Glided Promises

Chapter Two: Gilded Promises

The rain hadn’t stopped since dawn.

Emma sat curled on the edge of Ethan’s bed—no, his bed. She had to stop calling it hers. Her name wasn’t written anywhere in this penthouse. Not on the mailbox. Not on the lease. Not even on the pillow where her head had rested night after night.

She clutched the silk robe tighter around herself. His scent still lingered on her skin—sandalwood, leather, and something colder beneath, like steel after a storm.

Her fingers brushed the fresh bruise on her shoulder, not from anger, but from his grip. A possessive mark. Another invisible brand on a body that no longer felt like hers.

Seven years.

She whispered it aloud to no one. Seven years of becoming someone else. Of disappearing beneath someone else's shadow.

The worst part?

She let him do it. Piece by piece.

She hadn’t been naïve when she joined Lu International—just hungry. Driven. Sharp. Fresh out of business school, armed with ambition and no armor for the kind of man Ethan Lu was. He saw her potential, then bent it to his will with compliments, late-night assignments, and praise that felt like intimacy.

He groomed her with power—not flowers.

By the time she realized what she had become, it was already too late. She’d traded her freedom for his attention. And then his affection. And then, for a twisted version of love that came wrapped in diamonds, but cut like glass.

A noise broke the silence.

A knock. Sharp. Two beats.

Emma frowned and stood, her robe brushing the tops of her thighs as she padded barefoot through the penthouse.

She opened the door.

And everything changed.

“Hello, Emma,” Rose said, her voice velvet smooth, her expression unreadable. She stood poised in a cream trench coat, not a hair out of place, as if the weather couldn’t touch her. “I believe we need to talk.”

Emma’s stomach dropped. The air thinned around her. “Rose…”

There was no script for this moment. No protocol. Just years of secrets and silence shattering in the space between two women.

Rose’s eyes flicked behind her, taking in the disheveled sheets, the empty wine glass, the faint trace of Emma’s lipstick on the rim.

“You look tired,” Rose said softly, but there was steel beneath it.

Emma swallowed. “I wasn’t expecting—”

“No,” Rose interrupted. “You weren’t. Neither was I. When he proposed to me.”

The words struck like thunder.

Emma stepped back, heart slamming against her ribs. “He… he proposed?”

Rose nodded once. “Last month. His mother’s ring. A speech so practiced, it felt like something from a board meeting.”

Emma didn’t know whether to laugh or crumble.

How many other women had heard that same voice? That same low, dangerous warmth? The one that made you feel chosen. Special. Claimed.

“I didn’t ask for this,” Emma said quietly. “I never meant to—”

“To what? Fall in love with a man who only knows how to destroy the women who love him?”

That silenced her.

Because it was true.

They stared at each other, no longer strangers, not quite enemies. Just two women who had loved the same man—and been broken by it.

Rose’s voice softened. “I thought you were the problem. The mistress. The seductress in his closet. But now I see…”

She trailed off, shaking her head.

“I’m just another version of you.”

Emma’s throat tightened. Her hands trembled.

“Do you still love him?” Rose asked.

Emma looked at her. Really looked. At the clarity behind the heartbreak. At the strength buried beneath the sadness.

She wanted to lie. But she couldn’t.

“I don’t know what I feel anymore,” she whispered. “Only that it hurts.”

Rose nodded. “Good.”

Emma blinked. “Why?”

“Because if it still hurts, it means you haven’t given him all of you yet. There’s still a part of you that’s yours.”

And in that moment, something shifted. A thread loosened. A light flickered in the dark.

Hope.

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