Chapter 3

The first draft came fast.

Clear logic. Clean clauses.

When I reached the property section, I stopped.

The villa. The luxury cars. The unlimited secondary card Grayson had given me.

Three years ago, my family put a price on me.

Three hundred thousand dollars.

Now I was buying myself back.

So I wrote a single sentence:

I voluntarily waive all rights to division of marital property.

Not because I was noble.

Because I wanted nothing tying me to him anymore, least of all money.

I needed the policy number from the one insurance plan we held jointly, so I texted Grayson.

Where's the insurance contract?

Study. Third cabinet on the left.

It was the first time in three years I had entered his study.

The room smelled like his cologne and looked exactly like him.

Dark, precise, expensive, and completely lifeless.

I found the contract.

Then I noticed the top drawer of his desk.

Unlocked.

That was unusual for Grayson.

I opened it.

Inside was a velvet box.

Inside the box was a silver photo frame.

In the picture, Grayson was smiling.

Really smiling.

It was a version of his face I had never seen.

In his arms was Sophie Dane in a white dress, laughing into the camera.

His fiancée who had run the night before their wedding.

His great unfinished love.

On the back of the frame was an engraved line in his handwriting.

My Sophie. My only one.

I stood there holding it while the last of my self-deception died quietly.

I was not even a substitute.

I had been a temporary bandage over a social embarrassment.

I put the frame back exactly as I found it and walked downstairs.

Grayson was in the living room watching financial news.

"Found it?"

"Yes."

I set the insurance contract down and looked him in the eye.

"Grayson, we need to talk."

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