Chapter 1

Amelia's POV

The divorce papers sat on the marble counter like a death sentence.

My fingers trembled as I traced the edge of the document, unable to focus on the words that blurred behind my tears. Rain hammered against the floor-to-ceiling windows of the penthouse, each drop a gunshot in the suffocating silence. The city sprawled below us, indifferent and glittering, a thousand lives continuing while mine shattered.

"Sign it." Daniel's voice cut through the storm, cold and final.

I looked up at him, this man I'd loved with every broken piece of myself. He stood across the kitchen island, perfectly pressed in his charcoal suit, checking his watch like I was just another appointment running long. The watch I'd given him for our first anniversary—engraved with words that now felt like mockery. Forever yours.

"Daniel, please." My voice cracked. "Can't we just talk about this?"

"There's nothing to talk about." He didn't meet my eyes. "The marriage isn't working, Amelia. You have to see that."

I pressed my palms flat against the counter to stop them from shaking. The cold marble bit into my skin, grounding me when everything else felt like quicksand. "I don't see that. I see a husband who stopped coming home. Who stopped looking at me. Who…"

"You're holding me back."

The words landed like a punch. My breath caught in my chest, sharp and painful. I could taste copper on my tongue, as if I'd bitten through something vital.

"Holding you back?" I repeated, my voice barely a whisper. "I've done nothing but support you. Every late night, every cancelled dinner, every time you chose work over us—I understood. I waited."

I thought of the dinners that had gone cold, the birthday he'd forgotten, the anniversary he'd spent in Tokyo. I'd told myself it was temporary, that building his empire required sacrifices. I'd been so willing to be the sacrifice.

Daniel finally looked at me, and the emptiness in his steel-gray eyes was worse than anger. Those eyes that used to find me across crowded rooms, that used to light up when I entered. Now they looked through me like I was already gone. "That's exactly the problem. You wait. You accept. You never challenge anything. I need a partner, not a…"

He stopped himself, but I heard it anyway. The unspoken word hung between us like poison.

"Not what?" I straightened, something fierce flickering beneath my pain. "Not what, Daniel?"

He turned away, staring out at the rain-soaked city. His reflection in the glass was distorted, unfamiliar. "This isn't productive."

A memory crashed over me—three years ago, this same penthouse, Daniel spinning me around the empty living room before our furniture arrived. The space had echoed with our laughter, bright with possibility. "This is ours," he'd said, kissing my forehead. "Our beginning." His hands had been gentle then, reverent. He'd looked at me like I was the answer to every question he'd never known to ask.

I'd believed him. God, I'd believed every word.

"You proposed to me in a garden," I said softly. "Do you remember? You said I made you feel human again. That before me, you were just going through the motions." The memory was so vivid it hurt—the way he'd knelt in the roses, hands shaking as he opened the velvet box. He'd been nervous, vulnerable, real. Where had that man gone?

Daniel's jaw tightened, a muscle jumping beneath his skin. At least I could still provoke some reaction, even if it was just irritation.

"What changed?" I moved around the island, desperate to make him see me. To be more than a ghost in my own life. "Tell me what I did wrong. I'll fix it. Whatever it is, I'll…"

"You can't fix this." He stepped back, maintaining the distance between us like a fortress wall. The physical space between us felt like miles, like continents. "I made a mistake. We both did. It's better to end it now before we waste more time."

Waste more time. Three years of my life, reduced to wasted time.

My legs felt unsteady as I gripped the edge of the counter. The room tilted slightly, or maybe that was just me, my entire world knocked off its axis. "You don't mean that."

"I've already had my lawyer draft everything." Daniel pulled out his phone, scrolling through messages like my world wasn't imploding. The blue light cast harsh shadows across his face. "You'll be taken care of financially. The settlement is generous."

"I don't want your money." The words came out sharper than I intended. "I want my husband."

"That's not an option."

The finality in his tone broke something in my chest. I stared at this stranger wearing Daniel's face, speaking with Daniel's voice, and realized with devastating clarity - he was already gone. Maybe he'd been gone for months, and I'd just been too desperate, too hopeful, too blind to see it.

My hand found the pen beside the papers. It felt impossibly heavy, like it was made of lead instead of metal. Like it weighed exactly as much as three years of love and hope and wasted faith.

"When did you stop loving me?" I asked, my voice hollow.

Daniel's shoulders tensed, but he didn't turn around. "Does it matter?"

"Yes." A tear slipped down my cheek, hot against my cold skin. "It matters to me."

The silence stretched between us, filled only by the relentless rain. When he finally spoke, his words were carefully measured, deliberately cruel.

"I'm not sure I ever did."

The lie was so obvious, so painful, that I actually laughed - a broken, bitter sound. I knew him well enough to recognize the cowardice behind those words. He was cutting deep to make the break clean, and it was working.

I picked up the pen, my vision swimming. The signature line waited, innocent and damning. Mrs. Amelia Sterling. For three years, that name had meant everything. In one signature, it would mean nothing.

"I loved you," I whispered, more to myself than to him. "I loved you so much I forgot how to love myself."

Daniel said nothing. He stared out at the city he'd conquered, the empire that mattered more than the woman behind him.

I pressed the pen to paper. My hand shook so violently that my signature was barely legible, but it was there. Done. Finished. The ink looked too permanent, too final—black and irrevocable against the white page.

I set the pen down carefully, like my world wasn't ending.

"Where will you go?" Daniel asked, still not facing me.

The question came too late, wrapped in obligation rather than care.

"Does it matter?" I threw his words back at him.

This time, he had no answer.

I walked toward the penthouse door, each step heavier than the last. My heels clicked against the hardwood—a sound I'd never noticed before, now deafening in the silence. At the threshold, I paused, looking back one final time at the home that had never really been mine. The open-plan kitchen where I'd cooked meals he never came home for. The living room where I'd waited, night after night. The life I'd built had turned out to be made of paper.

Daniel stood frozen at the window, his reflection ghostly in the rain-streaked glass. For a moment - just a heartbeat- I thought I saw his shoulders shake.

But then he lifted his phone to his ear, already moving on to the next call, the next deal, the next thing that mattered more than I ever had.