Chapter 1: Sign Here

"Sign it."

Roman slid the folder across the table without looking up from his phone.

Sera looked at it. Thirty-two pages. Three years. Two words.

She pulled it toward her.

He glanced up then. Just for a second. She recognized the look , he was waiting for something. Tears, maybe. Or her voice going high and thin the way it used to when they argued. He wanted the version of this where she fell apart and he stayed calm and walked away clean.

She picked up the pen.

"You're not going to say anything?" he asked.

"You already said everything." She flipped to the last page. "Two days ago. When you told Isabella you'd handled the situation." She looked at him. "I was the situation."

His jaw moved. Nothing came out.

She signed. Not slowly, not with any kind of performance. She signed the way she did everything ,like she'd decided long before the moment arrived. Then she capped the pen, slid it back across the marble, and stood.

"The penthouse is yours. I cleared my side of the closet." She picked up her bag , the old brown leather one, the one she'd had before him. "Your housekeeper Mrs. Park prefers green tea in the mornings. Not the black coffee Isabella used to send up. She won't say anything, but she won't drink it either."

Roman watched her.

"Your Thursday meetings make you skip breakfast. That's why you get migraines by eleven." She adjusted the strap on her shoulder. "I left your medication in the top left desk drawer. The prescription one. The generic doesn't work for you."

"Sera…"

"Goodbye, Roman."

She walked out.

No slammed door. No tears in the hallway. Just the soft click of her heels on marble, then the quiet sound of the front door, and then nothing.

Roman stayed at the table.

He looked down at the folder. At her signature on the last line.

*Seraphina Montague Ashford.*

He'd seen her sign things before , documents, cards, the odd form he'd pushed her way. He'd never paid attention. But she always used her full name. Every single time. Three names, written out completely, like she was making sure someone remembered she'd been there.

His phone buzzed.

Isabella.

*Is it done?*

He picked up the phone. Read the message. Then looked at the door Sera had just walked through.

He typed: *Yes.*

He set the phone down.

The penthouse was quiet in a way that felt different from usual. He couldn't explain the difference. It was the same rooms, the same furniture, the same view he'd woken up to for three years. But something about the quiet had weight to it now.

He reached over and closed the folder.

---

The elevator was empty.

Sera watched the numbers above the door. Forty-two. Forty-one. Forty.

She breathed in through her nose, out slow. An old trick. It didn't fix anything, but it gave her something to follow.

Thirty. Twenty-nine.

She was not going to cry in this elevator. She'd made herself that promise two weeks ago, when she first called the lawyer. She'd cried then , once, alone in her car, in a parking garage , and she'd told herself that was the only time. That was all he got.

Twenty. Nineteen.

The doors opened.

She stepped into the lobby and nearly walked straight into the man leaning against the far pillar with his arms crossed, watching the elevator like he'd been there a while.

Dark-haired. Tall. A jacket that probably cost more than most people's monthly rent. The kind of face that security cameras instinctively tracked.

"Took you long enough," Dante said.

Sera exhaled slowly. "I signed it."

He looked at her face for one second. Just one. "And?"

"And nothing." She walked past him toward the glass doors. "Drive me home. I have work in the morning."

He fell into step beside her. That was the thing about Dante , he never pushed. He showed up and he waited. He'd been doing it since she was nineteen and didn't know how to ask for what she needed.

"Your father's going to want to see you," he said.

The cold hit her face when they pushed through the doors.

"He can wait one day," she said.

The car was at the curb. Dante opened the door. She got in.

She didn't look back at the building. She had told herself she wouldn't, and she was much better at keeping her own promises than other people's.

The car pulled into traffic.

---

Upstairs, Roman was still at the table.

He didn't know how long he'd been sitting there. Long enough for the light through the windows to shift into something softer, the city settling into its evening version of itself.

His phone had buzzed three more times. All Isabella. He hadn't answered.

He picked up the folder again. Turned to the signature page.

*Seraphina Montague Ashford.*

He thought, for a moment, about saying her name out loud. Just to see if it felt like anything in this empty room. He didn't.

He set the folder down and walked to the window. Stood with his hands in his pockets, looking at the city below.

He had everything he wanted. The thought arrived flat and factless, with nothing attached to it.

Isabella's name lit up his phone again on the table behind him. He didn't move.

He told himself what was sitting in his chest was just tiredness. The end of something long and complicated. Normal, probably. The kind of feeling that would be gone by morning.

He was a man who trusted his own instincts. He'd built his company on them. He'd walked away from bad deals before the numbers confirmed it, and he'd been right every single time.

So he couldn't explain , standing at that window, with a signed divorce folder on his table and Isabella's name glowing on his screen , why every instinct he had was saying the same thing.

*You just made a mistake.*

He picked up his phone. Typed back to Isabella.

*It's done.*

He hit send. Stood there waiting to feel like himself again.

He was still waiting.

…