Chapter One: The Anniversary Gift

The first indication that my husband had lost his damn mind was the bracelet.

Not the pregnant woman sitting beside him. Not the divorce papers waiting next to my champagne flute. The bracelet.

I stopped in the doorway of the private dining room at Laurent and stared at the narrow line of diamonds sparkling around the stranger’s wrist.

My bracelet.

My grandmother had worn it when she married my grandfather in 1962. My mother wore it on her wedding day, and seven years ago, she had fastened it around my wrist before walking me down the aisle to marry Grant Whitmore.

Three weeks earlier, I’d noticed it missing from my jewelry safe. Grant told me I’d probably misplaced it.

Apparently, I’d misplaced it onto his mistress.

“Camille.”

My husband stood. At least he had the decency to look uncomfortable.

I glanced at the woman beside him. She was beautiful, with honey-brown hair swept over one shoulder and the kind of cream silk dress designed to look effortless despite costing more than most people’s mortgage payments.

One manicured hand rested protectively over the unmistakable curve of her stomach.

I’d spent twenty minutes downstairs wondering why Grant had insisted we celebrate our anniversary at Laurent when he’d forgotten it entirely the year before.

Now I understood.

He hadn’t forgotten this anniversary.

He’d planned it.

“Sit down,” he said.

I looked at the empty chair across from them. “You invited me to my anniversary dinner to meet your pregnant girlfriend?”

The woman’s expression tightened.

“Camille, please.”

That tone.

I’d heard it countless times during our marriage. Camille, please usually meant Don’t make this more uncomfortable for me than my behavior has already made it for you.

I walked to the table and pulled out the chair.

“Okay.”

Grant blinked. “Okay?”

“You assembled the meeting. I’m assuming you’ve prepared an agenda.”

The woman looked at him. Grant rubbed his jaw, and for the first time I noticed the heavy cream folder lying between us.

My name was typed across the front.

CAMILLE MONROE WHITMORE

There it was.

Grant pushed the folder toward me. “I think we both know things haven’t been good for a long time.”

I opened it.

Seven years of marriage reduced to approximately twelve ounces of paper.

“How long is a long time?”

“Camille.”

“No, I’m curious.”

His eyes flicked toward the woman beside him before returning to me.

That answered part of my question.

“This doesn’t need to become ugly,” he said.

I almost smiled. There are certain sentences people use after they’ve already done something ugly but would prefer that your reaction remain aesthetically pleasing.

That was one of them.

The petition had already been filed.

Of course it had.

I read through the proposed property division. The Highland Park house to me. His company interests to him. Separate accounts retained by each party. Mutual waiver of spousal maintenance. Confidentiality. Non-disparagement.

Then I reached Whitmore Technologies.

All ownership, appreciation, proceeds, distributions, and future interests associated with Whitmore Technologies, Inc. shall remain the sole and separate property of Grant Whitmore.

I read the provision twice before looking up.

“You’ve had lawyers working on this.”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“Does that matter?”

“It matters to my billing curiosity.”

His mouth tightened. Apparently divorce hadn’t improved his sense of humor.

“About six weeks.”

Six weeks.

The bracelet disappeared three weeks ago. The woman across from me looked perhaps four months pregnant.

It was an impressively efficient timeline of humiliation.

“I don’t want to leave you with nothing,” Grant said.

That got my attention.

He offered me the house and another two hundred fifty thousand dollars, speaking carefully, as though he had spent considerable time determining what constituted generosity.

What he apparently had not spent time doing was checking the county records.

The house had no mortgage. I’d paid it off two years earlier from my personal account.

My husband was offering me property I already owned.

Vanessa—according to the place card beside her—raised her eyebrows slightly when Grant mentioned the money. She thought a quarter million dollars was substantial.

Grant thought it was substantial.

Neither of them knew the painting hanging behind my desk at home was worth more.

That had always been the peculiar thing about Grant. He knew my family had money. He simply had no idea how much.

When we met, Monroe Capital wasn’t something I discussed. I’d learned early that people behaved differently once they discovered what my grandfather had built, and Grant had fallen in love with me before he knew any of it.

By the time he learned my family was “comfortable,” as I’d described it, I had already fallen in love with the fact that he’d loved me first.

So I never corrected his assumptions.

Eventually, those assumptions became facts in his mind. Camille had enjoyed a privileged childhood. Camille’s parents were well-off. Camille made a respectable attorney’s salary.

Grant was the entrepreneur.

Grant was building real wealth.

Grant was the reason we lived the way we did.

During our marriage, correcting him had never seemed important enough to justify keeping score.

Tonight, I found myself reconsidering that decision.

“I think it’s fair,” he said.

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

I turned toward Vanessa. “And what do you think?”

Her head snapped toward me.

“She isn’t part of the settlement,” Grant said.

“She appears to be part of the marriage.”

