2. No one cared enough to see me cry
Sophia's Pov:
Adrian stepped into the room, Lily sleeping peacefully in his arms.
For a moment, his eyes met mine.
Then he gave a slight nod toward Lily, silently telling me to take her.
No words.
There had barely been any words between us in years.
In our marriage, silence had become our language.
A glance.
A nod.
A cold gesture.
That was all that remained between husband and wife.
I walked toward him and gently took Lily into my arms.
As I did, a familiar scent clung to Adrian’s shirt.
A strong cherry perfume.
My fingers tightened around Lily.
Vanessa.
I knew that perfume.
Lily had once come home smelling of it, excitedly telling me how “Miss Vanessa smells like candy.”
The memory made my chest ache.
I forced myself to stay calm and carried Lily to her room beside ours.
She stirred slightly as I laid her down on the bed, her tiny face soft and peaceful in sleep.
I sat beside her and brushed the strands of hair away from her forehead.
My precious little girl.
Tears burned behind my eyes as the painful truth settled over me once again.
Just a few months ago, Lily would cling to me every night.
She would refuse to sleep unless I held her hand.
She wanted me for everything.
But slowly, things had changed.
Adrian had started taking her to the office after school, saying it was easier that way.
That was where Vanessa entered her life.
And little by little, Lily had grown attached to her.
Now, more often than not, Lily spoke of Vanessa with innocent excitement.
The woman who had taken my husband’s attention was slowly taking my daughter’s love too.
The thought broke something inside me.
I lowered my head, swallowing the tears threatening to fall.
Sometimes I wondered how my life had become this.
Sometimes I thought back to where it all began.
I was only eighteen when I married Adrian.
Eighteen.
Too young to understand how cruel life could be.
Back then, we were in college.
Adrian Whitmore—the charming heir to the Whitmore empire.
And me—just an ordinary girl who believed that maybe what we had meant something.
We had only been dating for a month.
Nothing serious.
At least, that was what it was for him.
Then one drunken night changed everything.
One mistake.
One moment of recklessness.
And I got pregnant.
I found out a month later.
By then, it was too late to do anything.
I was terrified, but a part of me believed Adrian would stand beside me.
I believed he would support me.
Instead, he looked at me with anger.
“You hid this from me on purpose,” he had snapped.
I could still remember the cold accusation in his eyes.
“You waited until abortion wasn’t possible because you wanted this. You wanted my money.”
The words had shattered me.
I had never felt humiliation like that.
I had no one.
My parents had died years ago.
I was alone, frightened, and carrying a child I didn’t know how to raise.
I thought Adrian would help me.
Instead, he treated me like a burden.
He refused to marry me.
Adrian Whitmore was the heir to the Whitmore empire.
A scandal would damage his reputation, and reputation was everything to his family.
Marriage to a college girlfriend carrying an unplanned child would destroy the perfect image built around him.
So Adrian refused.
It was his parents who proposed the solution.
A secret marriage.
Adrian would marry me to protect the family name, but my identity would remain hidden.
No one knew I was Adrian Whitmore’s wife.
The world only knew that he was married.
His wife was kept a secret.
And so I became exactly that—
A secret wife.
Hidden inside a mansion.
Bound to a man who never wanted me.
A woman with his name but none of his love.
I looked down at Lily sleeping peacefully, unaware of the broken life around her.
She was the only beautiful thing that had come from this marriage.
And yet even she was slowly slipping away from me.
I wiped the tears from my cheeks before they could fall.
Because in this house, I had learned one thing very well—
No one cared enough to see me cry.