His Promise Was Paper-Thin

Half an hour after I signed the divorce papers, I went in and terminated the pregnancy.

My phone started shrieking just as I came off the table. The anesthesia was wearing off, and the pain brought up a fine sweat all across my forehead.

I answered anyway.

Nathan's voice came through, flat and cold. "Vivian. Take your things and get out."

"Okay."

I didn't even hesitate.

Five years of marriage, and there'd been one girl after another. To keep me from getting in the way of whichever one he wanted that month, he had his secretary rent a house for me out past the edge of Northport.

He'd said, "If I want to see you, I'll call. My secretary will send your living expenses. Don't show up in front of me unless I say so."

The last time, he knelt in front of me and begged me to come back. He swore he was done with all of it, that he wanted to build a real life with me. I cried like an idiot, and I believed him. Again.

So I moved home.

A week later, a girl caught her heel in the hem of her dress at a runway show and went sprawling, and landed right in his line of sight.

I saw the way he looked at her. Something in me was screaming, but I couldn't pretend I didn't know that look. He'd fallen again.

That night, photos of him walking a model into a hotel took over every front page in the city, and I went back to being the punchline people passed around over coffee.

This one really was different. A whole year, and Nathan never got bored.

In that same year, I got seventy-eight taunting photos and videos, plus more harassing messages than I could count. Every line of them said the same thing: she wanted my place.

Until three hours ago, when he put divorce papers in front of me for the first time. "It's only for show. Be good. Don't make me angry."

I held myself together and looked at him with my eyes burning. I didn't want to sign. However he'd played around before, that document had never once appeared.

But there he was, unhurried, stroking my hair the way you'd calm a cat with its back up.

I knew what happened when Nathan got angry. It was the same thing that had happened this time — he barely had to move a finger, and every problem Bianca had went away.

So I signed. And left him one word.

"Fine."

By the time I got home, Nathan and Bianca were gone. Martha came hurrying out of the kitchen, delighted to see me. "Mrs. Cole? How did the checkup go?"

My face was bloodless. I shook my head.

I'd planned to tell him that night that I was pregnant. Plans don't always survive contact.

In the space of a few days, I'd lost my marriage and I'd lost the baby.

"I ended it." I watched the shock land on her face and kept going, quietly. "This child wouldn't have had a happy life anyway."

Before she could answer, the front door swung open.

Bianca came in loaded down with shopping bags, a dozen bodyguards behind her carrying the rest.

She wasn't surprised to see me. She settled back into my chaise, all smiles, and everything she said had a blade in it.

"Honestly, I don't get it. Nathan treats you like this and you're still hanging around. Why?

"Yesterday I said I wanted chestnut cake. He didn't even think about it — walked three miles through the snow to get it for me.

"Has he ever done anything like that for you?"

I went quiet for a second.

Yesterday was the anniversary of my father's death.

When I finally reached Nathan through his assistant, I could hear wind roaring against the phone. And I heard him say, clearly, that he didn't have time.

So that was what he'd been doing. Buying her dessert.

My fingers closed around the hem of my coat.

There was a time when Nathan loved me more than anyone in the world except my parents.

He was our driver's son. No pedigree, nothing that fit in with the other kids we grew up around. They picked on him constantly for it. He never cared what any of them thought.

He used to say, "The only person I care about is Vivian."

When I ran a fever as a child, he sat up beside my bed the whole night. When the earthquake hit, he threw himself over me and let the falling debris split his scalp open. He didn't make a sound. He just kept his voice soft and told me I was safe.

In college, after a fight, he stood outside my dorm all night in heavy snow with my favorite candy in one hand and an apology letter thousands of words long in the other.

The day we graduated was the day we got married.

At the ceremony, my father put my hand in his, and his voice was hard. "If I ever catch you turning away from her, I'll take her out of this without a second thought. She has never lacked for people willing to love her."

Nathan closed his hand into a fist and swore he never would.

He said, "I'm going to make her the happiest person alive. I'm going to drive sadness out of her life for good."

School uniforms to a wedding dress. Everyone we knew envied us.

A year in, my father died, and Dawson Group landed entirely on Nathan's shoulders. He worked himself into the hospital more than once, and it broke my heart every time.

I'd never so much as boiled water growing up. I learned to cook for him.

Every evening he came home with an armful of yellow roses, my favorite. He called them the ones that meant something.

He sat out in the yard with me counting stars.

He held me while I slept.

So when did it change?