BAD WIFE

Chapter {4}

"Ex-husband," Baylee blurted, her voice cracking the silence like a whip.

Clarissa's jaw dropped. "How is that even possible?" she demanded, stunned.

Baylee ignored her completely, locking eyes with the tall, dark figure standing in the hallway.

"How did you even get here, Niko?" Her tone was sharp—accusatory—but her eyes shimmered with something far more complicated than anger.

"I followed you," he said evenly, like it was the most natural thing in the world. "What? Did you really think I'd just wake up and convince myself it was a dream? I knew you'd run."

But let's rewind... to just a few hours earlier.

After Conner's brutal rejection, Baylee shattered inside.

His words weren't just cold—they were precision knives, dipped in truth and twisted deep. Shame burned through her veins. Humiliation crushed her chest. The sting of it all was too much—too raw, too loud, too real.

She bolted.

Fled.

Ran from the bar so fast, the world blurred around her. The pain had to stop. Somehow. Any way possible.

Her mind, drowning in heartache, grasped for an escape... and it found him.

The secret she swore she'd never revisit.

The one she kept hidden like a shameful addiction.

An upscale high-rise in the heart of the city—a place she'd promised herself she'd never return to. Yet there she was, hours later, walking through the glittering lobby like she belonged there. The doorman recognized her immediately but said nothing, just offered a small nod, like he'd been expecting her all along.

She stepped into the elevator. Pressed floor nine.

Her hands trembled.

When the silver doors parted, her feet carried her to apartment 9B with terrifying familiarity. She lifted her hand to the keypad and hesitated. Then slowly, almost reluctantly, she typed in the numbers: 5-6-9-7.

The lock clicked.

Of course it worked. He never changed it.

The apartment smelled the same—clean, cold, expensive. A fortress of masculinity. Everything in its place. Everything except her.

Baylee tiptoed through the open-concept space, her heart thudding violently against her ribs. The master bedroom door creaked open beneath her fingertips.

There he was.

Nikolai Asher.

Sleeping, shirtless, in the center of a king-sized bed that looked like it belonged in a billionaire's hotel suite. Moonlight streamed across his sculpted chest, his dark lashes fanned across his cheekbones, his jaw shadowed in stubble. Even unconscious, he radiated danger, power, and a quiet kind of possessiveness that made her knees ache.

Her ex-husband.

Lola's older brother.

No one—no one—knew. Not even Lola. Baylee had sworn that relationship to secrecy, burying it deep beneath layers of sarcasm and bravado. She'd built her whole identity on being untouchable, untamed, uninterested in anything serious. Falling for a man—let alone marrying one—felt like weakness. And Baylee didn't do weak.

But he was the one man who ever got past her armor.

Let's go back even further...

It started years ago, at their high school graduation.