Secretly Married for 4 Years, He Regrets to Tears After the Divorce-Chapter 3: I’m Done Serving

The Lancaster Group headquarters.

A misplaced decimal point in a contract had cost the company over six million dollars.

Adrian Lancaster was livid.

He stood behind his desk, the offending document crumpled in his fist, his voice cold enough to freeze the room. "This was an obvious error. How the hell did it go uncaught?"

The chief secretary stood before him, visibly trembling. "President Lancaster, I’m deeply sorry. It was an oversight—"

"Who proofread this contract?"

The chief secretary didn’t hesitate. "Wren Sutton."

The name hit different today. Adrian’s eyes narrowed. Of course. Wren hadn’t been at the office in days—hadn’t called, hadn’t texted, hadn’t shown the slightest interest in whether he was alive or dead. And now a contract she supposedly proofread was bleeding the company dry.

He was convinced she’d done it deliberately. He hadn’t come home, so she was retaliating through his business. He’d underestimated her.

"Get her in here."

"President Lancaster... Wren Sutton hasn’t come into the office for several days. She isn’t answering calls or messages."

"Who approved her leave?"

"No one. It’s an unexcused absence."

Adrian’s jaw clenched. He rose, grabbed his coat, and strode toward the door.

"President Lancaster, where are you going—"

"Out."

He drove home at twice the legal speed.

The villa was dark. Silent. He threw the front door open and tossed his car keys onto the entry table with a clatter.

"Wren, get down here."

Nothing.

"Don’t pretend you’re asleep. Get down here. We need to talk."

Silence.

Adrian’s expression hardened. He took the stairs two at a time and shoved open the bedroom door.

Empty. The bed was made with hotel-room precision. The vanity was bare—no half-finished glass of water, no hairbrush left out. Even the faint scent of her perfume that usually clung to the pillows was gone.

Wren wasn’t here. Hadn’t been here in days.

For reasons he refused to examine, the emptiness of the room hit him harder than the six-million-dollar loss.

He loosened his tie with a rough jerk and called her.

It rang five times before she answered.

"Wren Sutton. I don’t care where you are. Come home. Now."

On the other end, Wren almost laughed.

Pigs must be flying. But she caught herself. She couldn’t show her hand—not yet. Not until everything was in place.

"I’ll be back in a few days. My best friend just got back from a shoot. I’m staying with her for a bit."

Adrian didn’t question it. But his frown deepened. "If you’re at her place, who’s going to cook for me?"

"Order takeout."

"I don’t eat that junk."

Then starve, Wren thought. He never thinks of me until his stomach growls. For years she’d been a workhorse at his company by day and a maid in his house by night. Adrian refused to hire household help—didn’t like "strangers in his space"—so every chore, from laundry to cooking to scrubbing floors, fell on her shoulders alone. In return, she got no romance, no affection, no gratitude. Just an endless list of tasks and a husband who looked through her like glass.

She was done serving.

"If takeout is beneath you, go eat at the family estate."

"What would that look like? Going back to eat alone? What would the elders think?"

How did I never notice how insufferable he is? He shot down every suggestion about a simple meal. As if feeding himself was beneath his dignity.

"Are you listening to me?" Adrian demanded from the sofa, his face dark with frustration.

Wren closed her eyes and resisted the urge to say something she couldn’t take back.

"You won’t eat takeout. You won’t go to the estate. So what exactly do you want, Adrian?"

"Come back, cook dinner, and leave when you’re done," he said, as if this were a perfectly reasonable request—as if he were being generous by allowing her to return to her friend afterward.

Wren was stunned. The sheer depth of his selfishness had found a new floor.

"How dare you even suggest that?"

Adrian’s expression didn’t change. Zero guilt. "The company lost over six million because of your negligence. You want to talk about nerve?"

Wren’s blood went cold.

What contract?

"I have never made a mistake at work. I haven’t proofread a single contract in the past month. If there’s an error that caused a loss, it wasn’t mine."

"Talk is cheap."

"Adrian. I’m telling you the truth. Check the proofreading logs. My name won’t be on them."

"And why should I believe you?"

Five words. That was all it took.

Five words, and four years of devotion collapsed into rubble.

