I Played the King’s Game Then I Divorced Him Chapter 10

I Played the King’s Game Then I Divorced Him Chapter 10

In April, the company initiated a new merger.

The other party was a startup specializing in AI customer service. The founder was a man in his

early thirties with short hair, wearing sneakers to the meeting. His pitch deck was full of technical jargon.

“Ms. Sterling,” he interrupted my question,

“do you actually understand what we’re doing?”

The room went silent. My assistant coughed nervously.

“I don’t,” I said,

“that’s why I’m here to listen to you.”

He froze for a second, then laughed. That smile wasn’t fawning or calculating; it was a pure, raw passion for what he was doing.

After the meeting, he added me on Slack and said we could communicate anytime. I accepted, but I never initiated a message. He occasionally shared industry articles, and I occasionally liked them, but that was it.

Maya said, “That guy is pretty good. He’s eight years younger than you, but his maturity is on your level.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying,” she chose her words carefully,

“you could try to believe again.”

I looked at the city lights outside the window, remembered Sean’s tears when he said “I’ll treat you right for the rest of my life,” remembered his calculating tone on the monitor, and remembered his unfinished “if” at the courthouse.

“Maya,” I said,

“do you know what the scariest thing is?”

“What?”

“It’s not being betrayed. It’s realizing that ‘believing’ itself has become a trauma.”

The other end of the line was silent for a long time.

“Then don’t believe yet,” she said.

“Just live. While you’re living, you might just feel like believing again one day.”

I hung up and opened the chat window with the AI founder. He had sent a message three hours ago with a link to a technical blog and a note: “This one talks about large model hallucinations. You might find it interesting.”

I clicked the link, read for twenty minutes, and then replied: “Your third point about data cleaning has similarities to a project we did in 2019. If you’re free, we can talk next week.”

He replied instantly: “Great! Coffee’s on me.”

I looked at that exclamation mark and realized Sean had never used that tone with me. Our conversations were always “Yeah,” “Okay,” “Got it”-like two contracts confirming receipt.

It wasn’t anyone’s fault; we just weren’t a fit.

And it took me seven years to see that “not a fit.”

We met for coffee on Tuesday afternoon. He was fifteen minutes late, walking in quickly and

sounding slightly out of breath, saying there was a traffic accident on the way.

“I kept you waiting, didn’t I? Let me buy you a cake to make up for it.”

“No need,” I said. “I just arrived.”

That was a lie. I had arrived forty minutes early, sat in my car for thirty minutes, and sat in the shop

for ten.

I didn’t know why I was nervous; maybe because it had been too long since I met a stranger one-on-one, or maybe I was afraid of finding out he was as good at pretending as Sean.

But he just sat down, opened his laptop, and started talking about his technical architecture. He became animated when talking about his passions and frowned when talking about his confusion completely immersed in his own world, forgetting that the person sitting across from him was someone who could decide his company’s fate.

That kind of self-forgetfulness is precious. I had never seen it in Sean-he was always watching my reaction, adjusting his expression, and calculating the weight of every word.

“Ms. Sterling?” He stopped. “Do you think I’m too idealistic?”

“No,” I said. “I was thinking, with your personality, how did you survive until now?”

He laughed. “Because my tech is good. Really, I’m not bragging-I’m in the top ten in the country in

this field.”

“What about the other nine?”

“Seven are at big tech firms, and two are in Silicon Valley.” He counted on his fingers. “So investing

in me isn’t a loss.”

I laughed too. For the first time in six months, it wasn’t for social reasons; I truly found it

interesting.

We talked for two and a half hours, from AI to our respective professions, from professions to why we started businesses, and from business to our respective failures. He said his first startup lasted two years before his partner ran off with the funds, and he had to mortgage his house to pay his

employees’ wages.