Succession

I Made You Nora Smith

Nora

"I want a divorce."

Chris announced it casually, wiping his mouth with a linen napkin.

I continued eating, deliberately ignoring his demand. I wasn't about to let him ruin the flavor of a perfectly cooked steak.

He stared at me with the most pitiful eyes anyone had ever given me. Not even when my parents died in that crash had anyone looked at me with such mocking sympathy.

Yet here was my husband of five years, my partner since high school, asking for a divorce in the middle of our anniversary dinner. A dinner he had graciously arrived forty minutes late to, with barely a half-hearted apology to show for it.

It was almost comical. He sat there looking so sure that those four words would completely shatter me.

I had never believed in divorce, my parents stayed together until the very end. Not even death could separate them. When I met Chris, I was fourteen, fresh off the transfer to Duke Street Academy. He used to tell me he knew we were soulmates the moment he saw me, and he didn't hesitate to propose the week after I finished college.

We got married a year later. The first two years were magical. Chris funded the start of my modeling career, connecting me to high-profile agencies, while his father finally handed him an executive position at the family firm.

I thought we had made it. But after a painful string of miscarriages, Chris turned into a completely different man. He stopped touching me. He wouldn't even look at me unless a camera was flashing. Behind closed doors, he called me undesirable. He told me I was too broken to touch.

In the tabloids, I was often called the luckiest woman alive, married to one of the most eligible bachelors in New York, the son of a billionaire.

Only a few outlets claimed our marriage was a sham, writing it off as nothing more than a PR stunt.

I ignored them. Despised them. Maybe it was because they could see right through the facade.

They sometimes referred to me as the New York Cinderella, the girl who got lucky enough to steal Chris's heart back in high school. After all, I came from nothing.

Yet... night after night, I cried myself to sleep, aching for a husband who now looked at me like I was the most disgusting thing he had ever laid eyes on.

Our marriage hit a breaking point last year when I landed the cover of Velour magazine as Model of the Year. It was a massive leap for my career, but it completely shattered Chris's ego.

He called the editors liars and screamed that I was nothing more than a glorified escort. "You know what kind of women the world calls sexy, Nora? Whores! Whores!" His screaming echoed in my head so loudly it woke me up from night terrors.

It didn't help that I was a tall blonde with full lips, automatically written off as a brainless trophy wife whose success must have been bought on her back.

Still, I stayed. I told myself he was just drowning in frustration because we didn't have children yet. He needed an heir to secure his place in his father's estate. Sebastian Smith had made it crystal clear: any child without an heir of their own would be stripped from the family trust. As the youngest of three, with both of his older siblings raising perfect little families, Chris was terrified of being left with nothing.

I blamed myself. I carried the guilt of my body failing him. The least I could do was endure his sharp tongue and keep supporting his ambitions. I had even been hopeful about tonight. My anniversary gift to him was a proposal to start another round of IVF, fully prepared to put my body through hell once more just to give him the child he wanted.