Chapter 1

Sebastian's POV

I grabbed some clothes and threw them on before tossing the divorce papers onto the table.

"I just wanted to know what it felt like to separate sex from love, the way you always said you could," I said. "Turns out, I like it. So I don't need you anymore."

"Sebastian Donovan!" my wife, Madeline Brooks, called after me, her voice thick with barely contained frustration. "You spent two years losing your mind trying to get me to come back. Now that I've cut things off with him and I'm carrying your child, you're asking for a divorce?"

My hand tightened around the papers, trembling.

She'd shattered the walls I'd spent years building around myself with just a few words.

"What right do you have to say that?" I turned back to her, my voice shaking with anger. "Out of all the men in the world, you had to cheat on me with my father's illegitimate son.

"You knew his mother was the mistress who destroyed my family and drove my mother to her death, and you still slept with him on our wedding day!"

Madeline's breathing faltered.

For a moment, she said nothing. Then she clenched her jaw and asked, "Who did you sleep with?"

"You don't need to know."

I looked away, my grip tightening around the divorce papers.

"That's only fair."

After Madeline's affair ruined our wedding, I became just as obsessed with finding out who the other man was. But she watched me lose sleep and slowly fall apart, all while protecting him so fiercely that I couldn't even learn his name.

Everything changed when Nathan Donovan sent me an intimate video of the two of them on my birthday. That's when I finally found out.

The man she'd been sleeping with was my own half-brother.

A cold smile curled across Madeline's lips. "You're not going to tell me? Fine. I can find her myself."

She leaned in and roughly bit down on the hickeys covering my shoulder, deliberately leaving her own marks over them.

I recoiled from her touch as if I'd been electrocuted. Without thinking, I grabbed the vase from the edge of the table and threw it in her direction.

"Get away from me!"

Madeline was shocked. Then, she stared at me with a dark, ominous look in her eyes before slowly stepping toward me.

"Get away from you?" she repeated. "Then who do you want? That bitch you're protecting with your life?"

Her words cut straight through me.

I forced a smile, desperately holding myself together as I spoke each word slowly. "Anyone would be better than you."

"Sebastian, stop pushing me!" Her voice rose. "You hate me, but don't pretend I'm the only one who's done wrong. My hatred for you is just as strong as yours is for me."

She suddenly sank her teeth into my arm, biting down so hard that the skin split open. Blood immediately welled from the wound, staining the corners of her mouth.

A violent wave of nausea rolled through me. I shoved her away. "Don't touch me! You're disgusting!"

Madeline stumbled back, then let out a mocking laugh as though none of it mattered.

"Sebastian, when are you going to stop?" she asked. "You staged this whole performance just to get my attention. Why are you pretending otherwise now?"

"Staged it?" I repeated the words in disbelief, my fingertips turning cold.

Madeline stared at me and spoke slowly, emphasizing every word.

"On Nathan's birthday, you pretended to swallow half a bottle of sleeping pills just to force me to come home and spend our anniversary with you.

"When I got pregnant with Nathan's child, you made a scene and slashed your wrist. You nearly died and forced me to stay by your side in the hospital for an entire month."

Her eyes reddened, and the hatred in them was impossible to miss.

"And when my child with Nathan was five months along, you climbed onto the roof of a hundred-story building and staged another suicide attempt. You forced me to terminate my pregnancy so I would stay with you."

She took another step toward me.

"You've played this manipulative game over and over again. How much longer are you planning to keep this up? Because I'm done with it. I'm sick of it."

A chill spread from my spine to my heart, and my entire body began to tremble.

She remembered Nathan's child, but she couldn't remember what I looked like five years ago, when I caught her aborting our baby for Nathan and spiraled into a deep depression.

She remembered every wrong Nathan had suffered, every hurt he'd endured. But every time I broke down and begged her for help, she dismissed it as another disgusting mind game.

All the emotions I'd spent years suppressing finally exploded. I grabbed everything within reach and hurled it at her like a madman.

"Madeline, everything between us is over!"

She glanced at my deathly pale face, then contemptuously tossed the divorce papers she'd already signed at my feet.

"Sebastian, I'll be waiting for you to come crawling back and beg me to take you back."

Then, she walked away without looking back, completely convinced that I couldn't live without her.

But I picked up the papers and signed them without hesitation.

Then I made a phone call and arranged exactly when I would leave.

After all, what made Madeline so sure that I was only putting on a show this time?