No Longer Yours To Disdain

1 I was a scholarship case, taken in by the Sinclair family’s charitable trust when I had nothing to my name. At twenty-two, pregnant and terrified, I married Bennett Sinclair. Bennett was known for two things: his family’s dynasty and his obsessive, suffocating germaphobia. Meals required separate serving utensils. Bedtime came with strict boundaries—no kissing on the mouth. If I so much as took a sip from his glass, he’d look at it like it had been pulled from a gutter and push it away. Yet tonight, in a crowded private lounge, I watched him take a lowball glass directly from Camilla’s hands and drink the bourbon she’d already tasted—just to spare her another toast. In that quiet, humiliating second, I knew our marriage was over. He was dead weight against my shoulder by the time I hauled him through our front door. He had intercepted drink after drink meant for Camilla, and his composure had completely disintegrated. Before we left, Camilla had smoothed her manicured hands over the lapels of Bennett’s coat, looking at me with wide, apologetic eyes. "I’m so sorry, Tessa," she had said, her voice dripping with delicate regret. "It’s entirely my fault he had so much. Years ago, I had a little too much champagne at a gala and almost let some stranger kiss me. Bennett’s been terrified of me drinking in public ever since." She had kept patting his chest, stroking down his tie, casually reminding me to make him warm honey water before bed. Any other wife with a shred of self-respect would have slapped her across the face right there on the sidewalk. I didn't. I simply took Bennett’s arm, hoisted his weight, and said nothing at all. It wasn't that I was saintly or numb. It was just that I knew my place. I had never possessed the standing to make a scene. Upstairs, I brought him a glass of plain warm water. Even through his drunken haze, Bennett’s hand hovered above the rim, his instincts flaring. "Whose glass is this?" "Yours," I said evenly. "Fresh from the cabinet." Only then did he lift it to his lips and swallow. I had known about his aversions from our first week together. Early in our marriage, he had suffered a sudden, agonizing flare-up of gastritis. Panic-stricken, tearing through the medicine cabinet for his pills, I had poured water into the mug I was using and brought it to him. The moment Bennett realized it was my cup, he shattered it against the tile. I told you, he had snapped, his jaw clenched in fury, I don’t share things. Never hand me something your mouth has touched. It was the first time I had ever seen him lose his temper, and I had stood frozen by the counter, trembling. Seeing my pale face, his tone had immediately softened, though his eyes remained guarded. It’s not personal, Tessa. I can't handle other people’s things. Just remember for next time. Not personal. Yet tonight, in that velvet-lined booth, reaching for Camilla’s glass had been as natural to him as breathing. He didn't hate sharing. He just hated sharing with me. A sharp, burning ache rose in the bridge of my nose. It wasn't as if Camilla Ward had been a secret. She was the one who got away, living in London for years, pursuing her career in high-end galleries. Bennett had never spoken her name in our home, treating the world—and me—with the same cold, pristine distance. I had convinced myself that this quiet, polite arrangement was a life I could endure. But watching him love someone tonight tore down every delusion I had built to survive the last four years. The quiet humiliations I thought I’d buried came rushing back, suffocating me under their weight. I was exhausted. Maybe I didn't have to swallow this anymore. Maybe leaving wasn't just an escape—it was mercy for both of us. 2 After helping Bennett into his bed, I slipped down the hall to my own room to shower. We had slept in separate bedrooms from the beginning. Bennett only came to mine on the first and fifteenth of every month—an antiseptic routine he called fulfilling his marital obligations. The only exception was when he drank too much. In his rare stupors, he would regress into an obstinate child, wandering into my room, pulling me against his chest, and refusing to let go until dawn. Just like tonight. I had barely laid my head against the pillow when the mattress dipped beneath a sudden weight. Before I could sit up, two heavy, familiar arms wrapped around my waist, dragging me back against his chest. Bennett let out a low, contented sigh, his breathing evening out almost immediately as sleep took him. In the past, even when the sharp stench of stale alcohol made my stomach turn, I would have swallowed my discomfort. I would have lain there in the dark, reminding myself of the Sinclair family’s generosity, telling myself to be grateful. Tonight, I felt nothing but an overwhelming urge to breathe clean air. I peeled his fingers from my ribs, twisted out of his grip, and slid out from beneath the duvet. If he wanted this bed, he could have it. The Sinclair townhouse had plenty of guest rooms. When I opened my bedroom door, I nearly tripped over Owen. He was standing in the dim hallway in his striped pajamas, staring anxiously past me into the dark bedroom, his small hands curled into fists. I knelt down, softening my voice as I reached out to smooth his messy hair. "Owen? What are you doing awake, sweetheart? You have preschool in the morning. Let’s get you back to bed." Owen slapped my hand away. His dark