All Chapters of Too Late To Love Me : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

"Sign them, Mira. I want a divorce."Dante Russo dropped the papers on the dining table. They landed right beside the cake.Mira stared at them. She had spent six hours on that cake. It was dark chocolate, his favorite, with a tiny sugar groom and bride on top that she had shaped by hand."Today is our anniversary," she whispered."I know what day it is." Dante did not even take off his coat. "My father signed the company over to me this morning. I'm the CEO of the Russo Group now. He can't threaten my inheritance anymore, so nobody can force me to stay married to you.""Is this about Celine?""This is about what you did on Tuesday!" He was shouting now. "You went to her building and screamed at her in the lobby. Someone filmed it, Mira. Half the city has watched my wife call an innocent woman a home-wrecker!""Innocent?" Mira's voice shook. "You pay her rent, Dante. I saw the bank transfers.""Because she has nothing! She left her whole life in Lakeport to come here with me. And then

"Frank? It's Mira. Can you come and get me?""Miss Mira?" Her father's old driver sounded half asleep. "It's five in the morning.""I know. I'm sorry. I need you to bring the car to the Russo villa." She swallowed. "I'm going home, Frank."There was a long pause on the line. Frank had driven her to school every day for twelve years. He did not ask a single question."I'll be there in forty minutes," he said.Mira hung up and turned back to the closet.Her suitcase lay open on the bed. Half the clothes in the closet had been gifts from Dante. She had kept every price tag in a box in the drawer, like they were love letters.Mira touched the white coat he had bought her their first winter. Then she let it go.'Nothing of his,' she told herself. 'If I take anything he gave me, I'll never stop looking back.'She packed only what she had paid for herself: her old jeans, her culinary school sweater, her piping tips. The suitcase was barely half full.She sat down on the bed with the divorce

"Oh, my baby. Look at you."Anne Beaumont opened the front door before Frank had even parked the car. She ran down the steps in her slippers and pulled Mira into her arms.Mira had promised herself she would not cry in front of her parents. She lasted three seconds."I'm sorry, Mama," she sobbed into her mother's shoulder. "I'm so sorry. You told me. You both told me.""Hush. Don't you dare apologize."Her father came down the steps more slowly. Laurent Beaumont was a big, quiet man with flour-scarred hands, and he had not said a word against Dante in two years. He wrapped his arms around both of them and held on."Frank called ahead. He says you brought one suitcase," he said into her hair."I only took what was mine.""Good girl."Inside, her mother made hot chocolate the way she used to when Mira was small. They sat at the old kitchen table.Mira told them everything. The cake. The papers. The photos. Celine's name at the bottom of the last message.When she finished, her father's

"Go home, Dante."Laurent Beaumont filled the doorway in a brown robe and slippers. The porch light made the old burn scars on his knuckles look white."Sir, I'm sorry about the hour." Dante's breath came out in white puffs. It was past midnight. "I need to see Mira. Five minutes.""You had two years of five minutes.""I know.""No, son. You don't." Laurent didn't raise his voice. He never had, not once in the twenty years Dante had known him. "If you knew, you wouldn't be standing on my porch in the middle of the night asking for more."Behind him, Anne Beaumont came down the last stair with a cardigan pulled tight over her nightgown. She took one look at Dante and folded her arms."She's sleeping," Anne said."Mrs. Beaumont, please. Someone erased her messages from my phone. Two years of them. She left me a letter saying she sent me something important, and I never got it. I need to know what it was."Laurent's hand tightened on the door frame until his knuckles went pale."So you f

"You look terrible, Mira Beaumont."Theo slid into the booth across from her and pushed a paper bag over the table. "Cannoli. From Dante's favorite place, which I now boycott on your behalf."Mira almost smiled."What happened to your face?" she asked, nodding at his cheek."Flying glass. Your husband's aim is terrible." He waved it away.Mira stared at the thin red line under his eye. "He threw a bottle at you?""At the table. I was standing near the table. Details.""You said you had something to tell me."The café on Harbor Street was two doors down from her father's very first bakery. It was Saturday, and the place was full of families and noise. Nobody looked twice at her."Two things." Theo took off his sunglasses. "First. The night of your anniversary, your husband smashed four hundred dollars of whiskey at the Crown Club.""Theo...""Let me finish. He was shouting because I said you were worth ten of her." He shrugged. "Then he told me if I came near you, I'd never set foot in