Chapter 2
Chapter 2
"Ms. Ashford," came the lawyer's measured voice, "at the current pace, the earliest we can finalise everything is roughly two weeks from now."
"That's too slow. I'll double your fee. I need this done as fast as humanly possible — I need the divorce certificate in my hands before the end of the month."
The attorney sounded surprised, but quickly recovered. "Understood. I'll expedite the process."
She ended the call and walked to the massive wedding portrait in the living room.
The woman in the photograph — in a white gown, with happiness and love she hadn't even tried to hide — was being held from behind by a younger Julian, his handsome face lit with an unguarded, radiant joy.
That was them at their most in love. The version of themselves she'd once believed would last forever.
Lily lifted her hand and traced the cold glass of the frame, tracing the face of the girl inside who'd had eyes for no one but Julian Sterling.
Back in high school, Julian had been infamous — the school's resident bad boy. Gorgeous, reckless, quick to fight, always surrounded by a crowd of followers. The kind who gave teachers migraines and made half the student body secretly swoon.
She was the opposite. Straight-A student, consistently ranking in the top three of her year. The kind of girl countless boys admired from a distance but never dared approach.
They should have been from different worlds. But Julian had decided, apparently, that she was the one.
As he'd told it: on some drowsy afternoon, he'd climbed a wall to skip class and, landing on the other side, found her hurrying past with a stack of workbooks under her arm.
One look. That was all it took.
He pursued her relentlessly after that.
He stuffed breakfast and snacks into her locker every single morning without fail. He cut class to stand outside her classroom door, just to catch a glimpse of her. When he heard a boy had written her a love letter, he had a quiet word with that boy in the bathroom. When she was on cleaning duty, he showed up with his crew and swept the whole classroom before she could. She was afraid of the dark, so he walked her home every night after evening study.
She was scared. She pushed back. Told herself they were nothing alike, that this would never work. She even set him a challenge, half-hoping it would drive him away.
"Julian, if you can rank in the top hundred in your year on the final exams, I'll consider going out with you."
She was certain he couldn't do it. But the boy just looked at her for a long moment, then gave a single firm nod. "Deal. I'm holding you to that."
Over the following months, he transformed.
No more skipping class. No more fights. He buried himself in textbooks day and night. Everyone thought he'd lost his mind.
Then the results were posted — and there was his name, ranked ninety-eighth.
He grabbed her hand and sprinted to the board. His eyes blazed. He spun to face her, voice shaking with barely-contained triumph: "Lily! I did it! You said you'd give me a chance!"
In that moment, watching the fierce, unabashed love burning in his eyes, she was lost. Like every good girl who'd ever been pulled in by the right kind of bad boy, she fell — completely, without looking back.
They stayed together from high school through university.
The trouble came when they met each other's parents. Lily's family was firmly opposed: Julian had no ambition, no prospects, no future. He wasn't good enough for her.
She argued with her parents until there was nothing left to say, then moved out — practically running — and took up residence with Julian in a tiny, run-down flat.
She still remembered that winter night. No heating in the apartment. Cold as a morgue. Julian had taken both her frozen hands in his, eyes red, voice cracking:
"Lily, I swear on my life — I will never let you down. I'll become someone worth respecting. I'll make your parents eat their words. I'll give you a good life."
She'd just smiled. "As long as it's with you, I don't need anything else."
She lived in that basement flat with him. Ate instant noodles with him. When his startup hit its worst patches, she handed over her entire scholarship fund to prop him up, and told him he could do it.
During the lowest stretch, they'd had nothing left but a single packet of noodles. He gave her all of it. He drank cold water alone all night.
Then, slowly, his company began to grow. And grow.
On the day the company went public, he stood under the lights at the New York Stock Exchange, ringing the bell, every camera trained on him. The first person he thanked was her.
He said: "Without my wife Lily Ashford, there would be no Julian Sterling standing here today."
He bought her jewels. Beautiful things. He took her to every corner of the world.
Everyone agreed: Lily was the lucky one. To have found someone like Julian Sterling — that handsome, that successful, that devoted.
She'd believed it too. The hard years were behind them. They would be happy, forever.
Except.
He started coming home later and later. The scent on his collar grew unfamiliar.
Then one day, in his car, she found a lipstick that wasn't hers.
She followed him. Through the window of a private dining room in an upscale restaurant, she watched him pull a university student — a girl whose features faintly echoed her own — into his arms and kiss her.
Scarlett Whitmore.
Her world collapsed.
She'd stormed inside, screaming, hurling a glass at him. In the chaos, he'd pushed her away. She hit the floor hard.
A sharp pain in her abdomen. Blood spreading across her dress. The baby — all of one month along — was gone.
Julian knelt at her hospital bed, sobbing, swearing he'd end it with Scarlett, begging her to forgive him.
She stared at the white ceiling, feeling nothing. But she nodded.
For the child that hadn't made it. For whatever was left of love. For the stubborn refusal to let go.
It wasn't long before she walked into his new apartment and found them together again. Still Scarlett.
She'd lunged at Scarlett — and Julian had stepped between them, catching her.
"Lily, don't. If you want to hit someone, hit me."
Scarlett cowered behind him, shaking, weeping in perfect anguish. And Lily stood there, looking every inch the pathetic, ridiculous fool.
She'd threatened to end her own life if he didn't cut things off completely. He promised. He swore on everything he had.
Then came the third time.
On the anniversary dinner she'd spent days preparing, his phone rang. He left. She followed, unable to help herself — and found him escorting a very drunk Scarlett through the doors of a hotel.
She didn't even have the energy to cry.
She went home and swallowed half a bottle of sleeping pills.
When she came back to consciousness, Julian was sitting at her bedside. There wasn't much tenderness in his face — mostly exhaustion, and a dull, barely-concealed impatience.
"Lily, can you please stop doing this?"
"I know I loved you — loved you like I was out of my mind. But maybe it burned too hot, too fast. And now… I don't think I have anything left. The feeling's gone."
"Being with Scarlett is easy. Light. New. I sometimes wonder — if I'd met her first — whether I would have ended up with you at all."
"But you've been with me through so much. I'm not heartless. I'm not going to divorce you. But I can't give Scarlett up either."
He looked at her — barely alive in that hospital bed — and said the words that killed the last thing in her:
"Going forward — could you and Scarlett… just try to coexist peacefully?"
This time, Lily didn't cry. Didn't scream. Not even a single tear.
She simply looked at him for a very long time. And then she nodded.
"Alright."
From that day on, she packed away every sharp edge. Every last drop of love, and hate, and feeling.
She became the wife he'd always wanted: quiet, compliant, as if she barely existed.
And behind his back, she quietly retained a lawyer and filed for divorce.
When she'd loved him most, she'd been a mess — paranoid, volatile, desperate, out of control.
But once that love had been bled dry, once the heart had gone cold — she'd finally found the calm to breathe like a normal person again. To live like a normal person. To wait, in perfect stillness, for the moment she could leave.