3– I Want A Divorce

“Hello, this is the assistant of Pedro King. I saw that you had put up an article stating that Mr. Julian Black was out with his wife. As his associates, we are unaware of any such information. Might I know if you have any other details about the woman in question?”

“Pedro King?” The reporter asked. “As in Pedro King… owner of King Enterprises?”

“Absolutely,” Lena said, her voice both sweet and professional.

“Wow, this is wonderful. I didn’t expect—”

“I’m sure it is,” Lena said. “But focus. The woman. My boss would like to know who she is.”

There was a brief pause on the other end, the sound of shuffling, fingers on a keyboard. 

“Right, yes. So our correspondent on the ground recognized her actually. Her name is Rose Calloway. She’s been abroad for the past few years, modelling, and taking on some brand work here and there. She flew in about a week ago and she’s been staying at The Meridian on Fifth.”

Lena bit her finger nervously as the man spoke. Once he was done, she muttered, “Thank you. That will be all.”

“Of course,” the reporter cleared his throat, “if you’d be kind to inform Mr. King that I would love a brief interview with him to know about King Enterprises’ Q4 projections, we’d love to—”

“I’ll have a conversation with Mr. King about it and reach out to you. Please expect a call soon,” Lena said, and ended the call.

She set the phone down on the kitchen island and stared at it for a moment.

Rose Calloway.

She typed the name into her search bar and waited. 

The results came back immediately. Though Rose’s career wasn’t anything of note, she was undeniably beautiful in a way that was nearly aggressive—just the supermodel kind of face.

Lena scrolled in silence.

Then she put her phone in her bag, told the driver to bring the car around, and went upstairs to change.

. . .

Lena walked through the lobby of the hotel like she owned it. She found the hotel restaurant off the main lobby, scanned the room once, and spotted her immediately.

Rose Calloway in person was somehow more perfect than the photographs had made her out. 

Rose was seated alone at a window table, a coffee cup in front of her, scrolling through her phone with an unhurried ease.

Lena crossed the room. She pulled out the chair across from Rose and sat down.

Rose looked up slowly like she was expecting a waiter. Her face contorted. She took Lena in, one measured sweep, and something moved behind her eyes. Recognition, maybe. Or calculation.

“I think you have the wrong table,” Rose said.

“I don’t think I do,” Lena said pleasantly. “You’re Rose Calloway, aren’t you?”

“And you are?”

“I think you already know who I am. You don’t have a poker face,” Lena said with a gentle smile.

Rose set her phone down. She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms, unhurried, unbothered.

“What do you want?” She asked.

“I saw the article, Rose. The one with you and my husband,” Lena said. 

“Your husband,” Rose repeated, a faint smile ghosting across her mouth.

“Yes.”

“And you came all the way here because of an article.”

“I came here because he wouldn’t tell me your name. So I found it myself,” Lena plainly said. 

“It seems you found my location as well,” Rose said distastefully.

“I know it seems weird—”

“Does it?” Rose cut her off.

Lena almost lost her composure, but she swallowed and kept talking. “It absolutely feels weird. But I’m a very curious person and… I just wanted to see for myself…”

Rose studied her for a moment. Soft laughter bubbled out of her, though it lasted a short while. “I have to hand it to you. This is not what I expected.”

“What did you expect?” Lena raised a brow.

“Tears, maybe. A lot of screaming that I stay away from your husband,” Rose tilted her head, smiling with mockery. “You’re calmer than I imagined, Mrs. Black.”

“Do you imagine me often?” Lena asked.

“Julian mentioned you,” Rose said, and the casualness with which she said it, like Lena was a minor detail in a story that was mostly about other people, made Lena’s chest tighten. 

“Julian mentioned me…”

Rose clicked her tongue against her teeth. Once. Twice. Three times. “Does he know that you’re here?” She asked. “Does he know that his fake wife has fallen so deeply in-love with him that she hunts down every woman photographed with him.”

“I do not hunt down every woman. But you’re not every woman,” Lena gritted out. “And I am not a fake wife.”

“The contract states otherwise,” Rose declared.

Lena’s heart stopped a moment. She blinked. Again. And again. “He told you about the—”

“He tells me most things,” Rose shrugged. “We don’t really do secrets, Julian and I.”

“Except for the part where his wife didn’t know you existed,” Lena said.

Anger flickered across Rose’s face. “You knew the terms of your arrangement.”

“I knew I was married,” Lena said. “I knew what I agreed to. What I didn’t know was that you had come back. When did you get in?”

“I don’t answer to you, Mrs. Black.”

“When did you get in,” Lena asked more firmly.

Even Rose felt the shift in Lena’s demeanor. 

“A week ago,” she whispered.

“And Julian knew before that…”

It wasn’t a question. 

Rose didn’t treat it like one. She simply held Lena’s gaze with confidence.

“Look,” Rose said, leaning forward slightly, her voice dropping to an almost gentle rhythm. Almost. “I don’t have any issue with you, Lena. I never did. But don’t you think you’ve held my place for long enough?” 

“Held your place?” Lena laughed humorlessly. “You think I was holding your place?”

“Well… it is what it is,” Rose smiled, and it didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m back now. And Julian and I, what we have, what we’ve always had, that doesn’t go away just because time passed. You know that. You’re smart enough to know that.”

“You’re fucking insane,” Lena whispered.

“You’re the insane one, Lena. Marrying a man who does not love you and who you do not love,” Rose chuckled, “how pathetic does one have to be to agree to such… arrangements.”

“You’re—”

“You should leave Julian, Lena. That is if your peace of mind matters even a little to you. Because I’m not leaving any time soon.”

Lena scoffed breathily. “The person I married is yet to ask for a separation, Rose. I came to see you and ease curiosity, and I have. So have a great day.”

