1.

EMILIA

The sheets had turned cold beside me.

I stared at the ceiling of Steven’s bedroom, counting the shadows the city lights made on the paint while trying to ignore the knots in my stomach.

It was 2 am in the morning. I knew because I had been watching the clock on his nightstand for the past forty minutes.

He had left right after we had sex.

That wasn’t new. Steven had always needed space after sex. He would retreat into himself like he was scared that I would ask for something he couldn’t give. Usually, he’d go to his office or the kitchen. Usually, he came back after ten or twenty minutes.

Tonight was different. It was almost an hour.

I pulled up the sheet to my chin even though the room wasn’t cold. The air conditioner hummed with a subtle buzz. Everything in Steven’s penthouse was perfect and expensive. Even the silence had a price tag.

I should go back to sleep. Pretend that I didn’t notice. That I didn’t care. After all, that was all I had been doing for the past five years. Pretending that being his mistress was enough. Pretending that one day he would wake up and realise that he loved me the way I loved him.

But I was tired of pretending.

I got up, wrapped the sheets around my naked body and walked outside the room, through the dark penthouse. The floor-to-ceiling windows showed Manhattan spread out like a galaxy below the forty-two-storey skyscraper apartment building.

I found him on the balcony.

He was smoking.

My stomach dropped as my legs froze.

In five years, I had never seen Steven Riorson smoke. Not once.

He said he hated it. Said his father used to smoke, and the smell made him remember things he’d rather forget. Things he never went on to tell me.

He stood with his back to me, wearing only his briefs. His shoulders were tense as he blew another puff.  The September air was cooler than I expected, and I shivered. But I didn't go back inside.

Steven didn't turn around, but I knew he heard me. He always knew when I was near. It was one of the things that had made me think we had something real. Stupid.

I waited. That's what I was good at. Waiting for him to notice me, to choose me, to love me back. I'd been waiting since I was seventeen years old and first saw him at that charity gala my family catered. He'd been twenty-four then, already cold and untouchable. But he'd looked at me, really looked at me, and I'd been lost ever since.

"I'm dissolving the contract." His voice was devoid of any emotion.

I wanted to say that I was surprised, but I wasn’t. I'd known this was coming since last Tuesday, when I saw the entertainment news on my phone. Bianca Lawson was back in New York after three years filming in Europe. The articles called her stunning, radiant, and ready to take Hollywood by storm.

Every photo showed her perfect face. Dark hair like mine. Heart-shaped face like mine. Wide brown eyes like mine.

I was her shadow. Her cheap replacement. I always had been. The painful truth was in every magazine cover she was in.

"When?" My voice came out steady, which surprised me.

"Tomorrow. Alexander will handle the paperwork." He took another drag of his cigarette. The ember glowed orange in the dark. "The apartment is yours for another month. After that, you'll need to find somewhere else."

One month. Five years reduced to thirty days of transition time.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted to ask him how he could throw away everything we'd built together, how he could let her waltz back into his life and erase me like I'd never existed.

But we hadn't built anything. Not really. I'd been living in a fantasy while he'd been living in a contract.

"Is it because of her?"

The question slipped out before I could stop it. I hated how small my voice sounded. How desperate.

Steven finally turned to look at me. His face was unreadable, that CEO mask he wore in boardrooms and business meetings. The mask that said nothing touched him; nothing mattered, and everything was just another transaction.

"This was always temporary, Emilia. You knew that." He said, his empty eyes boring into mine.

I did know that. The contract had been clear. Five years, with an option to renew or terminate at his discretion. Compensation provided. No emotional obligations.

I'd signed it anyway. Twenty-three years old and so stupidly in love that I thought I could change his mind. I thought if I was perfect enough, patient enough, understanding enough, he'd realise I was the one he wanted.

Five years later, here we were. My fantasy is still as real as unicorns, and Steven still the same cold man I fell for.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay?" Something flickered in his eyes. Surprise, maybe. Like he'd expected me to fight. To beg.

"Okay," I repeated before I turned and walked back inside.

