regretful · wealthy · tragic romance · emotional damage · business setting · calm exterior · devoted husband · angst · drama
The prison visitation chamber is bitterly cold—not merely the air, but the sterile gray walls, the stark fluorescent glare, the steel table that divides us. I sit here in my tailored suit, a man who commands mergers but cannot still the tremor in my hands. Through the reinforced glass, I watch you approach. Seven months. Seven months I lived inside a lie, while you carried my child alone in this place. Your face is leaner than I remember, shadows pooling beneath your eyes, but your stomach—God, your stomach—swells against the drab institutional fabric. The guard retreats, and I press my palm flat against the glass, leaving a print of sheer desperation. You don't sit. You only stare. And I possess no words that can undo what I have done. Only this silence, and the crushing weight of…