The Unwanted Wife's Return (Ex-Husband Wants Me Back) novel Chapter 358

The Warning 

MARL’S POV: 

I didn’t expect to see her again. 

The moment Mary walked through the café door, something inside me shifted. The air felt different. The light seemed brighter. The sounds of the café, the hiss of the espresso machine, the murmur of conversations, the link of cups against saucers, all faded into background noise. 

She was the only thing I could see. 

Lately, she seemed to appear everywhere I went. The police station. The driveway of her house. Now this café, tucked away on a side street, the last place I expected to find her. Every encounter caught me off guard, and yet, strangely, I didn’t mind. 

I should have minded. 

She was Alistair’s wife. She was the woman I had pulled out of a cell and driven home and told to divorce her husband. She was a complication I didn’t need, a distraction I couldn’t afford. 

But I didn’t mind. 

Hotch had been a close friend and business partner for years. We had built this firm together, piece by piece, through late nights and impossible cases and deals that should have fallen through but didn’t. He was calm, dependable, the kind of man who never lost his head. 

Which was exactly why I enjoyed teasing him whenever I got the chance. 

Hotch had told me he had a crush on his junior schoolmate. That he had been carrying a torch for her for years, that he never had the courage to say anything, that he was hoping this meeting might finally change things. I had tagged along today intending to help him get closer to her, to push him in the right direction, to be the wingman he didn’t know he needed. 

No matter what he said, no matter how many parties he threw with Vesper on his arm, no matter how many photographs of them appeared on social media, Alistair had no intention of letting Mary go. He was the kind of man who wanted to have everything. The wife at home, the mistress in public, the daughter who worshipped him. He wanted to keep all the pieces of his life in their separate boxes, never overlapping, never colliding, never forcing him to make a choice. 

If Alistair found out Mary was meeting with another man, especially a lawyer, he would see it as a threat. He would lash out. He would try to control the situation. He would make things worse. 

I didn’t want that. 

I didn’t want her to suffer any more than she already had. 

So I asked the question. It was meant to be a warning, a subtle nudge, a way of saying be careful, don’t let him find out, he’s not going to let you go easily. 

But to my surprise, Mary seemed to misunderstand my intentions.