Chapter 1

Ten years into our marriage, I discovered my husband was buying a ninety-million-dollar pink diamond for his mistress.

I asked for a divorce. He dragged me to the family's private cemetery and pointed at a tombstone already engraved with both our names.

"Vivienne," he said, "there is no divorce between us. There is only death."

The next day, I was placed under house arrest. My bank cards were frozen. My access to the company was revoked.

And his mistress, heavily pregnant, moved into the Presidential Suite aboard the cruise ship I had named after myself.

It was only later that I learned the truth.

That kidnapping and fire that nearly killed me when I was nineteen. He had arranged it himself.

If he wanted to lock me in a grave, then I would turn the entire ship into his coffin.

Vivienne's POV

Everyone in Los Angeles knew that Lucas Holt had once loved me like a man possessed.

When I was nineteen, to pull me out of the basement of that hellhole boarding school, he drove a truck straight through the perimeter wall.

When he was clawing his way to the top, to win the first shipping route that belonged to the two of us, he pressed a gun to his own temple at the negotiating table and bet his life on it.

After we married, he named the most expensive luxury cruise ship in his fleet after me. As if broadcasting his love for me via satellite to the entire world wasn't enough.

For ten years, he paved every road with his own blood and carried me into legend within this world.

And now, he tossed a ninety-million-dollar receipt into the fireplace. A receipt for a pink diamond bought for his mistress. Then he warned me in a cold, flat voice.

"It's just keeping up appearances. Stay out of it."

He didn't even look up at me.

"It's necessary PR management, Vivienne. Since when did you become so petty?"

I slid off the diamond ring, which he'd won at a Vegas poker table the night he proposed to me.

I slammed it down on the mahogany desk, along with the divorce agreement.

"If it's a liability, then cut it loose. Lucas, I want a divorce."

Lucas finally looked up. His eyes were dark and full of something cold.

He grabbed my wrist hard enough that I felt my bones grind, and dragged me toward the door.

"You want a divorce? Fine. We'll discuss it at the cemetery."

He drove like a man with nothing to lose. We ended up at the iron gates of the Holt family's private burial grounds.

He hauled me to a massive black granite headstone.

Both our names were already carved into it.

"Take a good look."

He pointed to the freshly dug pit beside it. His voice was as cold as the wind sweeping through that place.

"Vivienne, between us, there is no divorce. There is only burial."

That was the wedding gift he had prepared for me. A headstone with our names on it.

He released my arm, turned, got back in the car, and left me standing alone at the cemetery gate.

Rain ran down my hair and dripped into my collar. Ice cold.

I walked down the mountain road alone.

The cemetery sat on a hillside outside the city. At that hour, there wasn't a cab in sight.

I was wearing nothing but a thin silk blouse. The downpour soaked it through in seconds, pressing the fabric flat against my spine.

With every step, the red-soled heels felt like walking on knife blades.

How fitting.

It had been a rainy night just like this when I was nineteen.

The fire at the school. Lucas crashing through in that truck, pulling me out of the flames, and stripping off his own bulletproof vest to wrap around me.

He had said, "Vivienne, as long as I'm here, I will never let a single drop of rain touch you."

Tonight, he pointed at a grave with my name on it and told me only death could part us.

Then he threw me out like garbage into the rain.

Two beams of light swept up from behind me, stretching my shadow out long and thin against the road.

A black Rolls-Royce Cullinan shot past.

Lucas's car.

The wheels tore through a puddle and sent a spray of black mud across my calves.

The car didn't stop. It accelerated.

Through the tinted bulletproof windows, I could just make out Lucas in the driver's seat, phone pressed to his ear.

His brow was furrowed. His expression - careful, anxious, tender in a way I hadn't seen from him in three years.

So that was where all his urgency and his glances back had gone. He'd been giving them to someone else all along.

By the time I made it back to the house, two hours had passed.

Soaked to the bone, I pushed open the front door and was met with a warmth that felt like a slap.

I reached down to take off my shoes, and stopped.