Chapter 1 - The Anniversary Gift

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 the driveway in my heels, telling myself this was simply what it looked like to be married to a man who built things.

Now the chandelier threw its light over three hundred guests who all seemed to know exactly who they'd come to see, and I was holding a glass of champagne I hadn't touched, standing beside a pillar like a coat someone forgot to collect. Every time someone laughed, I felt it was at me. I knew that wasn't true. It still felt true.

I never saw her coming. One second I was looking at the door, and the next a hand closed around my arm like a claw and yanked me sideways so hard my shoulder knocked into a man's drink. Pain shot up to my wrist.

"What the hell—"

"Shut up and walk."

Victoria Vance, the devil in designer heels. She did not let go. She pulled me through the crowd with her chin lifted, smiling at people as she passed them, while my heel skidded on the floor and I tried to keep my balance and my dignity at the same time. A few people glanced over. Not one of them stepped in. In this family, nobody ever did.

The restroom door swung shut behind us and the music dropped to a dull thud through the wall. Her perfume filled the small room, sharp and sweet and expensive enough to make my head ache. She looked me over slowly, from my hair to my shoes, and her mouth twisted.

"Where is my brother, you psycho bitch?"

"I don't know. He said he had a deal with—"

"Don't tell me what he said." She stepped closer. "What is this? What are you wearing? You look like you're running a party for clowns. You try so hard, Elara, it's actually embarrassing to watch. Do you ever get tired of humiliating this family?"

"I'm not humiliating anyone. It's my birthday."

"Is it?" She tilted her head. "Funny, I only remember it because the staff kept asking what cake to order. Honestly, only heaven knows what Ian saw in you before he married you. You're a useless housewife in an apron, a house pet he feeds and pats on the head. Pathetic. A charity case in lipstick."

My jaw ached from how hard I was holding it. I wanted to say something clever and cutting, the kind of thing the women in books say, but my mind had gone completely blank and all I could think was that she'd said it so easily, as if she'd rehearsed it in the car. Victoria flipped her hair over her shoulder and walked out, leaving the door to bang shut and the room full of her perfume.

I made it to the sink before my face crumpled. I pressed my sleeve to my mouth so nobody outside would hear, and my breath came out in wet, broken pieces. In the mirror, a stranger looked back at me with smeared mascara and a smile that wouldn't stay on straight. I had spent two hours on that face.

I was still gripping the edge of the sink when the door opened and two women came in, midway through a conversation, completely at ease. I turned the tap on and stared at the water.

"I'm just saying, who leaves his wife alone at her own anniversary party?" the first one said, leaning into the mirror to fix her lip liner.

"A man who's between someone else's legs right now," the other answered, and they both burst out laughing.

It was a stupid, careless thing for a stranger to say, and it went into me like glass. I kept my eyes on the water running over my fingers and told myself not to cry again, not here, not in front of them. They didn't even look at me. I was just a woman at a sink, and the thing they were laughing about was my life.

When I walked back into the ballroom my heart was pounding so loudly the quartet sounded far away. I had barely taken three steps before the MC's voice filled the hall.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mrs. Elara Vance to the stage! Mr. Vance has sent her a very special anniversary gift!"

Sent. The word dropped into my stomach. He had sent me a gift instead of coming himself. But the crowd had already turned and started clapping, a wave of it rolling toward me, and I did what I'd been trained to do for three years. I lifted my chin, put on my best smile, and walked.

Under the stage lights I could barely see the faces below me, so I searched them anyway, row by row. Ian wasn't there. Camila wasn't either, and that was strange, because Camila had promised me, swore it on our friendship, that she'd arrive early and stay by my side the whole night. Where the hell was she?

A woman in a black suit came up to me holding a cream envelope and a pen drive. "Mrs. Vance, Mr. Vance wanted you to have these."

Something loosened in my chest. Maybe I'd been unfair. Maybe he was stuck in traffic and had put together a video, something sweet, an apology and a joke about Mr. Yan, and I'd spent an hour imagining the worst. I handed the pen drive to the technician with a small, hopeful laugh and watched the lights go down.

The screen lit up. Ian sat in a leather chair, wearing the gray suit I had ironed that morning, with his hands folded in front of him like he was about to chair a board meeting. He didn't smile.

"This is my anniversary gift to my soon-to-be ex-wife," he said, and his voice was so calm that for one second my mind refused to hear it. "I'm finally freeing you from our miserable marriage. It had no future from the start. I want a divorce, Elara Rhodes. The papers are in the envelope. Sign them and deliver them to my doorstep."

The sound the crowd made was one long gasp, and then the cameras went off. They went off all at once, white flash after white flash, from every direction, and I stood in the middle of them holding an envelope I didn't remember opening. His signature was on the last page, bold and slanted and final, in the same ink he used to sign our marriage certificate. My fingers shook so badly the paper rattled.

I had given him everything. My degree, which I never finished. My friends, who stopped calling because I was always busy at home. Every birthday, every holiday, every dinner kept warm in the oven until midnight. And he'd needed an audience of three hundred people and a projector to tell me I wasn't enough.

Across the hall, Victoria was standing with her arms crossed, a slow, satisfied smile curving her lips. She didn't have to say anything. I heard it anyway, as clearly as if she'd leaned over and whispered it into my ear. There. Now you know your place.

I couldn't breathe. I turned and ran off the stage, and the reporters were on me before I reached the bottom step, microphones shoved toward my face.

"Mrs. Vance, is your husband having an affair?"

"Are you going to fight for him, or will you sign the papers?"

"Mrs. Vance, how does it feel to be left in public?"

Each question landed like a slap. The room was tilting, the faces smearing into one another, and the only thing I could focus on was the red exit sign glowing at the far end of the hall. I pushed toward it through bodies and perfume and flashing light, with someone's hand catching at my dress and a voice calling my name over and over as if I were something to be caught.

The cold air outside hit me like water. I stumbled across the parking lot with my chest locked tight, dug my phone out of my clutch, and called Ian.

It rang twice and went to voicemail. I called again. And again. I stood between two parked cars in a gown that had cost more than I'd ever earned, pressing redial with a thumb I could no longer feel, until somewhere past the thirtieth call a polite recorded voice said, This number is unreachable. Please try again later.

I stared at the screen through the blur. All those late nights. The calls he took in the other room. The excuses I'd accepted with a nod because the alternative was admitting what they were. They had never really been questions. They had been answers, and I had spent months refusing to read them.

My hands were shaking so hard the keys slipped out of my fingers twice before I got into the car. I started the engine and pulled out of the lot with tears running down my chin, and the city lights streaked past the windshield like something melting.

The night he came home and wouldn't let me touch him, turning his back and saying he was tired. The smile he gave his phone when a text came in, a smile he hadn't given me in over a year. The tone he used when he called me paranoid, so gentle and patient that I had apologized for being upset. Every memory came back one after the other, and each one cut a little deeper than the last, until the pain in my chest felt like something that might actually crush me.

And still, after everything, my lips moved on their own.

"Ian..."

The car stayed quiet around me. There was only the hum of the engine and the sound of my own heart breaking.