eyes—so eerily identical to Bennett's—glared at me with raw, icy disdain. "Don't touch me, Tessa. You don't get to tell me what to do." Not Mom. Just Tessa. It had been that way ever since a few older boys at the private academy told him he was an accident, that his mother was an opportunist who had trapped the heir of Sinclair Capital by getting knocked up. Owen had turned on me overnight. He forgot the endless nights I had sat beside his crib, pressing damp cloths to his feverish forehead while Bennett was in Tokyo or London. He forgot the way he used to curl into my lap, whispering that I was his favorite person in the entire world. Now, his only wish seemed to be that someone else had given birth to him. I stared at the small, retreating back of my five-year-old son until his bedroom door clicked shut. A soft, hollow sigh escaped my chest. I walked into the guest room across the hall, shut the door, and dialed Gwen. The line rang twice before she picked up. "Gwen," I said into the quiet room. "I’ve thought it through. I’ll go with you to Paris." 3 There was a stunned pause on the other end, followed by a sharp intake of breath. "Are you serious, Tessa? Oh, thank god! Get your visa paperwork started first thing this week. The minute I finish wrapping up our transition stateside, we’re on the first flight out." I had majored in textile and fashion design, and Gwen had been my creative director before I got married. Even after Bennett and I tied the knot, I kept designing freelance for her under the table, slipping sketches into her inbox late at night. Recently, an established Parisian fashion house had poached Gwen to lead their creative department, and she had spent the last two months begging me to come along as her senior associate. I had hesitated. When you grow up in foster homes with your possessions stuffed into black garbage bags, the idea of a family becomes a phantom you chase your entire life. I hadn't wanted Owen to grow up in a fractured household without his mother. But looking at the hallway outside, I realized Owen didn't want me in his home anyway. A family isn't defined by the number of bodies in a house. Sometimes, you have to be your own home. After hanging up, I opened the cloud drive on my phone and scrolled back four years until I found the document Bennett’s mother had sent me: the draft of an uncontested divorce settlement. 4 The next morning, I opened the guest room door and ran directly into Bennett coming out of my bedroom. He looked rumpled and exhausted, his tie missing, his dark hair falling across his forehead. He gave me a sharp, questioning look, silently asking why he had woken up in my bed while I was walking out of a guest suite. "You stumbled into my room at two in the morning and wouldn't let go," I said before he could speak. "I couldn't sleep like that, so I gave you the room." A faint flush of embarrassment crept up his neck. He cleared his throat lightly. "I apologize. It won't happen again." "Don't worry about it." I didn't linger. I walked past him down the stairs to help the housekeeper with breakfast. Bennett remained at the top of the landing, frozen. Usually, whenever our nighttime proximity came up, I would blush and look down at my slippers. Today, my tone had been completely flat—almost dismissive. At the breakfast table, I poured coffee for myself and looked across at Bennett and Owen. "I have errands to run today," I said calmly. "I won't be able to drop Owen off at school, and I won't have time to drop off your lunch at the office. You'll need to make other arrangements." "Where are you going?" Both of them spoke at the exact same moment. Two identical pairs of dark eyes locked onto mine. I raised my eyebrows, slightly startled by their synchronized concern. "It’s been a while since I visited your mother at the estate," I said to Bennett. "I'm heading out to Long Island to see Eleanor." The tension in Bennett’s shoulders visibly drained. The corner of his mouth curved upward in a slight, patronizing smirk. "Wait until this evening when I’m off. I’ll drive you." "No need," I said, buttering my toast. "I can take the train. It’s easier." Bennett’s eyes narrowed, studying my face for any crack in my expression. When he found none, he set his napkin down. As he reached the foyer, he paused with his hand on the doorknob, turning back toward me. "I trust that when you speak to my mother today, no unnecessary complaints will be made." I blinked, and then an amused, bitter little smile touched my lips. He didn't want to drive me to Long Island out of consideration. He wanted to chaperone me so I wouldn't tell Eleanor about Camilla. He was worrying for nothing. The society columns had been buzzing about him and Camilla Ward for weeks; Eleanor read the papers every morning. Why would she need me to deliver the news? Near the staircase, Owen lingered by the coat rack, watching me. For a second, I thought I caught a flicker of hurt and confusion in his small, furrowed brow, as if he couldn't understand why I wasn't pleading to take him to school. Then he scowled, turned on his heel, and let Thomas, our driver, guide him out the door. I shook my head at my own foolishness. Owen resented my very existence; why would he care who walked him to the school gates? Two hours later, I was sitting in the sunlit conservatory of the Sinclair estate. When Eleanor Sinclair set down her porcelain teacup, I looked into her weathered, elegant eyes and spoke the words I had held back for four years: "Eleanor, I want a divorce." 