyes and let myself remember.

Ten years ago, in a café that doesn’t exist anymore, I sat across from a stranger my parents had chosen for me and wrote our future on a cocktail napkin.

The future tastes sweet.

It was supposed to be a joke. Pietro had just spilled coffee on his tie, cursing under his breath, looking nothing like the polished businessman his family had advertised.

I was twenty-three and terrified and trying desperately not to show it, so I grabbed the nearest napkin, scribbled the first thing that came to mind, and slid it across the table before I could think better of it.

He read it. Then he laughed. Really laughed, a laugh that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made him look younger. He took the napkin from my hands, read it twice, and tucked it into his breast pocket.

“That’s it,” he said.

“That’s what?”

“The tagline. The one my father’s people have been chasing for a year.” He patted the pocket. “A stranger just handed it to me because I ruined my tie.”

That was the company tagline, and for a while it really did feel like everything.

I married him six months later. I didn’t love him; I didn’t know him well enough for that. But when he laughed at my stupid napkin joke, I thought maybe I could learn.

The shower has been off for too long now. He should be coming down.

I check the oven, adjust the temperature, wipe my hands on my apron. The flour-dusted squares of unread notes crinkle in my pocket. I should throw them away and stop writing them altogether. But hope is a stubborn thing, and I’ve never been good at giving up.

Outside, the sky is darkening, the clouds thick and gray and heavy with rain. My chest tightens.

It’s just weather. It won’t be like that time.

I was seven when the storm took our roof. I remember the sound more than anything, that howling shriek of wind finding every crack in our walls, and my mother’s hands over my ears as she pulled me beneath the kitchen table. We clung to it for six hours while the world tore itself apart outside.

I haven’t been able to hear strong wind without my heart racing since.

Pietro’s footsteps sound on the stairs, and I force my shoulders to relax. I’ve never told him about the table, or the six hours, or the way storms still make me feel like that seven-year-old girl, small and helpless and waiting for the roof to disappear.

There are so many things I’ve never told him.

He appears in the kitchen doorway, already dressed in one of his charcoal suits, his hair still damp at the temples. He looks tired. He’s looked tired for months now, an exhaustion that sleep doesn’t fix.

“Smells good.” He crosses to the coffee maker without looking at me. “New recipe?”

“Nonna Fe’s. Same as always.”

“Right.” He pours himself a cup, takes a long swallow. “I’ve got an early meeting. Might be late tonight.”

My hand finds the velvet box in my apron pocket, the one I’ve been carrying for three days, waiting for the right moment. Inside is a card I started writing last year and never finished. I never told you that I chose you too. That’s all I managed before the words dried up.

Today is our tenth anniversary.

“I was thinking we could go to Rosetta tonight,” I say. “For dinner. Like we used to.”

“Tonight’s not great. There’s this presser for the expansion, and-”

“It’s our anniversary.”

He pauses with the coffee cup halfway to his mouth. I watch the realization move across his face, followed by guilt, followed by a flash that looks annoyingly like calculation.

“I know,” he says, and I know he didn’t. “I’ll try to wrap up early.”

“You don’t have to try. You have to show up.”

“Ysabelle-”

“Eight o’clock.” I don’t let him finish. “I’ll make a reservation.”

He sets down his cup. Crosses to me. His hand cups my cheek, and for a moment I let myself lean into it, let myself believe this is enough.

“Eight o’clock,” he repeats. “I’ll be there.”

The oven timer goes off. I turn away to pull out the focaccia, golden and perfect, and when I turn back, he’s already gone.

The front door closes.

I stand alone in our kitchen, holding a tray of bread my grandmother taught me to make, in a marriage my parents arranged, in a house that has never quite felt like home. The first drops of rain hit the windows, and I count my breaths until my heartbeat slows.

He said he’ll be there. He said eight o’clock. He promised.

My phone buzzes. A Google alert, the kind I set up years ago to track press mentions of the company.

I’d stopped really reading them months ago, when the coverage started to feel like a party I wasn’t invited to.

I almost ignore it. I should ignore it. But my thumb swipes the notification open before my brain catches up.

The photo loads slowly. It’s from some past event, Pietro in black tie, the Marino Foods logo bright behind his head. He’s not alone.

The woman beside him is tall, blonde, beautiful in that sharp-edged way that photographs well. Her hand is on his arm, and she’s smiling at him with the easy familiarity of someone who belongs there.

The caption reads: Marino Foods set to announce expansion today, with new partner Giulietta Greyson leading the charge.

I stare at the photo until the focaccia grows cold in my hands.

My phone buzzes again. A text this time.

Pietro: Long day ahead. I might be late.

For a long moment I don’t move. The kitchen is still warm from the oven, still smells of the bread I made him, and I read the two lines again.

Under my ribs, a slow, cold folding starts.

How long have I been baking bread for a man who treats our anniversary the way he treats a scheduled meeting?

My eyes sting, and I press the heels of my hands hard against them, because if I start now I won’t stop, and there’s no one here to see me cry anyway.

After ten years I’m standing alone in my own kitchen, hiding tears from an empty room, over a man who won’t remember that today was supposed to mean anything at all.

Outside, the storm breaks open, and the rain begins to fall in sheets, and I’m seven years old under that kitchen table again, waiting for the roof to come down.