All Chapters of Divorced By My Billionaire Ex, Pregnant With His Twins : Chapter 1 - Chapter 9

Olivia POVI press the elevator button twice, like urgency might make the car arrive faster, like there's anywhere fast enough.The doors open. I step inside. I press the button for the lobby, and the second the doors slide shut and seal me into that small mirrored box, alone, the thing I've been holding by main force since the doorway simply gives out.It doesn't come gently.My knees go first, my back sliding down the mirrored wall until I'm crouched in the corner of the car with my arms wrapped around myself, and the sound that comes out of me isn't crying, not at first — it's closer to something being torn, low and guttural, a sound I don't recognize as mine because I have never once let myself make it out loud, not in five years, not through every quiet cruelty that came before this one. My hand claps over my mouth too late to stop it, and I rock forward over my own knees, shaking so hard my teeth click together.I see her face when I close my eyes. Not his. Hers — calm, pleased,

Damian POVI get back to the penthouse just after ten. Olivia stands at the kitchen island in her pajamas, pushing eggs around a pan. Coffee steams next to her, and for one disorienting second I let myself believe we might actually get to have a normal morning, before I remember there's no version of today that gets to be normal.She looks up the second the door closes, and it's the first time all morning I actually see her — really see her, not just register that she's there. There are shadows under her eyes, dark enough that no amount of the concealer she usually wears has managed to hide them, like she didn't sleep so much as lie there with her eyes open counting the hours. Her face doesn't do anything I expect. No tears. No shouting. Just a stillness that's somehow worse than either, and underneath it, something tired in a way I've never seen on her before — not tired like she needs a nap, tired like something in her has been running on empty for longer than one bad night."Talia

Olivia POVThe staircase feels longer than it's ever felt in five years, each step announcing itself under the weight of a suitcase I'm dragging instead of rolling because the wheels catch on the runner and I don't have it in me to fight with luggage today. Somewhere around the fourth step I remember climbing this same staircase in my wedding dress, laughing about something I can't recall anymore, Damian's hand at the small of my back like a promise. The memory arrives uninvited and leaves just as fast, because I don't have room for it this morning. I have exactly enough strength left to get myself and three suitcases out the front door, and not one ounce more.Two maids stand near the hall table, pretending to arrange flowers that don't need arranging. Neither of them looks at me directly. Both of them watch anyway, the way people watch a car accident they're too polite to admit they're watching. I used to know both their names. This morning I can't summon either one, and the small,

Olivia POVI met Nadia two weeks ago at a café three doors down from this apartment, the kind of half-empty morning when neither of us had anywhere else to be. I'd walked in solely because the smell of espresso reminded me of nothing in particular — no memory attached, no ghost of Damian standing in the doorway of it — and that alone felt like enough of a reason to sit down. She was at the next table arguing in rapid, furious Italian with someone on the phone about a shipment of gemstones that hadn't cleared customs, and when she hung up she caught me watching and just laughed, this loud, unguarded sound that startled me because I hadn't heard anyone laugh like that in longer than I could remember."You're new," she said, in English, before I'd said a single word. "I can always tell. New people sit like they're apologizing for the chair."I didn't correct her. I probably was sitting like that.We talked for two hours that first morning, mostly about nothing — her work, some half-forme