CHAPTER 4

Selene's eyes stayed fixed on the document lying on the desk.

DIVORCE AGREEMENT.

She stared at it for several seconds, her mind refusing to catch up with what she was seeing. Her ears were ringing. This had to be a mistake.

Slowly, she looked up at Damien.

He looked completely calm, like he was waiting for her to finish reading a memo so they could move on with the evening.

"What is this?" she asked quietly.

"You can read," he said.

The words hit her like a closed fist. She swallowed. "You're divorcing me?"

He leaned back in his chair. "Aurora is back. And as you know, this marriage only happened because of my grandmother." He said it plainly, like he was explaining something she should have already understood. "There's no reason to keep pretending."

Pretending.

Three years. Three years of loving him, of learning him, of folding herself around his coldness and telling herself it was temporary. Three years of lying awake after he left her room in the dark, convincing herself that a man didn't keep coming back to someone he felt absolutely nothing for. And the word he chose for all of it was pretending.

"You think I was pretending?" she asked, her voice catching despite herself.

He looked away. "Selene"

"No." Her voice broke. "Answer me honestly. Were the last three years completely meaningless to you? All of it — did none of it matter?"

He didn't answer. He didn't have to.

Tears gathered in her eyes and she hated herself for it. Hated that she was standing here crying in front of him, giving him even more proof of how completely she had handed herself over to someone who never wanted her.

But she wasn't ready to walk out. Not yet.

"Damien, please." She stepped closer to the desk, her pride crumbling faster than she could hold it together. "If this is because Aurora just walked back in, at least give yourself time to think. Give us time"

"There's nothing to think about," he said, his jaw tight.

"How can you say that?" Her voice rose before she could stop it. "We have been married for three years."

"And I have never loved you." He said it quietly, but clearly. No apology in his eyes.

The room went completely silent.

Selene felt the words go through her like cold water. She knew it was true — she had always known, somewhere underneath all the hoping — but hearing it said out loud like that, so simply, so cleanly, made it something she could no longer argue with or soften or reframe.

Still, some desperate, exhausted part of her refused to let go.

"What if we started over?" she whispered. "We could go somewhere, just the two of us. Actually spend time together, give this a real chance. We've never even tried, Damien. Not really."

Something moved across his face. Just for a second — a flicker of something uncertain, something almost human. Then it was gone.

"You're making this harder than it needs to be," he said.

Those words. That was what she was to him — a complication. Something to be managed and resolved.

Her gaze dropped. Her hand drifted without thinking to her stomach.

The baby.

The thought moved through her like a current. She was carrying his child. If she told him right now — if she pulled out that report and laid it on top of the divorce papers — would it change anything? Would he stop? Would he finally look at her and see something worth staying for?

The words sat right there on the tip of her tongue.

Then the study door swung open.

"Baby?"

Both of them turned.

Aurora stood in the doorway wearing a red silk nightdress, her silver-blonde hair loose over her shoulders, looking like she'd stepped out of somewhere she had always belonged. Her eyes moved between Selene and Damien, and a small, uncertain smile appeared on her lips.

"Am I interrupting something? I've been waiting for you in the room."

The master bedroom. The room that Damien had shut her out of since they got married.

Aurora seemed to catch herself and brought a hand to her mouth. "Oh God, I'm sorry." She looked genuinely embarrassed. "I didn't mean to"

But Selene wasn't looking at Aurora anymore. She was looking at Damien, waiting, silently begging him to say something. To tell Aurora she was mistaken. To say something, anything — that would mean she hadn't completely lost this.

He said nothing.

And in that silence, something inside Selene stopped. Like a clock that had finally wound all the way down. Because she understood now, with a clarity that was almost peaceful in how complete it was, that this was never going to be what she had wanted it to be. Aurora wasn't the reason Damien was ending this marriage. Aurora was simply proof that he had never wanted this marriage at all.

Slowly, Selene reached out and picked up the pen. Her hand was shaking. The tears were falling and she had stopped trying to hold them back because there was no point anymore.

She looked at the signature line for a moment.

Mrs. Selene vance

A name she had carried with pride. A name she had worked every single day to deserve.

She signed it.

The sound of the pen moving across the paper was the only sound in the room. When she finished, she set the pen down, pushed the papers back across the desk, and looked up at him one last time.