She’d given him everything—her time, her labor, her youth, her dignity—and he wouldn’t even grant her the basic trust of checking a work record before condemning her.

Her hand tightened around the phone. Then, slowly, deliberately, she unclenched it.

"If you’re determined to blame me," she said quietly, "you’ll always find a reason. In that case, Adrian, there’s nothing left for us to talk about."

"What’s that supposed to mean?" Something in her tone made him sit up straighter.

"It means I’ll come home when I feel like it, and I won’t when I don’t. I wouldn’t cook for you if you were starving to death. Find someone else to be your maid."

"Wren Sutton—"

"Adrian Lancaster, I was blind. Utterly deluded. If I could turn back time, I would have stayed as far away from you as humanly possible."

She hung up.

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

Adrian stared at the phone in his hand. His knuckles were white.

She hung up on me.

She’d never—not once in four years—hung up on him. She’d never raised her voice, never refused a request, never pushed back on anything. And now she was telling him to starve?

So she’s grown some backbone.

His jaw worked. A dangerous darkness gathered in his eyes.

Fine. Let her play her little game. When she finally dragged herself back to the office, he would settle every score—old and new.

If murder weren’t illegal, Wren thought as she set her phone down, Adrian Lancaster would be my first victim.

He’d blamed her for a mistake she didn’t make, without a shred of investigation, and had the audacity to sound righteous about it. Did he truly think she was that much of a pushover?

She’d been that pushover for four years. Not anymore.

You want to accuse me of costing you six million? Fine. I’ll spend twice that.

She contacted the real estate agent and upgraded her selection—a larger flat, higher floor, more luxurious finishes. Full cash purchase.

After their marriage, Adrian had given Wren a black card. To let her "spend freely," he’d unlinked it from his personal banking alerts, so her purchases wouldn’t trigger notifications on his phone. A generous gesture in theory—but in practice, it was hush money. He gave Maya Marshall his time, his body, his tenderness. He gave Wren a credit card and silence.

And Wren, fool that she was, had barely used it. She didn’t want to be seen as a gold digger. She felt guilty spending his money, because she knew how hard he worked.

God, I was stupid.

The card wasn’t love. It was a transaction. Payment for services rendered—cooking, cleaning, warming his bed, and keeping her mouth shut.

Well, if he was going to treat this marriage like a business arrangement, she’d collect what she was owed.

If you can’t capture a man’s heart, capture his wallet.

With Wren gone, Adrian found the villa unbearable.

Everything irritated him. The kitchen was spotless but cold—no smell of food, no warmth. He couldn’t find the coffee filters. He opened the wrong drawer three times looking for a bottle opener and realized he didn’t actually know where anything in his own kitchen was kept.

Because Wren had always handled it. All of it.

The house felt less like a home and more like an exhibit—pristine, silent, and lifeless.

He smoked through half a pack, but the restlessness didn’t subside.

What the hell is wrong with me? he thought. So she’s not home. Why should I care? She can go wherever she wants. If she’s got the guts, she should never come back.

He grabbed his keys and left.

The lights in the president’s office had been burning past midnight all week. As long as Adrian Lancaster was in the building, no one in the secretarial department dared leave.

Voices in the break room dropped to whispers:

"President Lancaster’s been in a terrible mood."

"It’s the contract thing. Six million. He’s furious."

"It’s all Wren Sutton’s fault."

The secretaries exchanged practiced looks—the kind shared by people who all knew the agreed-upon story.

"Exactly. One bad apple."

"She hasn’t shown up in days. If that’s not an admission of guilt, I don’t know what is."

"If they investigate, she’ll probably get fired."

"Fired? If I were the boss, she’d be in court."

One of them lowered her voice, glancing toward the hallway. "I never liked her anyway. Always using her looks to get ahead—constantly going into President Lancaster’s office. I saw her come out once with her blouse buttoned wrong and lipstick smudged."

"Disgusting. Trying to seduce the president when everyone knows he has a girlfriend."

The break room door swung open.

Adrian Lancaster walked past without a glance, heading for the elevator. His face was carved from granite. The secretaries scattered like mice, scrambling back to their desks with their heads down, not daring to breathe.

He hadn’t heard them. His mind was somewhere else entirely.