Chapter 1
The Papers That Shattered Everything
One Last Kiss Before I Ruin You
The candles had been burning for two hours.
Sophia stood at the dining table and moved the same fork for the third time. The penthouse smelled like roasted garlic and the wine she'd opened too early. Their song — the slow jazz one from their first night together — drifted through the speakers and into all that empty space.
She pressed her hand flat against her stomach.
Breathe. Just breathe.
The pregnancy test was tucked inside her clutch, wrapped in a silk handkerchief. She'd taken it four times in four different bathrooms because she hadn't trusted herself to be alone with the result in their home. Four pink lines. All of them screaming the same word.
Tonight. She would tell him tonight. And maybe — maybe — tonight would be the night Damian Voss finally said the words she'd been starving three years to hear.
The elevator hummed.
He walked in the way he always did. Like the room owed him something. Black suit, no tie, jaw set hard, dark eyes scanning the penthouse the way security scans a room for threats. He stopped when he saw the table. The candles. The two glasses of wine and the good china she'd dragged out of the cabinet she'd never been allowed to use before.
Something moved across his face. Not warmth. Something closer to pity.
"You didn't have to do this," he said.
"It's our anniversary." Sophia smiled, even as her fingertips went cold. "Three years today."
He didn't smile back.
He reached into his jacket.
The envelope landed on the white tablecloth between the candles and the wine glasses with a soft, papery slap that was somehow louder than anything she'd ever heard in her life.
She looked at it.
Divorce Petition — Voss v. Reed.
"The contract is fulfilled." His voice was even. Practiced. Like he'd said these words to himself in the mirror until they stopped feeling like anything. "My lawyers have been thorough. You'll receive the settlement we agreed on at signing."
Her wine glass was in her hand. She didn't remember picking it up.
"Damian—"
"I'm marrying Victoria Harmon. The announcement goes out in sixty days." He loosened one cufflink without looking at her. "It's been arranged."
The candles blurred at the edges.
"You were never more than convenient, Sophia." He said it like a footnote. Like the period at the end of a sentence he'd already written. "You knew that from the start."
She set the wine glass down before she threw it.
Her hands were shaking when she opened her clutch and pressed the pregnancy test flat on the table between them.
Four pink lines.
Silence.
He looked at it for a long moment. Long enough that she thought — hoped — something might crack in that controlled, beautiful, terrible face of his.
Then he laughed.
Not cruelly. That would have been easier. It was empty. The laugh of a man who had already decided everything before he walked through the door.
"Get rid of it."
Three words. She heard each one drop like something heavy into deep water.
"Damian, please—"
He moved so fast she had no time to step back.
One moment the table was between them. The next, her back hit the marble wall, his hand gripping her jaw, tilting her face up, his body warm and solid against every inch of her — and nothing cold about him now. His eyes burned with something she had no name for. Something desperate and furious and starving all at once.
"One last taste," he breathed against her mouth, "of what's mine."
Then he kissed her.
Not gently. Not the way husbands kiss their wives on anniversaries. The way a man kisses something he's losing and hates himself for losing it. His other hand slid up her thigh under the silk of her dress and she gasped against his lips — and her body didn't wait for permission. Three years of cold nights and empty beds and he is never going to love you, and her body kissed him back like it had been waiting to burn.
He pulled away breathing hard. His forehead nearly touched hers.
* * *
Her palm hit his cheek before she even knew she'd moved.
The crack of it bounced off the marble walls. His head turned with the impact. He didn't look at her.
Sophia grabbed her clutch. She walked past him. Through the lobby. Through the revolving door.
Cold New York rain hit her face the moment she stepped outside, soaking through her silk dress in seconds, and she stood on the sidewalk and let it.
Three years. One dinner. One positive test.
Four words: Get rid of it.
She pressed her hand against her stomach again, rain running down her wrist, and stared up at the black Manhattan sky.
Her lips were still burning.
She wasn't going to cry.
She was going to make him pay.
