Chapter 2
Of course I remembered.
Back then Julian had nothing.
No company.
No mansion.
No driver.
No private aircraft waiting at Charleston International Airport.
He had a secondhand Honda that stalled when it rained and an apartment with a refrigerator that hummed so loudly we had to turn up the television.
But he had ambition.
And he loved me with a terrifying certainty.
The night he proposed, I had told him the only promise I needed.
“If you ever stop loving me, tell me. Don’t humiliate me by pretending.”
Julian’s hands tightened around the steering wheel.
“Would you still keep that promise?”
My chest tightened.
“So you don’t love me anymore?”
His answer came quietly.
“No.”
Twelve years disappeared in one word.
I thought of the creditors who used to call our apartment every morning.
I thought of paying rent while Julian built his first company.
I remembered selling the diamond earrings my grandmother left me because Mercer Technologies was eleven days from missing payroll.
Julian had cried when he found out.
“One day,” he promised, “I’ll buy them back.”
He eventually bought me earrings worth twenty times as much.
They had never meant as much.
Now Mercer Holdings was worth hundreds of millions.
And the man I had helped build wanted someone else.
I nodded.
“Then we’ll divorce.”
Julian finally looked at me.
“That’s it?”
“What else did you expect?”
His jaw tightened.
“I don’t know.”
“Apparently you expected something.”
“Claire—”
“Did you expect me to ask what she has that I don’t?”
He said nothing.
“Did you expect me to beg?”
“No.”
But his face said otherwise.
Maybe not consciously.
Maybe Julian had imagined tears. Rage. Accusations.
Maybe some part of him needed proof that losing Julian Mercer would destroy me.
Instead I asked, “How long?”
He hesitated.
“Does it matter?”
That hurt more than I expected.
I looked out the window again.
“No,” I said. “I suppose it doesn’t.”
A minute passed.
Then he asked, “Don’t you want to know who she is?”
“No.”
That finally made him angry.
“How can you not want to know?”
“Because I’m divorcing you, Julian. Not her.”
He stared ahead.
When we reached Hawthorne Manor, I stepped from the Bentley and looked at the enormous house we had spent eight years turning into a home.
“You can keep the house,” I said.
Julian stopped.
“What?”
“I want sixty percent of the liquid assets. My personal investments remain untouched. We keep our individually controlled business interests, and I want the agreement filed this week.”