"There'll be no more talk of divorce, Eliza...ever," the alpha told her with a sickening air of finality.

"You can't stop me from divorcing you, Romano," she responded bravely.

"You really want a divorce, cara?" he asked. Eliza nodded stiffly.

"If you get that divorce, your cousin loses her business, and she can't afford that now, not with a new baby on the way. She and her alpha need all the capital they can get."

Somehow Eliza hadn't expected that, she should have, but she hadn't. Romano had loaned her cousin, Nadia, the start-up capital for her bookshop.

Eliza didn't know what the specifics of that loan were, but she had always assumed that it was done out of generosity. 

Staring up at Romano now, the omega couldn't believe her own naïveté.

Romano Visconti did nothing out of sheer generosity, and that loan was merely another weapon for him to use against her.

"You wouldn't," Eliza responded. "Nadia has done nothing to deserve this."

"Cara, I will do whatever it takes to get what I want from you."

"I have money too, I can help her..." the omega began desperately.

"No, you have a rich father, and he had the opportunity to help Nadia, but he made his contempt of the idea more than obvious to everyone at the time, and you know that he would never support you through a messy divorce, Eliza."

"I still don't believe you would do it! You have a reputation to uphold. You're an honest businessman, and you wouldn't destroy a small business just to prove a point. What kind of message would that send?" Eliza asked.

"That I'm not to be trifled with." Romani shrugged.

 "Do you honestly think I care what people think of me, Eliza? Do you think I care what you think of me? I never have and I never will. You're weak and spoiled."

"I'm not..." Eliza tried to defend herself, but Romano made a scolding sound in the back of his throat before continuing as if Eliza hadn't spoken."

"You'll get your divorce eventually, but there's something I need to get from you first. You wanted this marriage, remember? You begged for it, I'm sure. So if you want a divorce right now, it'll come with some heavy penalties. Are you willing to gamble with your cousin's future?"

Eliza wouldn't do it, and he knew it. Romano had her exactly where he wanted her. 

There would be no divorce. Not when so much hung in the balance.

But there would be changes...Eliza Visconti was done being a doormat. She said nothing, choosing to turn and walk away instead.

Romano watched her go, and she could feel his eyes burning into her slender back but Romano did not call her back. 

Eliza did not return to the bedroom they had shared since the first day of their marriage, opting instead to head for the library, knowing that she would not sleep another wink.

Not in that room, not anymore.

Hours later, Romano came downstairs for breakfast. 

It was a Saturday morning, so he didn't have any early-morning meetings to rush out to and instead he tended to linger over his newspaper and coffee and largely ignore Eliza.

That morning was no different. It was as if their earlier argument hadn't happened at all. 

They ate their casual weekend meals in the kitchen and the homey setting lent a false sense of domesticity to the scene.

But while Eliza was uncomfortable and tense in the intimate setting, Romano always remained as cool as the proverbial cucumber.

Then again, that was nothing new, as the alpha rarely showed emotion.

In fact the "discussion" of that morning was the most heated Eliza had ever seen him.

Romano kept his feelings under wraps but had always made his contempt for the omega more than clear.

It was in the way he refused to meet Eliza’s eyes, the way he could make love to the omega without kissing her on the mouth, the way he could talk past her when he had something to tell her, while eternally optimistic and stupid Eliza had never been good at hiding her feelings from him.

Not from the very moment she had met him, nearly two years ago. How hopelessly infatuated she had been. How quickly the omega had fallen in love.

◌ੈ✩‧+ ̊

Eliza vividly recalled their first meeting.

Romano had come to dinner at their house. Her father hadn't told her much about their guest except that he was the son of an old acquaintance, and an alpha.

Her father had then left her to meet Romano by herself so that he could make an entrance.

It had been one of Victor Harrington's many "tricks" to keep his business adversaries constantly wrong-footed. 

He loved getting them on his own turf and had conducted many business deals in his home. He would let Eliza soften them up with her natural warmth, and then he would swoop in while they were still charmed and go in for the kill.

Eliza hadn't known about her role in her father's wheeling and dealing until she was twenty two; before that she had merely been grateful for the opportunity to help her father entertain his important friends.

By the time she met Romano, Eliza was the consummate hostess: charming, sweet, warm on the outside but completely disillusioned on the inside. 

Her father's little business parties had always left her feeling used and disheartened.

Romano Visconti had swooped into their home looking grim and purposeful, like a man ready for battle. Romano had seemed surprised to see Eliza standing in the huge entrance.

Eliza had been wearing a simple green sheath dress, her hair upswept into an elegant ponytail of her then wavy chest length hair, and she had chosen a simple emerald pendant with matching earrings as her only embellishments.

Romano had faltered at the sight of the omega and frowned in confusion. Eliza, for her part, had been completely riveted by the unexpectedly splendid man who stood in front of her, and for the first time ever Eliza’s poise had deserted her, she had been unable to utter a single word.

Romano had been beautifully outfitted in a tailor-made business suit, but his windswept hair had contradicted that air of sartorial splendor, giving him a slightly wild appearance. 

His dark stubble and loosened tie reinforced that ruggedness. He had been like no other man she had ever seen before, and the omega wanted to know everything there was to know about him.

Romano had recovered first. He had taken a step toward the omega, followed by another and then another, until he stood directly in front of her, so close that his every inhalation of breath caused his chest to lightly brush against hers.

