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My husband, the Architect, was a man built for spotlights. A celebrated figure whose glass-and-steel creations dominated the city skyline, he carried himself with an air of practiced, almost suffocating confidence. His entire existence was one of meticulous, self-serving design, where everything—including our fifteen years of marriage—appeared perfectly structured. I, his wife, was merely the quiet elegance that anchored his dazzling public life—the solid, unsung foundation beneath his modernist facade.
Our apartment, suspended high above the river, was less a home and more a monument to his success and our shared, if slightly sterile, taste. We had our rhythm, or what I thought was a rhythm: morning coffee overlooking the city, his inevitable late nights in the studio, my work curating historical textiles. It was a partnership based on mutual respect, financial security, and my tacit acceptance of his desperate need for outward perfection. For him, that perfection was his ultimate pride; he valued his public image and his professional integrity far more than the private stability of the life we had built. I learned early on that to wound him, you had to wound his image.
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