As Lena spoke, she stood, ready to leave with her pride intact. 

Only she was yet to stand straight when Rose spoke again. “Julian chose this arrangement because he needed someone, and you were there. But he is mine, he has always been mine. He will ask for a divorce, and when he does, you better not fight it or I’ll come at you with everything I have.”

“Everything you have?” Lena raised a brow. “Who do you think you’re speaking to?”

“A desperate bitch who married a vulnerable man for money.”

The silence between them buzzed even louder than the chatter in the restaurant.

Lena looked at her, this woman who spoke about Julian like he was a house she had left temporarily and returned to find exactly as she’d left it. What she felt wasn’t just anger, but the pain that came from having a fear confirmed so casually.

“Thank you,” Lena said.

Rose blinked. “Sorry?”

“For being honest. I value honesty a lot,” Lena said. She didn’t wait for Rose to respond before walking away.

. . .

The first thing Lena noticed when she walked into the house was Julian’s jacket thrown over an armchair, then Julian impatiently pacing back and forth.

She had barely set her bag down when he began bombarding her with questions.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“Out,” Lena said.

“Out where?” 

“Am I a prisoner in my own home now?” Lena asked as harshly.

“Rose called me,” he muttered as he prowled forward on predatory steps.

Lena’s brows twitched, her lips setting for trouble. “Did she?”

“You went to her hotel, Lena.”

“That girlfriend of yours,” Lena rolled her eyes in disgust, “she sure didn’t waste any time before running to you to tattle.”

“This is not a joke!” Julian roared.

“Don’t raise your voice at me over another woman, Julian,” Lena warned. “I let it go last night because you claimed there was nothing between you two. But now that I know for sure… don’t even start with me…”

“Lena—”

“So what if I went to see her?!” Lena’s anger bubbled over. “If you had answered my question truthfully last night, I would not have gone to those lengths! You are the liar, Julian. You’re the one who deceived me—”

“And you are the one who has gone and embarrassed yourself!” Julian countered.

Laughter bubbled out of Lena. “I embarrassed myself? Tell me, Julian, what is more embarrassing than my husband telling his ex the circumstances surrounding our marriage?”

“Lena—”

“Our third anniversary has barely just passed, Julian. And that night… you touched me differently, you were tender… you led me on… that night—”

“I was drunk,” he completed.

“I see,” Lena nodded.

“Don’t look at me like that, Lena. I don’t know what you allowed yourself to believe… but we have always had this agreement…”

“Yes,” Lena agreed. “An agreement that was meant to be kept between you and I and our lawyers. You have breached the terms of our contract by lying and by deceiving and by revealing our deal to another party.”

“That is a secondary concern, Lena. But the primary concern here is that you went to see her, and I want to know why,” Julian demanded.

“You wouldn’t give me her name,” Lena said, her voice steady even as she was anything but underneath the surface. “You stood in our living room last night and looked me in the face and told me she was a business associate. You made me feel like I was being paranoid. Like I was being embarrassing just for asking. So yes. I found her myself. And I went. And I sat down. Because you left me no other choice.”

“You always have a choice,” Julian said. “The choice was to leave it alone.”

“Leave it alone,” Lena said quietly.

“Yes.”

“While your girlfriend is trending on every entertainment page in the city. While they’re referring to her as your wife when your true wife sits and rots here at home.”

“And whose fault is that?” Julian breathes harshly.

Lena wanted to speak, but her voice cracked before her words could form and she hated herself for it. 

“How long has she been back?” She asked finally.

Both Rose and the reporter had given her answers, but she wanted to know if Julian would be truthful.

Silence.

“How long?” Lena pressed.

“That is not your concern.”

“You are my husband. Everything about you is my concern.”

“Lena—”

“How long?” she said again, louder this time, and she heard the rawness in it—the rawness she had been trying to keep underneath the surface since she walked out of that hotel lobby with shaking hands.

Julian looked at her for a long moment. And in that moment she searched his face for some trace of the man who had come home drunk on their anniversary and reached for her. She found nothing she recognized.

“A week,” he said.

“A week,” Lena repeated.

“Yes.”

“She has been back for a week,” Lena said slowly, “and you have known, and you said nothing, and you let me sit in this house and make your dinners and wait up for you and wonder what I was doing wrong…” her voice broke and she stopped, pressing her lips together hard.

“Don’t do this,” Julian said.

“Don’t do what? Feel something?” She laughed, and it was a terrible sound. “I’m sorry. I forgot that wasn’t part of the arrangement.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?” she asked. “Tell me what you meant, Julian, because I am standing here trying very hard to understand how we got here and I cannot find the thread. I cannot find the moment where I did something so terrible that I deserve to be lied to in my own home for this long. If the picture had not gotten out, how long would you have kept this from me?”

Julian’s expression hardened. “You want to know how we got here?”

“Yes.”

“We got here because this marriage was never real,” he said. “We got here because I have been patient for three years waiting for my life to begin and now it can, and I am done pretending that what we have is something worth holding onto.” 

“Julian—”

“I want a divorce, Lena.”

The room went completely still.

“No…”

“I want out,” he continued, his voice flat and final. “I want out of this sham of a marriage and I want it handled as cleanly and quickly as possible. I want both of us to be able to move on with our lives.”

Lena’s eyes brimmed. Her chin trembled. “You… you want us to move on with our lives…”

“This was bound to happen, Lena.”

“You’re cruel… and heartless…”

“And it was you who went searching for answers,” Julian retorted.

“So I should have ignored my intuition? I should have remained here and allowed myself to be lied to and humiliated by my husband and his lover?”

Silence stretched for a moment.

Then Julian stepped toward, his hardened eyes fixed on Lena’s glossy ones.

“You wanted answers, Lena, there they are. I am done with you. I want a divorce.”