5 The Sinclairs had plucked me from the state foster system when I was fifteen. That year, Bennett’s father and grandfather were killed in a private plane crash off the coast of Maine. The family was shattered, and Eleanor, drowning in grief, had consulted spiritualists and old family confidants. Someone convinced her that to protect Bennett—the sole remaining heir—from the family’s streak of tragedy, she needed to bring an orphaned child into their home and pour charity into her, balancing the scales of fate. She picked me. She paid my private school tuition, covered my dorm fees, and financed my design degree. I spent years revering her, feeling an almost crushing debt of gratitude toward the family. Then came the gala four years ago. A socialite looking to secure a Sinclair marriage slipped a sedative-laced aphrodisiac into Bennett’s drink. I was working the event as a catering coordinator, saw him collapsing in the corridor, and tried to help him to a private suite. We spent that night together. The aftermath was brutal. The social circles labeled me an opportunistic stray who had bitten the hand that fed her. Bennett knew exactly how it happened—he knew I hadn't orchestrated the drugs or the setup—yet he never said a single word in my defense. He let the city believe I had trapped him. A month later, my pregnancy test came back positive. Eleanor had sat in front of me, taking my trembling hands in hers, weeping as she begged me to have the child. Bennett had broken up with Camilla a year prior and had sworn off marriage entirely, retreating into cold, workaholic isolation. Eleanor was terrified the family line would end. She promised me that if I gave birth to the child, I could file for an uncontested divorce whenever I felt ready, with full financial independence. Remembering everything she had done for me, and looking at the desperate tears of a grieving mother, I agreed. After Owen was born, the maternal instinct I never expected to have wrapped its claws around my heart. I couldn't leave him. I stayed, telling myself that an emotionally hollow marriage in a penthouse was a far better life than the freezing winter shelters of my childhood. I had vastly overestimated how long a human soul can survive on crumbs. Eleanor kept her word. She didn't shame me, nor did she beg me to stay for Bennett’s sake. She simply summoned her personal attorney to the conservatory, instructing him to walk me through every clause of the settlement. She treated me less like a troublesome daughter-in-law and more like a daughter she was finally setting free. The terms were staggering: a portfolio of liquid assets, a trust fund, and a townhouse in Manhattan that instantly made me an independently wealthy woman. As I stood up to leave, Eleanor looked up at me, her eyes glistening. "Thank you, Tessa," she whispered softly. "For everything." My throat tightened. Eleanor had always been kind to me. From funding my education to respecting our privacy after the wedding, she had given me far more grace than most matriarchs of her pedigree ever would. 6 When I arrived back in the city, Bennett’s executive assistant called my cell. He sounded frantic. Mr. Sinclair had skipped lunch entirely because I hadn't sent his usual thermal container, and with his chronic gastritis, the assistant was terrified Bennett would collapse during the afternoon board meeting. He asked if I could possibly whip up something light and bring it to the Sinclair Capital headquarters. My instinct was to say no. But thinking of Eleanor’s gentle warmth earlier that morning, I softened. I packed a warm chicken broth and drove downtown. Outside Bennett’s corner office, the heavy mahogany door was cracked an inch. I was about to knock when I heard another man’s voice from within. "Word on the street is that you and Camilla have been practically inseparable lately." Through the crack, I saw Bennett’s fountain pen pause over a document. He leveled a cold stare at his longtime friend, Marcus. "Stop reading tabloid trash. If you mention it again, I’ll call your father and have him drag you back to your family office." Marcus chuckled, kicking his feet up onto the leather coffee table. "Come off it, Bennett. We’ve known each other since boarding school. If the rumors were false, your PR team would have wiped them off the internet within ten minutes. Why don't you just pull the trigger? Divorce Tessa, marry Camilla, and give the storybook romance its happy ending." "No," Bennett answered immediately. The room fell quiet for a second before Bennett added, his voice low and deliberate, "Camilla has her galleries in Europe. She has an artistic vision. I won't tie her down and ruin her career." He paused, tapping his pen against the desk. "Besides... Tessa has taken good care of Owen and the house all these years." Marcus barked out a laugh. "So what, you're keeping Tessa around as a glorified housekeeper?" Bennett didn't answer. Standing in the carpeted hallway, the warm soup container in my hands suddenly felt freezing cold. A dull, sharp ache stabbed behind my ribs. He refused to divorce me not out of affection, but because I was convenient. I was the reliable, obedient caretaker who kept his home running like clockwork. Meanwhile, Camilla was the delicate, sacred muse whose dreams were too precious to be tainted by the domestic grind. And what about my dreams? What had I been to him? When you accept scraps for too long, people genuinely begin to believe you don't deserve a full meal. I didn't push the door open. I carried the bag down to the ground floor, handed the hot soup to the building's custodian, and took a cab home. That evening, dinner was eaten in near-total silence. When I finally retreated upstairs, I found Bennett standing in front of my bedroom door, blocking the threshold. "Do you need something?" I asked. Bennett’s throat moved as he swallowed. "It’s the fifteenth." 