Chapter 2

My phone screen lit up with more than a dozen missed calls.

"Laurent?" I checked the call log and found they were all from his younger brother, Hunter Maddox.

I let out a bitter laugh, realizing I had overestimated my place in Laurent's heart. In our three years of marriage, he had never phoned me that many times.

Right on cue, the phone began to ring again. The moment I swiped to answer, Hunter's abrasive voice came through the receiver.

"Where are you?" he demanded. I've been looking for you all afternoon!"

I rolled my eyes at his blatant lie. Given the timestamps, those 13 missed calls had all been made within a tight ten-minute window, meaning he hadn't spent a second searching for me before that.

Laurent had likely ordered him to track me down in the morning, and Hunter, who had never shown me an ounce of respect, had only just remembered the chore now in the late afternoon.

He was simply trying to cover his tracks with a frantic, last-minute phone bombardment. It was ironic, considering he was the very person who had posted that group photo this morning.

"Don't bother looking for me," I said evenly, matching his hostility with cold indifference. "I've already signed the divorce agreement and left it on the table. Just tell Laurent to sign his part."

Back when I was still trying to make my marriage work, I had gone out of my way to please everyone in Laurent's orbit. This was especially true for Hunter, a spoiled, hot-tempered brat whom I had always treated with gentle patience.

I had never once argued with him, and I even routinely praised his rare good traits in front of the rest of the Maddox family. Yet despite my endless compliance, he had always treated me with malice.

"That divorce threat is a thousand years old, Debbie," Hunter scoffed. "If you actually manage to leave Laurent, I'll become your damn dog!"

He was even more certain than Laurent that I was bluffing.

"Try a different species, Hunter," I countered icily. "Don't insult dogs."

With that, I cut the line and blocked every member of the Maddox family.

My parting insult must have struck a nerve, because Hunter immediately took to our massive shared group chat to blast the news to every wealthy socialite and heir we knew.

Hunter: [Debbie is playing the divorce card again. I told her she'd never actually leave Laurent, and that if she did, I'd be her dog.

[She had the nerve to tell me even dogs don't want me! I'm running the books now: I bet she will come crawling back home within three days.]

The chat blew up instantly. They immediately began placing extravagant wagers on when I would return. Some bet a week, others half a month, and some a full month.

They put up luxury cars, vintage wines, and even six-figure cash sums. I watched the notifications flood the screen, completely detached, until someone tagged me to ask for my timeline so they could fine-tune their bets.

I knew most of the people in the group only through Laurent. Every one of them was a silver-spooned elite born into power and wealth.

Spoiled, these kids had no concept of human decency, or perhaps they simply believed that a woman like me didn't warrant any.

I wasn't a native of Aronespire; I had moved to the city purely for university, fell blindly in love with Laurent, and ultimately stayed because of marriage.

Under Laurent's sharp ambition, the Maddox family had pulled so far ahead of the city's old money over the past few years that they were in a league of their own, cementing them as the wealthiest family in Aronespire.

Yet, despite legally being his wife, I had never truly fit into the upper-crust social circle that revolved around them. I had always been an invisible outsider, and now that I was finally the center of attention, it was only as the punchline of a cruel joke.

But I was dead serious about leaving Laurent. Refusing to waste my breath arguing with any of them, I quietly exited the group chat and began deleting their contacts one by one.

By the time I finished purging my phone, my friends list had shrunk drastically, leaving me with only a handful of people: the ones I'd been close with since before university and a couple of casual friends I'd made locally.

I had lived in Aronespire for seven long years, wasting my youth on a man who didn't care. All I had to show for it was a college diploma and nothing else.