Ex Husband, Prepare To Burn

Elara's POV Where the fuck is he? I kept muttering it under my breath as I made another lap around the Grand Hall, my diamond stilettos clicking against the marble and drawing glances I pretended not to notice. It was our third anniversary and my twenty-fifth birthday, and that very morning Ian had held my face in both hands and promised me a night I would never forget. I checked the entrance again. A couple in matching navy, a man struggling out of his coat, a waiter with a tray of champagne. No Ian. He had left hours earlier, standing by his car and brushing at his lapel even though there was nothing on it. "Go on in, babe, I'll catch up shortly," he'd said. "I have to close the butterfly deal with Mr. Yan tonight. His flight leaves later and I can't afford to lose a billion-dollar investment." Then he'd kissed my cheek, quickly, the way you kiss a relative you're late to leave, and the car was already pulling away before I'd found anything to say. I remember standing in

Elara's POV My fingers shook so badly I had to unlock my phone three times. I stood at the end of the road with blood stiffening in my hair, and the only thing I had left that belonged to me was on that screen. On the stairs, before I understood why, my thumb had started the voice recorder, and it had run in my clutch through everything upstairs. Fourteen minutes of Ian saying he never wanted me, that I was never enough, that Camila was what he actually wanted. He had no idea. I attached the file and typed underneath it. Let's see how calm you stay when the world hears the truth, Ian. A tear slid down to my jaw and stung the cut. I pressed send, and the message whooshed away. My life was in ruins, but this was the first thing I had done on my own all night, and it felt like striking a match in a dark room. Let him find out what it was to lose control of the story. The phone buzzed before I could lower it. Greenfield Women's Clinic, a number I'd ignored for two days. Mrs. Va

Elara's POV I followed Ian out of the hall at a distance of thirty feet and slipped behind a marble pillar in the corridor, where the noise of the show dropped to a low hum. The lace half-mask across my eyes was my own choice. Spectra Minds had been teasing "a face to be unveiled at the end of the night" for a week, and half the industry had decided I was either a publicity stunt or a very expensive joke. My pulse was steady. Five years had taught it how to hide. But my hands had gone cold, and I flattened them against the stone to keep them from showing me what they wanted to do. He had his phone against his ear, and I could hear the other end clearly, because his mother had never in her life learned to lower her voice. "You need to hurry up with Camila, Ian. You're thirty-three. Do you think you're still young? This isn't the old days, and you can't keep clinging to ideals that went out of fashion. A marriage to her would be good for the family's name. You're a businessman. You

Liam's POV "Babe, you promised me the best designer gown when you get back," Avery said, and her voice came through the phone warm and unhurried, the kind of voice that could loosen a man's shoulders after fourteen hours on his feet. I smiled before I'd decided to. "You should've come with me. You're the best model this company has, and you've got better taste than half the people in that hall. My queen." "We've been over this." I could hear her grinning. "My new contract won't let me travel until the current shoot wraps. I'm chained to a studio and a very bossy photographer." "I know, I know. It doesn't mean I miss you any less." A tap landed on my shoulder before I could say anything else. Gwen stood at my elbow with her tablet pressed to her chest and the faintly apologetic look of a woman about to ruin my evening. "Sir, it's almost time. I'm so sorry, you'll have to get off the phone." "Love you, babe," I told Avery, and slid the phone into my pocket. "Gwen. Tonight I want th

Camila's POV The Vance mansion rose out of the dark like it had been built for me. Every surface gleamed under the chandelier, the marble, the banisters, the long polished table in the hall, and I let my heels click across it slowly, one deliberate step at a time, because I had waited five years to walk through this door without looking over my shoulder. Elara had been such a fool. She had handed me everything, her husband, her house, her seat at every table, and she had never even noticed the exact moment she stopped being needed. Everything that had once been hers belonged to me now. Including Ian. Tonight had cracked something. I could feel it in my teeth. But I put my shoulders back anyway, the way I had learned to do in rooms where people watched my face, and I reminded myself that no one in this house dared cross me unless I allowed it. I had reached the foot of the staircase when a thin voice stopped me. "Miss Camila." I turned slowly. Jane stood by the kitchen door in her