"There," she said. Her voice came out hollow and strange, like it was coming from somewhere far away.

Damien glanced at the signature. Something shifted briefly in his expression — what it was, she couldn't say, and she was too tired to try to read him anymore.

The tiny white baby shoes and the ultrasound report sat exactly where she'd placed them that afternoon, full of a hope that felt like it belonged to a different lifetime. He would never see those shoes. He didn't even know the child existed. And standing here now, looking at him sitting behind that desk with Aurora in the doorway behind her, she made the decision quietly and without drama.

He wasn't going to find out. She walked toward the door.

"Selene." Damien called out coldly

She stopped. Against every instinct she had left, hope flickered one last time.

"You'll be compensated generously," he said.

A slow, bitter smile crossed her lips. Of course. That was his closing statement. The assurance that she would be paid for her time and could now go quietly.

She didn't respond.

She walked out, pulled the door shut behind her, and stood in the hallway in the dark.

For the first time in three years, she stopped waiting for him to change his mind.

Selene walked out of the study without another word, pulling the door shut behind her. She stood in the hallway for a moment, staring at the door. On the other side of it was the man she had loved for three years. The man she had waited for, prayed for, quietly fallen apart over more times than she could count. The man who had just slid a divorce agreement across his desk like he was wrapping up a business transaction.

Her eyes burned. She blinked the tears back hard and forced herself to walk

She made it halfway down the corridor before her legs slowed on their own. There was a large window there that looked out over the estate gardens, and she stopped in front of it without really meaning to. The fountain below was lit up, glowing gold in the dark. The grounds looked exactly the way they always did.

A short, broken laugh escaped her before she could stop it.

This morning she had left this house as his wife. Tonight she was leaving as something he wanted to erase. And he didn't even know — he had no idea that while he was sitting in that study handing her divorce papers, she was carrying his child.

The tears came then, slow and quiet, and for once she didn't rush to wipe them away. She was tired. Tired in a way that went deeper than anything sleep could fix. Tired of making herself smaller so he could be comfortable. Tired of reading kindness into his silences and hope into moments that meant nothing to him. Tired of loving someone who had looked her in the eye tonight and told her, without blinking, that he had never loved her back.

The thought hurt. But underneath the hurt was something else — something quiet and steady that she hadn't felt in a long time.

Clarity.

She had spent three years waiting for Damien to choose her. Tonight he had finally made his choice. And for the first time, she was going to make hers.

She pulled out her phone and stood there for a moment just looking at the screen. There was a contact she hadn't called in years. Not because the person wasn't important to her, but because she had convinced herself she was fine. That she had a husband and a home and a life she was building, and she didn't need to reach backward for support. She understood now how wrong she had been about all of that.

She pressed call before she could talk herself out of it.

It rang twice. Then the line opened, and for a second neither of them said anything.

"Selene?"

Just her name, but the familiarity of it — the way that voice wrapped around it like it actually mattered — made her chest ache all over again.

"It's me," she said.

"What's wrong?" The voice asked.

She swallowed hard and leaned her forehead lightly against the cold glass of the window. "I need a favor."

"Selene." The voice was serious now. "Tell me what happened."

"I can't get into it right now," she said quietly. "Not tonight. I just — I need you to come get me tomorrow morning."

The silence that followed was long and careful. The kind that meant the person on the other end understood that whatever had happened was serious, and that pushing for details right now would only make things harder.

"Are you sure?" they finally asked.

She looked back down the hallway toward the study. Toward the closed door. Toward everything she had poured herself into for three years and received almost nothing back from.

"Yes," she said. "I'm sure."

Another pause. Then, gently, "Does this mean you're finally ready to come home?"

The word stopped her completely.

She had called this mansion home for three years. She had told herself that if she was patient enough, warm enough, loving enough, it would eventually feel like one. Standing here now, she couldn't believe how long she had believed that.

"Please," she said, her voice dropping to just above a whisper. "Just come."

She heard a slow exhale on the other end. Then, "I'll be there first thing in the morning. Get some rest."

The call ended.

Selene lowered the phone and stood there in the quiet hallway for a long moment, her heart still unsteady in her chest. She pressed her free hand against her stomach — a small, instinctive gesture she was already getting used to.

Tomorrow everything would change. But What she didn't know was that the person on the other end of that call was the last person Damien Vance would ever expect to see pull up to his gates.