Chapter 2

As I walked out of the café, my phone rang.

Harrison.

I looked at the screen. Declined. Blocked. One smooth motion.

Then I opened my email. Pinned at the top was the acceptance letter that had arrived that morning from the Royal College of Art in London.

The professor had written that he was looking forward to having me.

I touched my stomach and replied calmly: I’ll be there in seven days.

At two in the morning, I heard a Maybach engine cut off outside the front door.

“I sent my assistant to get you this afternoon. Why weren’t you there?”

He tossed his suit jacket onto the couch and loosened his tie.

“I saw your text about a car accident. But when I called, you didn’t pick up.”

He walked up to me with a kind of tired, I-know-exactly-what-you’re-doing look in his eyes. “Evelyn, you’d really make up a car accident just to get me home? I had my assistant track your phone. You were at a café around the corner.”

He sighed and reached for my forehead, the way you’d soothe a child having a tantrum. “Okay. Enough. Is the fever gone?”

I turned away, and his hand hung in the air.

“You’re angry?” His voice was low. “There really was a big acquisition this afternoon… I didn’t handle it well. Whatever you want to make up for it, just name it.”

I pushed the folder on the coffee table toward him. “I found a house I like. It needs your signature.”

He picked it up and was about to open it when his phone rang.

Natalie.

I don’t know what she said, but he frowned slightly. He hung up, flipped to the last page without reading a word, and signed.

“Next time you like something, just buy it. You don’t have to ask me.” He picked up his car keys and turned to go. “What’s mine is yours.”

Before the words had even finished, the front door had shut behind him.

I looked down at the signed Marital Settlement Agreement.

The next day, I went to the courthouse and picked up the stamped Judgment of Divorce.

I put his copy in a box I’d prepared ahead of time.

When I got home, Harrison was sitting on the couch with Natalie and Leo.

“They’re going to stay here for a while.”

He said it flatly, like it was routine business.

I nodded. “Okay.”

That made him frown. “You’re not going to ask why?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore.”

He stared at me, and there was a tension in his voice he couldn’t quite hide. “What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?”

I didn’t answer. I just handed him the gift box.

“What’s this?”

“It’s for you.”

He started to open it, then stopped, like something had just occurred to him. A smile flickered in his eyes. “Seven days from now is our anniversary.”

He closed the box and tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket. “I’ll open it then.”

I gave him a tight little smile. “Suit yourself.”

I went upstairs to pack. Last of all, I went to the safe in the study.

I pressed my thumb to the scanner, opened the door, and reached for the familiar spot.

Empty.

I tore the safe apart.

Nothing.

The only photo I had of me with my grandmother was gone.

I ran out of the study. In the living room, Natalie was sipping black tea, smiling fondly at her son.

Leo had a marker in his hand and was writing something with great concentration.

I walked over, and the blood rushed straight to my head.

My face in the photo had been scribbled solid black. And across my grandmother’s kind, smiling face, he’d written one word: BITCH.

I grabbed Leo by the back of his collar and hauled him up. “Who said you could touch my things?!”

Natalie set her cup down and came at me, shrieking, trying to shove me.

I backhanded her across the face. Hard.

“Control your brat!” I stared at her, my eyes cold as ice. “If you can’t teach him, a restraining order will.”

Leo wriggled free in terror, grabbed the photo, and ran out the door.

I went after him—and Natalie shoved me hard from behind.

My hip slammed into the sharp corner of the marble banister. A tearing, dragging pain ripped through my lower belly. Sweat soaked through the back of my shirt in an instant.

But that was the only photo my grandmother had left me.

I gritted my teeth, pushed myself up, and stumbled out after him.

Leo had already reached the koi pond in the garden.

When he saw I was about to catch him, he spun around and flung the photo away with all his strength. The second the drain swallowed it, something in my head snapped.

I dropped to my knees at the edge of the pond and shoved my hand into that cold, filthy drain without a second thought.

“Evelyn!”

Harrison ran out of the study and saw me kneeling at the edge of the pond.

He grabbed my shoulders to pull me away, and I threw him off. “Get away from me! That’s my grandmother! That’s the last picture I have of my grandmother…”

Natalie strolled over, frowning delicately. “Evelyn, stop acting crazy. It’s just an old photo. Leo’s little. You’re scaring him.”

Harrison whipped his head around. The look he gave her was so cold that Natalie took half a step back without meaning to.