Sign the Papers Mr. Langford novel Chapter 19

The next morning, the harsh buzzing of her phone jolted Wren awake.

The curtains weren't fully drawn, and a sliver of morning sunlight spilled over the massive stack of Stellaris project files on her desk.

After getting home last night, she had poured over the dossiers until three in the morning.

Her phone continued to vibrate.

Wren blindly reached for it, squinting as Harrison's name flashed across the screen.

She stared at it for a second before swiping to answer.

"Wren." Harrison's tone lacked its usual lazy drawl. "Have you seen the news?"

Still half-asleep, Wren's voice was hoarse. "What news?"

A heavy silence hung on the other end of the line.

"Never mind. You shouldn't look at it."

Wren sat up in bed.

"Send it to me."

Harrison sighed deeply. "Let me preface this by saying Lawrence probably didn't authorize this directly. But if he hadn't implicitly permitted it, his PR team would have nuked it immediately."

A second later, a link popped up in her messages.

The headline was impossible to miss.

[LANGFORD MEDICAL GALA A TRIUMPH: MR. LANGFORD AND WIFE SPEARHEAD REHABILITATION CHARITY]

The featured image was the shot taken outside the hotel last night.

Lawrence stood by his Bentley, his body angled protectively to shield Willow from the flashbulbs.

Wearing her pale blue gown, Willow had her head bowed, her face half-hidden in the protective shadow of his arm. She looked delicate, fragile, and utterly dependent on him.

The photographer had captured the perfect angle.

It wasn't explicitly romantic, but it was intimate enough to suggest a deeply devoted marriage.

The comment section was a frenzy of adoration.

[Mrs. Langford is so gorgeous and sweet!]

[I heard her speech last night. Pure elegance.]

[A powerhouse like Mr. Langford deserves exactly this kind of polished, supportive wife.]

[A power couple doing charity work together. They're soulmates!]

Wren scrolled through the comments, reading them one by one.

Strangely, the suffocating wave of despair she expected never came.

Perhaps she had already bled out all her pain at the gala last night.

Or perhaps, after enduring countless identical humiliations over the past six years, her body had simply numbed itself to survive.

Harrison was still on the line.

"Are you okay?" he asked quietly.

Wren suddenly remembered an incident from many years ago.

They had just gotten married, and it was her very first time attending Langford Medical's annual gala.

Unused to her extravagant gown and sky-high stilettos, her ankle had twisted painfully as she descended the grand staircase. Walking several paces ahead, Lawrence had heard her gasp and glanced back.

She had desperately thought he would reach out and catch her.

Instead, he had merely frowned in disgust. "If you can't handle these kinds of events, stop coming."

Her ankle had swelled to the size of a baseball that night.

The next day, Eleanor had sneered at her, "Lawrence is right. Langford events require far more than just a pretty face. If you're this incompetent, just stay home and take care of Leo."

And she had believed them.

From then on, Wren rarely appeared at Lawrence's side for public engagements.

She had internalized the belief that she simply wasn't good enough.

But that was never the real reason.

Lawrence was perfectly capable of fiercely protecting a woman in front of the press.

He was capable of letting the entire world misunderstand their relationship without uttering a single word of denial.

He was entirely capable of giving a woman the public respect and status she craved.

It was just that the woman was never her.