My legs were steady beneath me even though I felt like I was falling. Everything felt mechanical and distant, like I was watching myself from somewhere far away.

I found my clothes on the floor by his bed. The blue dress he'd said he liked at dinner. The heels that made my feet hurt. The underwear he'd torn in his rush to get it off me.

Six hours ago, I'd thought tonight might be different. He'd texted me himself instead of having Alexander do it. He'd taken me to that Italian place I loved. He'd almost smiled when I laughed at something the waiter said.

God, I'd been so stupid.

I got dressed quickly. Steven came back inside as I was putting on my shoes. He'd stubbed out the cigarette, but I could smell it on him. Smoke and expensive cologne and the mint he was chewing to cover it up.

He just looked tired. There were lines around his eyes I didn't remember seeing before. Grey in his dark hair that hadn't been there last month.

"Emilia." He said my name like it hurt.

I looked up at him, hoping and waiting. But he didn't say anything else. What could he say? Sorry? Goodbye? Thank you for wasting the best years of your life on me?

I picked up my purse and walked to the door. My hand was on the handle when he spoke again.

"You'll be taken care of financially."

Of course. Because everything with Steven Riorson came down to money and contracts and clean exits. And there, my hope died with the last word he said.

I didn't respond. I opened the door and stepped into the hallway, and I didn't look back.

The elevator ride down felt endless. Forty-two floors of descending, each one taking me further from the life I thought I had. The doors finally opened to the lobby, all marble and gold and a night doorman who'd seen me come and go a thousand times.

"Goodnight, Ms Jones," he said, like this was any other night.

"Goodnight, Marcus."

The September air hit me when I stepped outside. Cool enough that I should have brought a jacket, but I'd left it upstairs. I wasn't going back for it.

I walked to the corner and raised my hand for a taxi. Manhattan at two thirty in the morning was never really quiet. There were still people on the streets, still lights in windows, still the city humming along like a heartbeat.

A cab pulled over. I got in and gave the driver my address. The apartment Steven paid for. The one I had thirty days to get out of.

My phone buzzed in my purse. For one pathetic second, I thought it might be him. That he'd changed his mind. That he'd realised he was making a mistake, but the hope that tried to rekindle itself burnt out like a fickle flame when I saw the name on my screen.

It was Sunny. My little sister.

You okay? Haven't heard from you today.

I stared at the message. Sunny was twenty-five, three years younger than me, and had her life together in ways I never had. She was a teacher at an elementary school in Brooklyn. She had her own apartment, her own friends, and her own future that didn't depend on a man who couldn't love her back.

I couldn't text her back. Not yet. If I did, I'd have to tell her what happened. And if I told her, it would be real.

I put my phone away and watched the city pass by through the window.

The cab dropped me off in front of my building. Steven's building, technically. He owned it. He owned everything in my life except me.

Not anymore.

The apartment was exactly how I'd left it this morning. Clean with expensive furniture that Steven's decorator had chosen. A kitchen I barely used because Steven preferred I eat with him.

It was a beautiful cage, and I'd been a happy prisoner.

I dropped my purse on the floor and walked to the bedroom. I shed the clothes like they were the cause of my heavy heart. Steven had bought every item on my body.

The sheets were cold when I climbed between them, and my head had just touched the pillows when my phone buzzed again.

Sunny, probably. Or maybe Alexander with instructions about moving out. Or maybe, impossibly, Steven.

I didn't check.

I stared at the ceiling and counted shadows until the sun started to rise. Somewhere in those hours, reality sank in. Really sank in, past the shock and numbness and into the place where it would live permanently.

Steven Riorson didn't love me. He never had. I'd wasted five years of my life on a man who saw me as a contract, a convenience, a substitute for the woman he really wanted.

And now Bianca was back, and I was nothing.

The sun was fully up when my phone rang. Not a text this time. An actual call.

I looked at the screen. Sunny.

I answered.

"Don't say you're fine," Sunny said before I could speak. "I know you're not fine. I saw the news."

"What news?"