Chapter 1 Five Days

Mia's POV

"Madam, are you sure you want to divorce Mr. Branson?"

The lawyer asked it gently, the way doctors ask if you understand the diagnosis. Rain traced slow lines down the window behind him, blurring the city into grey watercolor.

I looked down at my hands, folded in my lap. There was still a faint pink line across my palm where the pavement had torn it open. It would fade. Everything fades, if you give it enough time. That's what I had told myself for ten years.

"I'm certain," I said, and my voice only trembled a little. "I can't keep being a wife without dignity beside a husband who doesn't love me."

Saying it out loud hurt more than I expected.

I loved Kyle Branson. I had loved him since I was fifteen, from the back row of a party I wasn't welcome at, watching him laugh in his football jersey with his eyes fixed on someone else.

I had loved him quietly through college, through the years as his secretary, through three years of a marriage that existed only on paper and in the darkness of our bedroom.

The lawyer's pen scratched across the paper.

Two weeks ago, I had been happy. For one whole afternoon, I had been happy.

"Congratulations," Dr. Ray had said, "you're pregnant."

I blinked rapidly, trying to focus. Her smile never wavered as she guided my attention to the screen, pointing to two tiny dots pulsing in sync.

"Twins," she added. "You're having twins."

I had been so careful — the pills Kyle insisted on, the contract with its cold black text. Clause 6: Regular contraception required. No pregnancies permitted.

But staring at those two flickering lights, something warm and terrifying opened up in my chest, like a window I hadn't known was painted shut. Two lives. Two tiny beings growing inside me. Kyle's children. Our children.

I cried in the hospital parking lot, my forehead against the steering wheel, and I couldn't have said whether it was fear or joy. Maybe there's no difference, when you've wanted something for as long as I had wanted a family.

Would they look like me? Would they have my green eyes, or their father's dark, stormy gaze? The whole drive home, hope kept rising in me, impossible to ignore. Maybe this changes everything, it whispered. Maybe when he sees the picture. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

I should have known. Hope had never once kept its promises to me.

That evening, I stood outside his study with the ultrasound picture in my cardigan pocket. The door was ajar; lamplight spilled into the hallway in a thin gold line. I raised my hand to knock—

"You've been married three years, Kyle." Marcus's voice, lazy with whiskey. "She should be pregnant by now, right?"

I froze, knuckles an inch from the wood.

"There won't be a child." Kyle's voice was flat.

It's like standing in warm water and feeling it turn cold around you, inch by inch, while you're too stunned to move.

Marcus laughed. "True. Taylor's back in the country now — I bet all your attention is on her." Ice clinked against glass. "How was last night? A whole night of sweetness, I'd guess."

Last night I had crouched behind a parked car in an empty garage while a stranger's footsteps circled closer, my ankle screaming, my palm bleeding, my phone pressed so hard against my ear it left a mark. I called Kyle times.

He'll come. This time he'll come. I thought.

An old security guard found me. He shouted the man off, walked me to my car, and stood in the rain until my hands stopped shaking enough to drive.

Kyle's reply was waiting when I got home. One word, glowing in the dark bathroom while I wrapped my torn palm.

Busy.

Humiliation was a living thing crawled up my throat.

"So tell me," Marcus pressed, grinning audibly. "Which is better — the wife, or Taylor?"

Kyle didn't answer.

"Look at me asking," Marcus laughed. "How could a contract wife ever compare to a first love?"

I pressed both hands over my mouth so no one would hear me sob.

This is a deal, he'd said once, sliding the contract across his mahogany desk. I hope you don't have any other ideas. But I did. So I'd signed, clinging to the hope that time would help him see me differently. Three years later, that hope had proven as substantial as morning mist.

When there were no tears left, I took out the ultrasound picture and looked at my babies in the lamplight, two tiny dots, my two tiny dots.

"It's okay," I whispered, my thumb tracing the edge of the photo. "Mommy sees clearly now. We don't need him."

"All right, ma'am." The lawyer's voice drew me back. He capped his pen. "The divorce agreement will be sent to your email within five days."

Five days.

Outside, the rain had stopped. I stood on the courthouse steps and breathed, one hand resting lightly over my stomach.

Five days. And I'll be leaving him.