CHAPTER 4

Adrian's POV

My assistant found me in my office at 8:47am with coffee in one hand and a lawsuit in the other.

“Mr. Lancaster. These were delivered via a personal service.”

I didn’t even look up from the Northport Harbor acquisition papers. “Leave them on the desk.”

“Sir. They're divorce papers.”

That got my attention. I looked up and took the envelope. Hurriedly, I tore the envelope and brought out a thick expensive paper with my name typed clean across the front.

I laughed once. “Is this supposed to be a joke?”

“It’s signed by her counsel,” my assistant said carefully. “And there’s a penalty clause. If you don’t sign within seven days, you forfeit all claims to shared assets and Lancaster Holdings goes into immediate liquidation to cover marital debt.”

I flipped it open to page three, it confirmed what my assistant had just said.

My jaw tightened. “She can’t do this.”

“She did, sir.”

I tossed it aside. “Fine. I’ll deal with it after the summit.”

Because everything else was going well.

Northport Harbor was mine. The board was happy. Our Q3 projections were the best in five years. Investors were calling me a genius again.

Vivian leaving didn’t fit the narrative.

Just because I'd made a mistake that night and she lost the pregnancy, she was filing for a divorce.

I furrowed my brow in displeasure and was about to scrunch the paper when I thought about the penalty that followed if I didn't sign them.

"She'll come to her senses soon. She loves me too much to leave me." I said with an air of confidence and placed the paper on the table.

I picked up my phone and tried dialing Vivian's phone number. It rang for a long time before I ended the call and redialed, this time, it didn't go through at all.

Something inside my chest tightened. Irritation settled inside my gut.

I immediately informed my assistant to hire the best investigation team to look for Vivian. She had moved away from the city now her phone number wasn't going through.

She thinks she can just dissolve this marriage from wherever she's hidden but I was going to prove her wrong.

Few hours later, my assistant reported back to me.

Vivian was being shielded currently by her and his security network was ironclad.

The investigators I had hired found nothing on her at all.

They hit dead ends everywhere they turned, reporting back to a furious me that she had completely vanished into an impenetrable fortress of privacy.

**********

That night was the Annual Northport Tech Summit.

The convention center ballroom was all crystal and champagne and people pretending they weren’t here to network.

I walked in looking exactly like I was supposed to: tailored suit, clean shave, smile in place.

Lancaster Enterprises was still the name on everyone’s lips.

I was halfway through a conversation with two investors when I spotted Vivian standing across the crowded lounge.

Something inside my brain snapped the moment I saw her protruded belly.

I pushed past a group of startled tech executives, shoving people roughly out of my way as I marched straight toward her. My breathing was heavy, my face twisted into an ugly mask of pure desperation and rage.

"Vivian!" I hissed, stopping right in front of her, blocking her path.

I didn't care that people were watching. I didn't care about my precious pride anymore. I leaned in close, my voice shaking with furious energy.

"Is this the reason you served me the divorce papers?! You're still married to me and you had the guts to carry another man's child?!" I barked at her, pointing a shaky finger at her stomach.

"Tell me. Who is the father of that child you're carrying?!" I could barely contain my rage as I asked.

She didn't flinch at my rage, she didn't even step back an inch.

Instead, she slowly raised her glass to her lips, took a quiet, elegant sip of her sparkling water, and looked down at me with eyes as cold as winter ice.

"You spent years playing chess with paper money, Adrian," she whispered back in a calm and collected tone that cut through the noise of the room like a sharp blade. "You were so busy looking down at the board that you completely forgot who owned the house."

My face went entirely pale. My hands curled into tight fists at my sides, and a dangerous, desperate look flashed in my eyes.

I raised my arm, my fingers clawing outward as if I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake the truth out of her right there in front of hundreds of people.

Before my fingers could even touch the fabric of her sleeve, a sudden, heavy presence filled the space beside her.

A tall, imposing man stepped smoothly out of the dim shadows of the lounge. Without a single word, his hand settled firmly onto her waist, pulling her slightly behind him as a protective shield against my rage.

That man was Damien Cross, my arch nemesis.