I'm In For The Drama

Serena's Pov 

The smell of eggs hit my nostrils before I opened my eyes.

I lay still for a moment. Damien's side of the bed was empty and cool. I got up, washed my face with cold water, and looked at myself in the mirror until I felt ready. Then I walked out.

He was at the stove in a grey t-shirt, moving easy, unhurried. The table was already set. Two plates. Orange juice. He had found the fruit bowl I kept at the back of the cabinet — the one too pretty to use — and filled it.

"Morning." He turned when he heard me and smiled. That smile. The early one, warm and open, like he had nowhere else to be.

My chest did something I told it not to.

"Sit down." He turned back to the pan. "Almost done."

I sat. He plated the food and came around to set mine in front of me, and he pressed his lips to the top of my head. His hand rested on my shoulder a moment — warm, familiar — then he sat across from me and picked up his fork.

"You slept okay?" he asked.

"Fine."

He nodded. Started eating.

I looked down at my plate. Eggs exactly how I liked them. Soft, not rubbery. Pepper, no salt. Three years of small remembered things sitting in front of me, and I hated that they still landed. I hated that some part of me still received his kindness like it was real.

Maybe it was real. Maybe a person could love two things at once and destroy both without meaning to.

It didn't matter. Real or not, it had never been enough to only exist in the mornings.

"I've been thinking," Damien said, setting his fork down.

I looked up.

"About trying again." His voice was careful. Gentle. The voice he used when he wanted to sound honest. "I know it's been hard. The miscarriages. Everything. But I don't want us to stop, Serena. I want to keep trying."

Something moved through my chest. Not warmth. Something sharper. The specific, terrible ache of hearing exactly what you waited years for and knowing it arrived too late and for the wrong reasons.

He reached across the table and covered my hand with his.

"We'll figure it out," he said. "Together."

I nodded. I even managed something that must have looked like a smile because his face relaxed and he squeezed once and went back to eating.

I pulled my hand back and reached for my juice.

His phone lit up on the counter behind him. He had his back half-turned to the counter talking to someone on the side phone and the screen was facing me and I could read it clearly from where I sat.

Rose: I miss you already.🤍

I looked at it for one second. Then I looked back at his face.

He was still talking. 

Something inside me went very quiet.

*********

Damien left at half past eight.

He kissed me at the door — both hands on my face, like I was something worth holding carefully. I let him. I watched him walk to the lift and press the button and glance back once with that smile. I raised my hand in a small wave and waited until the doors closed.

Then I went back inside, picked up my phone, and confirmed the appointment I had made at six in the morning while he was still asleep.

The office smelled like fresh flowers. Lawrence's assistant showed me in and closed the door, and I sat down across from a man in his mid-forties with reading glasses pushed up on his forehead and a desk losing a war against paperwork.

I put my phone on the desk with the photos already open.

"I've brought documentation," I said. "Everything I could find."

He pulled the glasses down and went through the images without rushing. I watched his face produce different kinds of reaction. Disgust, disbelieve, pity, surprised? All of it. The way he scrolled back to the third photograph twice.

"Are you aware," he said, still looking at the screen, "that you are a signatory on the incorporation documents for Holt Meridian Properties?"

I went still. "What?"

He turned the phone to face me and pointed. My name along with my signature. A date from fourteen months ago.

"I don't remember signing that."

"You did." He set the phone down. "Most likely presented as something else. Now, let me break it down. It's ajoint financial form, an insurance document. It happens." He wasn't unkind about it. 

"But the consequence is that you hold a twenty-two percent stake in that company. Legally. "

I stared at him.

"There's more." He picked up a printed sheet from his own file.

 "The marriage contract you signed three years ago contains a standard asset-sharing clause. Any business growth occurring during the marriage is considered jointly accrued. Holt Meridian Properties was incorporated eleven months into your marriage." He paused. "It has grown considerably since."

I said nothing.

"Your husband also carries business debt partially secured against joint assets. In a divorce proceeding, that debt becomes a shared liability — unless we can demonstrate you had no knowledge of and no benefit from the borrowing." He looked at me over his glasses. "Given what you've shown me today, I believe we can argue that."

The room was quiet.

"What are you telling me?" I asked.

"I'm telling you that your husband has hidden investments, significant debt, and a company in which you are a legal stakeholder." He leaned forward slightly. "I'm telling you he doesn't know you know any of this." A beat. "And I'm telling you that the timing of how we file, what we file first, and how we sequence everything will determine whether you walk away with nothing —" he paused "— or whether you walk away with everything you're entitled to."

He held my gaze.

"If you play this correctly, Mrs Whitmore… you can ruin him."

Six months ago that word would have made me flinch. Before everything that recently happened 

"How long?" I asked.

"Six to eight weeks. Less, if he makes mistakes."

"And in the meantime I maintain appearances."

"That would be advisable."

I picked up my phone from his desk and stood.

"Then let's begin," I said.