Chapter 1—The Request

“I want a divorce.”

Kael Sterling didn’t look up, his pen kept moving as he signed his name on the contract document in front of him. The deal had taken him three months to close. He barely even took in her words. They were just another thing people said in this house that he didn’t have time for tonight.

“If this is about the caterer for the gala, tell Wren to handle it. I don’t have time to pick between salmon and beef.”

“Kael.”

He looked up.

Elara Vale sat across from his desk, her back straight and her hands folded neatly in her lap. She looked as if she was waiting for a job interview instead of sitting in the house she had lived in for five years.

She was still wearing the dress from dinner that evening. Her face gave nothing away, and that was the part that got to him. After five years of marriage, he still couldn’t read her when it mattered.

He almost smiled. Almost.

“Is this another one of your tests?” he asked. “Sit there looking serious and wait for me to beg you to stay?”

“No.”

“Say that again,” he said.

“I want a divorce. I’ve already spoken to a lawyer.”

The pen stopped moving in his hand.

Kael leaned back slowly and looked at her carefully. This was not how Elara usually behaved. She never confronted him after dinner, and ever brought up lawyers before talking to him first. She always asked for things gently, the way she had been taught her whole life to ask a husband who never really wanted her.

That meant this wasn’t just a mood. This wasn’t just a bad night.

This had been planned.

“Is this about the Hamptons trip? He asked quietly. “About Serena’s family being there this year?” If that bothers you so much, I’ll tell my mother to cancel it.”

“It was never about Serena,” Elara said. Her voice stayed calm and even. There was no anger in it. “Not really.”

Kael set his pen down on the desk. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew this was the moment he should say something, ask her what was wrong, or ask her what he could fix. That was what a husband was supposed to do, even a husband who had only married for a business deal and not for love.

But the words wouldn’t come. For the first time in five years, he realized he truly didn’t know what to say to this woman.

“You’ve been unhappy,” he said instead, as if he was reading it from a report. “I know that. I’m not blind, Elara. But divorce is—”

“I’ve been patient.” She cut him off, her voice quiet and steady. “There’s a difference.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

“For five years, I never asked you where you were. I never asked why you came home smelling like her perfume. I never made a scene, not at a single dinner, not at a single gala, not at a single family holiday, no matter what I knew was going on behind my back.”

She paused. For the first time, her hands unfolded and rested flat on her knees, as if she needed something steady to hold onto.

“I told myself that was strength. Staying quiet, and being understanding. I told myself if I just gave you enough time and enough space, you would eventually notice me.”

“Elara—”

“I stopped waiting for that a long time ago, Kael. I just never told you.”

The room went very quiet. Kael stared at his wife. Something shifted in his chest that he didn’t have a name for yet, a mix of panic, disbelief, and a strange, uncomfortable respect for how calm she was being while ending the only marriage he had ever had.

“You’re serious,” he said at last. The realization hit him late.

“I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life.” Elara reached into the leather bag at her feet and pulled out a dark blue folder. The corners were still sharp, like it had never been opened until tonight. “I didn’t want to do this over dinner in front of the staff. I didn’t want to make a scene. I know how much you hate scenes.”

She slid the folder across the desk toward him. It stopped just before reaching his hand, close enough that he would have to reach for it.

Kael looked down at it. Then he looked back up at her.

Somewhere in the last thirty seconds, the woman across from him had stopped being his wife and started being a stranger wearing her face. He had no idea when that change had actually happened, maybe it had happened a long time ago, and he had just been too busy to notice.

“You had a folder prepared,” he said slowly, as if the words felt strange to say. “Before you told me.”

“I had a lot of things prepared before I told you.” Her voice stayed steady. Her eyes stayed on his. “I didn’t want any confusion about what I was asking for. And I didn’t want this to take longer than it needs to.”

Kael’s hand hovered over the folder. He thought about arguing. He thought about telling her she was overreacting, that they could talk about this like adults, that five years wasn’t something you threw away because of a bad feeling at dinner. He thought of a hundred different things he could say.

He said none of them.

Elara watched him still not reach for the folder. For a moment, the calm look on her face slipped. A flash of real emotion broke through, just enough for him to see it, before she quickly smoothed her expression back into calm.

“Everything is already prepared,” she said quietly. “You just have to sign.”