Chapter 3: Who the Hell Do You Think You Are?
Austin’s POV
My phone buzzed. A message from Elara appeared on the screen:
There’s something going on at the company. I’m leaving first.
A sudden irritation stirred in me.
I had come back with her to put on an act, and she had actually left without me.
When I left the Amman apartment, I had originally planned to go to Luna’s place. She had said over the phone that someone was following her. Whether it was true or not was another matter, but she was someone I had planted in this whole charade. At the very least, I had to make sure no third party had interfered.
“Austin, since you don’t like Elara, why don’t we work together?” Hunter continued. “Our father wants the Richter Group and the Thorne Group to jointly develop the Gulf project anyway.”
He was wearing an orange-red suit and swaggering around in front of me. He looked like a stupid turkey.
I didn’t like the Richter family. More precisely, I especially disliked Leon Richter.
Three years ago, when he had put his daughter’s marriage on the negotiating table, his tone had been no different from someone haggling over a piece of land for sale.
What had truly surprised me was Elara. The proud and confident second daughter of the Richter family had not resisted at all. She had simply allowed other people to decide her marriage for her.
It wasn’t until after we were married that I understood. She had never cared whether I loved her. All she cared about was the inheritance of the Richter Group, and—
This marriage happened to give her exactly what she wanted.
Looking at Hunter’s idiotic face, I said coldly, “You want to discuss business with me? Who the hell do you think you are?”
The smile froze on Hunter’s face. I picked up the coffee on the table, but didn’t drink it.
“The Gulf project is worth tens of billions. You can’t even tell me the Richter Group’s profit margin from last quarter, and you think you’re qualified to touch it?”
His face flushed red.
“Why are you defending Elara?” he demanded. “She married you for the power of the Thorne family, didn’t she?”
“Whether she wants my power or not is between her and me. Who the hell do you think you are?”
Hunter’s face turned livid.
He clenched his teeth and lowered his voice. “Austin, don’t forget—if she really gets the inheritance, she’ll only become harder to control.”
Control.
That word made me raise my eyes.
Hunter continued, “She’s only a woman. Once I take that position, I’ll have plenty of ways to make her behave. And if that doesn’t work, I have my brothers—”
He never finished.
I was already on my feet, grabbing him by the collar. Suddenly, an image flashed through my mind: Elara pinned beneath someone, crying in pain.
“You’d better behave yourself. If you dare make a move against her behind my back again, I won’t mind making what happened three years ago in international waters happen all over again.”
Hunter’s face went pale, and the corner of his mouth twitched.
That tiny flicker of expression betrayed the fear inside him.
“That incident… You were the one who did it?”
Three years ago, on the day Elara and I got married, he had sent people to kidnap her. I had intercepted them, then used his own methods to have him taken out to international waters and suspended over the freezing sea for three whole days.
I imagined those three days had been something he would never forget.
I let go. Hunter’s legs instantly gave way beneath him, and he stared at me with a mixture of shock and suspicion.
“And you still claim you don’t like her?”
I let out a cold laugh.
“Elara is my legal wife. It has nothing to do with whether I like her.”
The words came out so smoothly that I almost believed them myself.
I wiped the hand that had just gripped Hunter’s collar, as if I were afraid I had touched something filthy. Then, while he was still staring at me in disbelief, I walked away.
I had just reached my car when the old steward of the estate approached cautiously.
“Sir, Madam didn’t seem to be in a good mood when she left. I think she may have been crying.”
Crying?
That wasn’t like her at all.
Could it have been because she had heard what I said on purpose?
Earlier, when Hunter had asked whether I had fallen for her, I had suddenly caught sight of a flash of white at the corner of the staircase. It was the same dress she had been wearing that day.
So I had deliberately raised my voice and said, “Even if I fell in love with a dog, I could never fall in love with her.”
How ridiculous. She had never cared about me. Why would my words make her cry? The steward must have been mistaken.
Just then, my phone rang, interrupting my thoughts.
I got into the car while answering it. A man’s voice came through immediately. It was Miles.
“You’re seriously sick in the head,” he cursed the moment the call connected. “You dump an international deal on me, run off to play house with your wife, and now I have to clean up your mess at Luna’s place too.”
“How is she?”
“Nothing happened. The person supposedly following her was a reporter. I’ve taken care of it.”
I gave a quiet hum of acknowledgment.
Miles suddenly laughed. “So why did you put on this whole show today? Was it just to bury those photos of Elara from last night?”
I said nothing.
The photos that had been sent anonymously to my email the previous night rose in my mind.
A private restaurant. A dimly lit private room. A man’s arm wrapped around Elara’s waist from behind. The angle was intimate enough to give every media outlet at least ten different headlines about a marriage on the verge of collapse.
My first reaction had not been to find out who the man was. I had smashed the glass in my hand instead.
Only afterward had I ordered someone to suppress the photos and release my own scandalous news first. As long as the story burned around me before it reached her, her press conference wouldn’t be branded as “the Richter heiress cheating on her husband.”
As for having Luna come to the apartment that morning, that had nothing to do with handling the news.
I had simply wanted to see whether Elara would care.
She had come and asked whether I could explain myself. I told her I hadn’t slept, and the hand gripping her bag strap had loosened. At that moment, my mood had actually improved a little.
Then I had insisted on asking whether she only cared about losing face at the press conference.
Thinking about it now, I wished I had never asked.
It wasn’t as if she hadn’t given me a chance to say something else.
I drew in a deep breath. “Don’t overthink it. I just didn’t want people to know I’d been cuckolded.”
Miles continued laughing on the other end. “Keep telling yourself that. I wonder who it was that saw those intimate photos last night and got so angry he nearly tore my entire club apart.”
“Shut up.”
I hung up immediately after saying it.
From the very first day Elara married me, I had known that she only wanted to borrow my power.
But today, when she set a three-month deadline, I realized something for the first time: she could also cross me out of her plans.
I had never imagined that she would be the one to bring up divorce.
Just then, my phone buzzed again. A message from my assistant appeared.
BOSS, Madam just contacted a lawyer and requested that a divorce agreement be drafted. She is also consulting about protecting the marital assets.
I stared at the message without moving.
Less than three hours had passed between Elara asking for a divorce and beginning to prepare the agreement.
Was she really that desperate to leave me and return to that man?
My phone buzzed again.
Also, Chairman Richter has just instructed the secretariat to draft a resolution granting Madam full authority over the Gulf project.
My fingers tightened unconsciously around the phone.
When it came to her father, she refused to yield even an inch. The project, the authority, the board resolution—she wanted all of it, and she dared to take it.
But when it came to me—
I lowered my eyes to the cuff Elara had touched. The fabric had long since smoothed out. Yet the more I remembered the way she had withdrawn her hand, the more irritated I became.
Three months.
She had even set the date when our relationship would end. What made her think I would sign the papers so readily?
I replied to my assistant:
Prepare for negotiations over the Gulf project. Have her come in person.
