SEVEN

ELENA

“How dare you hurt her?” His words hit harder than any hand could. “You’re a mother, yet you’re so cruel!”

The crowd that had been staring, whispering, gawking, gone. Dismissed by him, like I was some scandal he wanted covered up as quickly as possible. Now it was just me, Damian, and Isabelle with her glass cuts and crocodile tears.

“Damian, no…” I shook my head so hard my vision blurred, denial tumbling out of me in gasps. “I didn’t touch her. I swear it, I…”

“That’s enough!” His roar shattered what little strength I had left. He looked at me as though I were something he regretted ever touching. “How could I not have realised you were such a vicious person before?”

Vicious. I wanted to laugh hysterical, bitter, humourless laughter. I was the vicious one, while he was the one who’d been parading his ex-lover around like she was his queen.

I watched him walk over and put his arms around Isabelle as if she were breakable glass.

My stomach churned, my throat burning with a mix of humiliation and despair. I wanted to shout at him, shake him, force him to look at me and see the truth, but then his hand moved, pulling a folder from under his arm. His face was unreadable, flat and cold.

The paper fluttered, landed with a soft slap.

“This is the divorce agreement.” His voice was steel, stripped of anything human. “Sign it.”

My lips parted, but no words came out. He might as well have told me I was being evicted from my own life.

And then without hesitation, without a flicker of doubt he turned. Isabelle clung to him, her face half buried in his chest, and when she turned around, a hint of a smile appeared at the corner of her mouth.

A smile that said: Checkmate.

I don’t know where the strength came from, but before he could leave me bleeding in that restaurant with only his papers for company, I lurched forward and caught his arm. My grip must have been pathetic compared to his strength, yet it was enough to stop him.

“Is it because of this,” my voice cracked, my throat raw with swallowed tears, “or because you cheated on me that you want to divorce me?”

He froze. For the briefest moment, I thought maybe I’d broken through. But when Damian finally turned around, slowly, like a storm changing direction, I realised I’d only stepped further into the eye of it.

The way he looked at me… it squeezed something inside my chest so tight I thought my ribs might splinter. My legs cramped again, a vicious reminder of the weight I carried, but I forced myself to stand tall, to not buckle beneath his stare.

“Damian…” I whispered, almost pleading.

His eyes locked on mine at last. Cold, searching and strange. As if he no longer saw his wife standing there, but some enemy who had infiltrated his home.

“Elena,” he said, voice low, dangerous, deliberate, “do you think everyone treats marriage like a joke? Do you think everyone is unfaithful to their families?”

My blood ran cold. The venom in his words sliced deeper than any accusation Isabelle could ever fling at me. My lips trembled, but I couldn’t speak.

Then he delivered the blow that shattered me.

“You’re right. I’m not divorcing you because you hurt her.” His voice cut like a blade, every syllable precise. He stepped closer, his shadow falling over me, his gaze narrowing with hatred that left me trembling. “I’m divorcing you because the child in your belly isn’t mine at all.”

The floor dropped from beneath me.

My hand involuntarily rose and hit Damian in the face. My heart could not stand hearing the man in front of me talk dirt about my child.

His eyes piercing mine, as though he were waiting, begging for some twitch in my face.

The cramps in my legs didn’t ease, they spread merciless, crawling up my thighs, my stomach, until my whole body trembled. My knees buckled, and I fell into the chair with a confused expression, not understanding what had happened or whether Damian deliberately said such words to disgust me.

Damian’s hand moved. The folder he’d been clutching hit the table with a violent smack, papers exploding into the air like a deck of cursed cards. They fluttered down in cruel slow motion, and when they landed at my feet, I wished I’d never looked.

But my eyes betrayed me. Photographs, of me—or at least, a woman who looked like me.

Her hair tangled across a hotel pillow, her face tilted at just the right angle. A strange man beside her, his hand roaming across her body, his mouth pressed too close. Pose after pose, his touch so revolting I felt bile rise in my throat. My shaking hand reached for one photo but dropped it instantly, as if the glossy paper had burned me.

“This…” My voice cracked into a scream, raw and desperate. “This is not me!”

Damian’s eyes stayed fixed on me, dark, hard, merciless.

“I don’t know him!” I cried, pointing at the stranger’s smirking face. I never did these things, I swear to God, Damian, I swear it!”

He didn’t move, didn’t even blink. His silence was more terrifying than his accusations.

“Please… you have to believe me. These aren’t real. They’re fake, they’re…”

And then his laughter cut through me.

“These photos,” he said, each word deliberate, dripping with scorn, “don’t show any signs of Photoshop.”

I grabbed the edge of the chair to steady myself, but my hand slipped against the wood slick with sweat. The room swam in circles around me, the restaurant, the smell of wine still staining the air, the divorce papers lying cruelly untouched at my side.

I looked down at the pictures again, scattered like evidence in a trial where the verdict had already been decided. My face stared back at me from the glossy paper, but I didn’t recognise her.

His eyes blazed red, bloodshot, wild like a man cornered, except I was the one suffocating in the trap.

“Do you really think that by hiding this man, you can pretend he doesn’t exist?” Damian’s voice sliced through me, low and sharp, every syllable digging into my skin. He stepped closer, so close I could smell the faint bitterness of whiskey on his breath, his shadow swallowing me whole.

Then his words dropped, cold and merciless:

“I’m giving you a chance. Explain where you were seven months ago on the Thursday night of the third week.”

The question struck me like a bucket of ice water poured over my head.

That night.

I remembered it vividly. The text message, the sudden surge of hope. A mysterious man telling me my father wanted to see me, that he was waiting for me at a hotel. My father, who I believed was still alive. My father, whom I would have crossed hell itself to find.

I went and I waited. He never came. And by dawn, I was too exhausted to do anything but collapse on the hotel bed, grief clawing at me until sleep dragged me under.

My lips trembled as I forced the words out.

“It was because of my father that I—”

“Liar!” Damian’s roar cracked like thunder, silencing me, stealing the breath from my lungs. His face twisted with fury, disbelief, hatred. “Your father died a long time ago. If you still have a conscience, don’t you dare use him as an excuse.”

I couldn’t explain the text, the meeting, the cruel absence. Not without sounding insane. Not without looking guiltier.

And so I stayed silent.

Damian’s gaze hardened, every trace of the man who once painted pink walls and roses with me gone. Tears blurred my vision, making his face a shadow.

Then his hand reached out.

For one desperate, foolish second, I thought he would pull me close, remind me he was mine, remind me I wasn’t alone in this nightmare.

But no. His fingers brushed against my cheek, rough, impatient, wiping away the hot streams of tears as though they disgusted him.

“Put away your tears,” he muttered, his voice a blade pressed to my throat. “And your performance. I won’t be fooled by your tricks again.”