Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 1 - Chapitre 9

Freezing rain swept through the Seaport by the time the investor meeting ended.My rideshare app showed a twenty-five-minute wait, so I stood beneath the club awning and watched the cars pull away one by one.I didn’t look for Ethan.After what happened inside, I already knew who he would leave with.A few minutes later, his black SUV slowed beside the curb.The passenger window rolled down.Ethan leaned across the console. “Aless.”I looked over.Madeline was already sitting in the passenger seat, wrapped in Ethan’s wool coat.“Fiona scared her pretty badly,” he said. “I’m taking Maddie home first.”I hadn’t asked.That was what hurt.I hadn’t walked toward his car. I hadn’t expected him to wait for me. I hadn’t even wondered whether he would take me home.But he still felt the need to explain why, once again, he was leaving with her.“Okay,” I said.His brows drew together.“You’re not mad?”“No.”I meant it.I wasn’t angry about the ride.I was standing there thinking about the man

Ethan’s hand was already on the doorknob when I came out of the study with a freshly printed folder. “Sign these before you go.”“What are they?”“Just some contracts.”The last document clearly read UNCONTESTED DIVORCE AND MARITAL SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT across the front page.Ethan didn’t look at it.Madeline called again. While reassuring her, he scribbled his name beside all eight tabs.“I trust you with contracts.” He tossed the pen onto the desk and left.The moment the door closed, I photographed the signatures and messaged Marcus.[Everything is signed. File in the morning.]Then I started packing.Three hours remained until midnight.I didn’t sit by the window or keep calling Ethan. I divided my closet into three piles: take, donate, leave.Five years of my life fit into two suitcases. Most of what remained had been bought for the role of Mrs. Cole—the clothes, the dishes, the carefully curated decorations. I no longer needed any of it, or the name that came with it.At ten, I di

North Shore’s investment pitch crashed and burned the next morning.Madeline’s deck was riddled with unverified figures. The cost estimate was off by two zeros, and she had included a competitor’s hotel in North Shore’s portfolio. The investors walked out after ten minutes.Ethan threw the file onto the conference table. “Who approved this version?”No one spoke.Madeline stood with tears in her eyes. “I made it. Aless promised to help, but she only called data recovery. She didn’t fix anything for me.”Ethan almost asked how I could do that to her.Then he stopped.The presentation was Madeline’s job. Why had everyone assumed I would clean it up?For the first time, he looked at her as an employee. Her title, salary, and credit belonged to a creative director, but whenever she failed, she cried, claimed she wasn’t good enough, and waited for someone to rescue her.“Redo it,” he said. “I want a presentable version by tonight.”She blinked. “But I’m not in a good place right now.”“Then

Ten days after returning to my family, I took my seat in the boardroom of Moretti Holdings.Five years earlier, I had walked away from my law degree at NYU, the board seat my father kept for me, and my place as the Moretti heir. I had carried one suitcase to Boston and lived under my mother’s last name while building North Shore from nothing beside Ethan.He thought I negotiated well because I was gifted. He didn’t know I had listened to men fight over ports and shipping routes at the family dinner table from the age of thirteen. By eighteen, I could make directors thirty years older than me reopen a contract.I had hidden every sharp edge so Ethan wouldn’t feel he had married a dangerous woman.[That hadn’t been love. It had been a betrayal of myself.]My father never asked why I had returned. He pushed an acquisition file across the table. “Adriatica Capital needs a chief executive.”I opened it. “Aren’t you worried I’ll run away for another man?”“Love whoever you want,” he said. “B