Chapter 7

Eliana had lost the baby. Her body was depleted. She hadn't eaten.

The moment she could walk, she got up, hailed a cab, and left the clinic.

The digital billboards on the high street were cycling through the same images on a loop — Adrian on one knee, sliding a ring onto Serena's finger. He'd bought every screen in the city. The photographs were everywhere: the two of them kissing, laughing, radiant. Strangers stopped to look. Women sighed.

Nobody remembered that once, Adrian had bought a private island in the Mediterranean and named the pleasure garden he built on it after her.

Adrian arrived at her flat not long after, carrying a new set of divorce papers.

"Sign them. Serena won't settle down until it's done."

Eliana took the papers and signed without reading a word.

Adrian watched her. He didn't move.

"You're not going to ask anything? You'll just sign, just like that?"

"Are you playing another game? Trying to steal these back again?"

He looked at her — hard, searching, as though he expected to find something in her face.

"Eliana, tell me what you want. Name it."

Eliana didn't look up from the table.

"What do you want me to want?"

She pushed back her chair. "Let's go to the registry office right now. I want this done today."

Adrian's grip on the papers went white-knuckled. He stared at her for a long moment, then picked up a pen and added a clause to the bottom of the final page. His handwriting pressed through every layer of paper.

"One more thing — that island I gave you years ago. Serena loves it, but she doesn't want your name on it. I'm having the whole property demolished and rebuilt."

Eliana's eyes dropped to the new clause. Then she looked up and gave a very small nod.

"Fine."

"Have the final version drawn up tonight. I'll be here."

She waited.

The indifference in her face drove him beyond fury. He leaned in close.

"You're this desperate to be free of me because Maxwell Thorne's back in the country, is that it? In a rush to get to him?"

He still believed it. Even now. He had never once — not once — asked her whether any of it was true.

Eliana looked at him for a long moment, too tired for anything but the truth of how absurd this all was.

"You're right. I was never in love with you." Her voice was steady, almost bored. "Seven years ago when Maxwell walked out at the altar, I handed you the bouquet because you were standing nearest to me. That's all it ever was."

"I'm admitting it. Does that satisfy you?"

Adrian's eyes reddened. He caught her wrist — and then, suddenly, he laughed. A raw, cracked sound.

"You really are —"

"Serena." A small sound from behind them. She was in the doorway, trembling. "You're not going to back out after all, are you?"

"I'm not backing out of anything." Adrian let go of Eliana and reached for Serena instead. He pulled her through the door, down to the street, into a cab — and Eliana realised, looking down at her feet, that she didn't have shoes on.

He hadn't noticed. Or hadn't cared.

She followed them into the registry office in her bare feet.

Adrian had influence everywhere. Within five minutes the papers were processed, the divorce recorded, the certificates produced.

When they were placed on the counter, he still didn't look at Eliana. He pulled Serena to him and kissed her in the middle of the room — long and unhurried, watched by a dozen strangers who gasped and whistled.

Eliana picked up her copy from the floor where he'd dropped it and walked out.

Bare feet on cold marble. Then cold pavement. She stepped on a sharp stone and felt the skin tear, and kept walking.

A car drew up beside her.

Serena rolled the window down, pink-cheeked and radiant.

"Eliana — don't tell me a divorced woman can't even afford shoes? Do you want us to give you a lift?"

She smiled. "Oh, and tomorrow's our wedding. You should come."

Eliana shook her head. "Thank you. I wish you both well."

Adrian was in the passenger seat. He saw the trail of red left by her bare feet on the pavement. For a moment, something moved through his face.

Then it was gone.

"I wasn't offering you a ride," he said. "This is mine and Serena's car. Your blood isn't something I want in it."

"Serena — let's go."

He raised the window. She heard the engine accelerate and then the car was gone, and the sound disappeared with it, and Eliana was alone on the pavement.

She stood quite still for a moment. The sky above the buildings was wide and clear and very blue.

She took out her phone and sent a message.

A minute later, a car pulled up. The driver stepped out and held an umbrella over her head without being asked.

"Miss Ashford. We've come for you."

She got in. She closed her eyes.

Leaving Adrian Wyndham — that was what starting over felt like.

What was between them was ash. It would never burn again. And they would never cross paths again.

Never again.