Chapter 40:
“Oh.” Freya’s response was ice-cold.
The difference between her and her sister couldn’t be starker. Where Freya embraced simplicity, her sister dripped in elegance—every outfit curated, every smile polished to perfection.
“Half a day. That’s all I’m asking,” Kristian pressed. “I won’t monopolize their time.”
“You didn’t care to visit when we were married. Why start now?”
Freya’s tone was light, almost mocking. “People might think you’re doing this out of spite.”
“Because I never—”
“If you’d truly wanted to meet them, you would have done it years ago,” Freya interrupted, her usual composure slipping into blunt impatience.
“Last time, Kristian. Drop it.”
Her defiance only sharpened his curiosity.
The harder she resisted, the more he wondered about the life she’d led before him.
The address on her passport had led him to an unremarkable neighborhood in Alerith—hardly the backdrop for Hugh Briggs’ daughter.
“Why are you so against this?” he demanded.
“Because I don’t need my dad laughing at me,” Freya said, her voice eerily detached. “If you waltz in and announce we were married for two years before splitting, how do you think he—or his new wife—would see me?”
Her words dragged his thoughts back to last night.
Freya had mentioned her strained family ties, her father’s remarriage.
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“Then let me visit your mom,” Kristian offered, shifting tactics.
Freya’s hand froze mid-air, the toner bottle hovering as her expression went blank.
Kristian caught the flicker of something raw—something she quickly smothered.
Just as he opened his mouth to push further, Freya steadied herself, picked up the bottle, and said tonelessly, “My mother is dead.”
The words hit him like a punch to the gut.
Of all the possibilities he’d considered, this wasn’t one of them.
For once, he was at a loss.
“If that’s all,” Freya said, replacing the bottle with deliberate calm, “we’re done here. We’ve got a divorce to file tomorrow.”
Kristian’s gaze sharpened, weighing her mood before settling on a quiet, “Good night.”
“Good night.” Freya’s reply was flat, devoid of warmth.
He didn’t press further. At the door, his broad frame seemed to shrink the room as his hand hovered over the knob. A last glance at Freya—her face unreadable, her posture unchanged—and he left without another word, the latch clicking softly behind him.
Sleep eluded them both.
Kristian twisted in the sheets, the impending divorce a leaden weight on his chest. Worse was the gnawing realization: after two years, he knew nothing of Freya’s life. Not even that her mother was gone.
Freya drowned in nightmares.
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.
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