“Camille—”

“No.” Vanessa’s voice was quieter than I expected. “It’s okay.”

She looked directly at me.

“I know you hate me.”

“I don’t know you well enough to hate you.”

She flinched.

“I never wanted this to happen this way.”

My gaze dropped to my grandmother’s bracelet. “Which part?”

Her hand instinctively covered it.

Grant sighed. “I gave her the bracelet. I didn’t know it belonged to your grandmother.”

I believed him, which somehow made it worse. He had taken jewelry from my safe without knowing what it meant.

Vanessa immediately began unclasping it.

“I didn’t know,” she said.

“I believe you.”

Her fingers stopped.

For the first time that evening, I saw something in her expression that didn’t fit the story I’d constructed the moment I walked through the door. There was no triumph there, and very little of the smugness I’d expected from a woman attending another woman’s anniversary dinner while carrying her husband’s child. What I saw instead was shame, raw and uncomfortable enough that I believed that, whatever Vanessa had done, she hadn’t known everything.

She held the bracelet toward me.

I accepted it. “Thank you.”

Then I looked at my husband.

Seven anniversaries, two houses, countless Sunday mornings and a thousand small private jokes stood between us. There had been harder things, too, including the pregnancy we’d lost and the grief we’d once believed had brought us closer. All of it belonged to a life that, until twenty minutes ago, I still thought we were living together.

Grant stared at me as though he’d never seen me before.

The unsettling thought occurred to me that perhaps he hadn’t.

“Do you have a pen?” I asked.

His brow furrowed. “What?”

“A pen.”

“You don’t have to decide tonight.”

“Apparently you’ve had six weeks. I don’t see why we both need them.”

Concern finally appeared in his expression.

He’d expected tears. Questions. Negotiation. Maybe even begging.

My calm frightened him.

Good instinct.

He handed me his Montblanc.

“You should have your lawyer review this.”

“I am a lawyer.”

“You know what I mean.”

I did. He meant a divorce lawyer.

Ordinarily, I would have agreed.

But Grant had overlooked something important. For eleven years, I’d been reading contracts for a living.

For seven, I’d been reading him.

I signed.

“Camille, wait.”

I dated the agreement and slid it across the table.

He stared at my signature. He should have looked relieved.

Instead, he looked terrified.

I stood.

“There will be transition issues with the company,” he said quickly. “You’ve handled a lot of our legal work informally. We could discuss a consulting arrangement.”

I stared at him.

Then I laughed.

“You’re divorcing me and asking whether I’ll keep working for you?”

“I’d compensate you.”

Of course he would.

Grant had apparently managed to reduce our entire marriage to a series of transactions.

I slipped his pen back into the breast pocket of his jacket.

“Take good care of him, Vanessa. He’s considerably more expensive than he looks.”

Then I walked out.

I made it through the restaurant, past the valet and into my car before the first tear fell.

Once it did, the others came without dignity.

I cried because being powerful didn’t make betrayal painless. I cried because knowing Grant had underestimated me didn’t mean I hadn’t loved him. Seven years didn’t disappear because someone signed the last page of an agreement.

Eventually, though, the tears stopped.

They always do.

I wiped my face and opened my phone. For several seconds, I stared at a contact I hadn’t called in nearly nine years.

JULIAN CROSS

My thumb hovered over his name.

No.

Not tonight.

There was someone else I needed first.

My aunt Evelyn answered on the second ring.

“Camille?”

“Grant filed for divorce.”

Silence.

Then, “That stupid son of a bitch.”

Despite everything, I laughed.

“Where are you?”

“Outside Laurent.”

“I’m sending a car.”

“I have my car.”

“I wasn’t asking.”

That was Evelyn.

“There is something else,” I said. “Whitmore’s financing round. Has the investment committee approved the extension?”

Her silence changed.

Monroe Capital had invested in Grant’s company three years earlier through one of its subsidiaries. Grant knew an institutional investment fund had backed him.

He did not know precisely whose money was behind it.

My grandfather had insisted upon that arrangement. Family and business, he’d always said, made dangerous roommates.

“Monday’s meeting is final,” Evelyn said. “Why?”

“Don’t approve anything before I get there.”

“Camille.”

“Yes?”

“You’ve never attended an investment committee meeting. You’ve never exercised your voting interest, and you’ve spent almost ten years telling us you want nothing to do with Monroe Capital.”

I looked back at the restaurant where my husband was presumably explaining to his pregnant girlfriend why his wife had signed away seven years without a fight.

“That was yesterday.”

My aunt was silent for a moment.

Then she understood.

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll see you Monday.”

“Camille?”

“What?”

Amusement had crept into her voice.

“You might want to dress nicely.”

“Why?”

“Outside counsel is presenting the Whitmore file.”

My fingers tightened around the steering wheel.

I already knew.

Still, I asked.

“Who?”

Evelyn laughed softly.

“Julian Cross.”