Chapter 1

Livia Solene

My jaw practically unhinged, dropping so low I thought it might shatter against the cold marble floor of our Manhattan penthouse. A trail of crumpled fabric lay strewn across the entryway. It’s Vincent’s expensive designer slacks tangled shamelessly with a lacy, crimson thong that definitely didn't belong to me.

My gaze drifted up, following the pathetic breadcrumb trail of clothes toward the kitchen. I let out a dry, humorless breath, shaking my head so hard my long black hair whipped against my shoulders. 

Again. Four years of this suffocating, gilded cage, and he couldn't even bother to activate the alarm to be alerted when someone entered in the middle of his sex with another of his mistresses.

I didn't hesitate. My heels padded silently across the tile floor until I reached the kitchen archway, the sound of rhythmic, disgusting wet slapping echoing off the pristine marble countertops.

“F*ck, you’re so tight, babe! Unlike my wife.”

Ice flooded my veins, turning my green eyes pitch black. I leaned my hip casually against the doorframe, crossing my arms over my chest.

“Oh, sorry that I am not tight enough for you,” I said, my voice dripping with lethal, effortless authority. “But why blame me? Not your small dick, my dear husband?”

I let out a sharp, mocking laugh that cut right through the heavy air. His secretary, who had some fresh-faced twenty-year-old playing dress-up, instantly scrambled off the counter, her face turning the color of a bruised tomato, soaked in absolute shame as she tried to pull her skirt down.

“See? She’s not even moaning,” I added, rolling my eyes before turning my heels on them.

I marched straight up the grand staircase, my heels clicking like gunshots against the steps, heading straight for the master bedroom and our massive walk-in closet. I yanked my giant hardshell luggage off the top shelf, dropping it with a loud thud onto the floor, and popped the latches. 

I was done. Completely, irrevocably done. I needed oxygen. I needed to breathe air that didn't smell like his cheap lies.

This entire marriage was a joke. I had married him at twenty-one because my controlling, high-society parents drilled it into my skull that he was the ultimate catch. His tech company had been a rising blip on the radar back then, but the Feroci family name? We poured our money, our connections, and our blood into pushing him straight into the top five corporations in New York.

“What the f*ck was that, Livia?!” Vincent’s frantic, booming voice shattered my thoughts as he stormed into the walk-in closet, already hastily buttoning his dress shirt.

“You should ask yourself about that and not me,” I snapped back, not even looking at him as I started aggressively grabbing fistfuls of clothes from the racks and throwing them into the suitcase.

“Why are you even here?!” he yelled, throwing his hands up like I was the criminal here. “You are supposed to be at a fashion show watching models and wasting my money—”

“Your money?” I cut him off, spinning around to face him, my eyes blazing. “Or my money? You are not where you are right now without me, Vincent. Without my family! I wasted my twenties with you! Who cleaned up your messes every single time photos of you cheating leaked to social media? Me! I kept this sham of a marriage and your precious career afloat all by myself!”

His face flushed a mottled, ugly red, his bloodshot eyes darting around because he couldn't form a single counter-argument. Because it was the raw, undeniable truth.

“I just have one rule, Vincent! Don’t let your dirtiness come to my house!”

“It’s your fault! You’re never good enough for me!”

There it was. The inevitable, pathetic gaslighting. The classic script where he turns his depravity into my failure as a wife. He forced me to give up my own career, forced me to play the dutiful stay-at-home trophy wife to protect his image, and then punished me for suffocating in the role.

“You always act like you are—”

“I am done with this conversation.” I grabbed the heavy zipper and yanked it shut, crushing the unfolded clothes inside.

I hauled the luggage off the floor, snagged my designer purse, and shoved past him out of the room.

“Where do you think you are going, Livia?!”

I didn't give him the satisfaction of an answer. I moved fast, my heels hitting the hallway floor until I reached the private elevator. The secretary was nowhere to be seen, probably scurrying out the back. I slammed my finger against the down button. Just as the heavy metal doors began to slide shut, Vincent’s panicked, furious face appeared in the gap.

Without breaking eye contact, I slowly raised my right hand, extended my middle finger right into his face, and let out a slow, poisonous smirk.

When the elevator chimed and opened to the lobby, I practically glided across the polished floor, catching the doorman's attention. “Get me a cab, please.”

I didn't have to wait long. A yellow taxi pulled up to the curb, and the driver hopped out, hauling my heavy luggage into the trunk. I slid into the backseat, the leather cool against my bare legs.

“Let’s go to the airport.”

My fingers flew across my phone screen, pulling up the airline app to search for the fastest way out of this place. My smirk widened into something sharp and reckless when my eyes locked onto an available flight to San Diego, California. Thousands of miles away from Vincent’s cheating hands. Thousands of miles away from my parents, who cared more about a wedding ring than their own daughter’s pulse.

Even if it was just for a few days, I needed this. I needed to run, or I was going to lose my damn mind and end up locked in a psychiatric ward because of my cheating husband.