7 Right. The fifteenth. The bi-monthly routine. Bennett presented himself to the world as an ascetic, cold and unbothered by carnal desire. But behind closed doors, he was demanding, rough, and relentless, keeping me awake until the sky turned bruised with dawn. He had always forbidden mouth-to-mouth kissing, yet when the heat took over, he would grip the back of my head, pulling me into bruised, suffocating kisses, commanding me to say his name over and over until my voice gave out. Now that the paperwork was drawn, the thought of his hands on my skin made my stomach knot. "Not tonight," I said, reaching for the door handle. "I have my period." I turned to slip inside, but Bennett’s fingers snapped around my wrist, tight and demanding. "Your cycle doesn't start until next week." I looked at him, irritated by his sudden, stubborn persistence. I yanked my arm back. "It came early. Is that a crime?" Without waiting for his reaction, I stepped inside and shut the door in his face, turning the deadbolt with a sharp click. Outside, the silence lingered. It took several minutes before I heard his footsteps fade down the corridor. Around two in the morning, the mattress dipped. Before my sleep-fogged brain could react, warm, heavy arms encircled me from behind, tucking me firmly against a hard chest. His breath stirred the hair against my neck. "Having your period doesn't mean we can't sleep in the same bed," Bennett murmured, his voice thick with sleep. I tried to shove his arms off, but his grip was like iron. Heavy with exhaustion, I finally gave up and let darkness pull me under. When I woke, the space beside me was already cold. Thomas had already driven Owen to preschool. I spent the afternoon at the French consulate, finalizing my expedited work visa. On the cab ride back, a lingering thought tugged at me: maybe I owed it to Bennett and Owen to tell them about the divorce in person. It wasn't something to drop on them out of nowhere. The moment I stepped through the front door of the townhouse, the thought dissolved. Sitting on the living room sofa were Bennett, Camilla, and Owen. The moment Owen spotted me, he threw his arms around Camilla’s neck, his voice high and triumphant: "Dad and Auntie Camilla picked me up from school together today! It was the best day ever. I wish Auntie Camilla could pick me up every single day." He cast a smug, defiant glare right at me. 8 Camilla stroked Owen’s hair with exaggerated tenderness. "If you're a good boy, I'll come pick you up whenever I'm free, Owen." Bennett sat back against the leather cushions, glancing up at me with a cool, casual explanation. "Camilla wanted to see Owen, so I brought her over." I nodded, not sparing Owen another glance, and walked directly toward Bennett. "Do you have five minutes? I need to speak with you privately." Bennett frowned, his brows drawing together. "Tessa, don't start making a scene. I know you're uncomfortable around Camilla, but she is a guest in this house. You owe her basic courtesy." He sighed, checking his watch. "Whatever it is, it can wait until tonight. Camilla mentioned she's been craving that glazed pork tenderloin you made last month. Go into the kitchen and help Maria start dinner." Camilla immediately waved her hands, looking horrified. "Oh, Bennett, stop! Tessa isn't the staff. How could you ask her to cook for me? At my apartment, I never lift a finger." "It's fine," Bennett replied smoothly, not even looking up. "She's different from you. She's used to taking care of these things." "Is that so?" Camilla tilted her head, giving me a soft, pitying smile laced with quiet triumph. "Well, thank you so much, Tessa. I appreciate the trouble." I drew a long, slow breath into my lungs. So the lunches I had carefully packed for him over the years had ended up on Camilla’s desk. The urge to explain myself completely vanished. What was left to say? "I'm not feeling well," I said evenly. "If you two want dinner, order takeout." I turned toward the stairs. Just then, Bennett’s executive secretary appeared in the foyer, holding a leather portfolio. He looked pale and acutely uncomfortable, hovering by the entryway. "Mr. Sinclair," the secretary stammered, casting an anxious glance my way. "I have the quarterly filings that require your signature... and... there’s one more document." Bennett frowned. "What is it?" "It’s... it was sent over from Mrs. Eleanor Sinclair’s legal counsel this afternoon. The uncontested divorce agreement." The entire living room went dead silent. Bennett and Owen both snapped their heads toward me. Even Camilla’s polished mask slipped, her eyes widening in genuine shock. Bennett took the legal folder. His eyes scanned the first page, and with a sickening snap, the expensive fountain pen in his hand broke cleanly in two. Dark blue ink bloomed across his knuckles. A vein pulsed violently along his jawline, his voice terrifyingly calm. "You want a divorce?"