Chapter 3

I slowly released the door handle, turned, and walked out of the restaurant.

The cold night air hit me. I kept walking, with no idea where I was going.

When I finally snapped out of my daze, I was standing outside a fortune teller's shop. The wooden door was ajar.

Esme sat on the other side of the candlelit table. She didn't look the least bit surprised to see me.

She simply looked up. "Do you want to draw a card?" Her voice was rough and weary.

I hesitated, then nodded.

She drew a tarot card from the deck with a bony hand and laid it flat on the table.

The Page of Swords.

"The person you're wearing yourself out trying to save can't be saved. The thing you want most is going to come to nothing."

She tapped the edge of the card.

"Only after you get through the worst of it will you have your one chance to leave this city."

...

I walked home on legs that didn't feel like mine.

Leonardo stood outside the house in a sharp suit, waiting in the night wind. His expression was frighteningly cold.

The second he saw me, he strode right up to me and clamped a hand around my arm.

"Where were you? Do you have any idea how many men I sent out? I had them searching all over Chicago!"

The panic in his eyes was real, and for a second it threw me.

He still seemed as afraid of losing me as he'd ever been.

Then the wind tugged his open shirt aside, exposing the hickeys and scratches covering his chest.

I couldn't take my eyes off them. Whatever warmth I had left drained away.

Right. His fear of losing me was real. But his obsession with another woman, and everything he let her get away with, was even more real.

I gave him a thin smile.

"Leonardo, I just went to see the fortune teller."

Leonardo went very still.

"What... did she say?"

My eyes stung, but I forced a slow smile.

"She said we're going to go through a terrible time.

"But it'll be over soon... and after that, I'll be by your side forever."

Leonardo's face relaxed at once. He pulled me in by the waist and laughed under his breath.

"She knows how to say the right thing, I'll give her that."

I took a small box out of my pocket and put it in his hands.

"A present."

His face lit up. He took it and began picking carefully at the ribbon.

I put my hand over his.

"Open it in a week.

"A good surprise is worth waiting for."

He stopped, then gave in and laughed.

"What am I going to do with you..." he murmured. I stood quietly in his warm embrace. For a moment, it was as if nothing had changed.

No one knew that the box held a set of divorce papers.

I'd had it all planned for a while.

Once I was gone, I'd probably haunt his nightmares night after night.

Wasn't that its own way of being by his side forever?