Eliza had tilted her head back to stare at the alpha in wonder, tracing every angle and curve on his face in fascination.

"Hello, cara." His voice, like dark velvet over gravel, had sent a shudder of awareness up her spine. 

"What's your name?"

"Eliza." She had been helpless to do anything but respond. Then he smelled wonderful like whiskey and sin, and Eliza couldn't help and had found herself leaning towards the alpha to breathe in his scent.

She remembered every word, every emotion, every sensation of the exchange that had followed.

"Eliza?" he repeated, his appealing voice going slightly husky. "Bellissima. I'm Romano."

"Yes," she said, not making much sense at that moment, and the alpha grinned.

 It was a beautiful, warm, boyish smile that made him even more handsome.

"Can you say it?" he asked quietly. "Say what?"

"My name. I want to hear my name on those amazing lips." Romano traced a finger over her lips and she stopped breathing completely and moaned. "Say it, cara. Please?"

"Romano," the omega whispered, and he groaned a little.

"Perfect. You're perfect, little Eliza." No one had ever looked at her and seen perfection before. 

No one had ever smiled at her with so much appreciation and warmth in their eyes before.

Eliza had found herself staring back at this appealing stranger, and for the first time in her life, she had felt wanted. Between one heartbeat and the next,Eliza had fallen head over heels in love.

*◌ੈ✩‧+ ̊

Eliza shook herself , refusing to dwell on past events that she could not change and instead tried to focus on her present.

Breakfast passed with agonizing slowness, the silence broken only by the sound of Alpha's newspaper as he carefully perused the business section.

Eliza barely ate and hated her husband for being so unaffected by the tension that he could finish a hearty meal. Eliza picked up her own dishes and headed to the sink.

"You have to eat more than one slice of toast," her husband's voice suddenly growled unexpectedly. "You're getting much too thin." The fact that he had noticed what she'd eaten, despite having hardly glanced at her over his newspaper, startled him.

"I'm not that hungry," she responded softly, and placed the dishes in the sink.

"You barely eat enough to keep a sparrow alive." He lowered his paper and met her eyes for a few seconds before diverting his focus back to the mug of coffee on the table in front of him. The direct eye contact was so unusual that Eliza barely restrained a gasp.

"I eat enough," she responded halfheartedly. Normally she would have let it go, but Eliza wanted to see if she could goad Romano into meeting her eyes again.

No such luck.

Romano merely shrugged, neatly folded his newspaper, and dropped it onto the table beside his empty plate. He gulped down the last sip of his coffee before getting up from the table.

Eliza watched as Romano stretched, his black T-shirt rising to reveal the toned and tanned band of flesh at his abdomen. 

Her mouth went dry at the sight of that dark flesh, and once again she was disgusted by her own reaction to her husband's physical presence.

She had spent the first year of their marriage believing that Romano would come to love her.

She had valiantly believed that if she loved him enough, he would go back to being the laughing, affectionate man she had known in the first few months after they had met.

Eliza still wasn't completely sure what had caused the change, but from the snide things Romano sometimes said in passing, she suspected it was her father's influence.

After nearly a year of marriage and two heats, that she spent alone in the cold bed, writhing and yearning for her husband who had refused to be bonded with her, she had been forced to face reality; Romano truly hated her. 

He hated her so much that he couldn't bring himself to speak to her, kiss her, touch her outside of bed, or even look at her.

Eliza had finally realized that there would be no thaw; their marriage was a perpetual winter wasteland, and if she ever wanted to feel the warmth of the sun on her face again, she had to get out of it.

Unfortunately, escaping would be trickier than she had thought, she would have to find a way out that did not include hurting her cousin.

Nadia and Ryan were expecting their first baby, and while Nadia was having a fairly easy time of it, Eliza was concerned that anything that would upset her could be potentially harmful to Nadia or the baby. 

Also, while Ryan’s advertising agency was fairly successful, Nadia had always prided herself on the fact that she held her own financially in their relationship. 

Taking her bookshop away could put too much strain on their relationship, and she didn't want that on her conscience.

Eliza sighed heavily and started to do the dishes, she liked to do little household tasks despite the fact that her thirty-four-year-old husband, who had worked his way up from mailroom clerk to the president of the bank his father owned, "had more money than God," as her father had once put it.

Eliza had even enthusiastically insisted on doing some of the cooking herself. They employed a housecleaning staff, as was practical when one lived in a ten-bedroom, five-bathroom monster of a house.

Because their marriage united two prominent families, the press avidly followed the intimate details of their marriage, yet Eliza tried to cling to what she believed was a semblance of normalcy.

On Saturdays the staff had the day off and Eliza liked to pick up after herself and Romano rather than wait for the maids to get to it later.

She had never had a "normal" life, and she fondly imagined that these tasks kept her grounded in reality. 

Romano didn't pretend to understand her need to have a hand in the everyday running of the house and had mockingly accused her of playing house once, shortly after their wedding.

He had never seemed to notice it again after that.

Eliza stared down at the dishes she had ready to be placed in the dishwasher and quite abruptly abandoned the task halfway through before heading upstairs and leaving Romano still in the kitchen.

Eliza changed her clothes from sweat suit to jeans and T-shirt, dragging her vibrant, hip-length chestnut brown hair into a ponytail and tugging on a denim jacket to ward off! the early autumn chill. 

On her way to the front door, she passed by the den where Romano had retreated with his laptop.

"I'm going out," she casually called through the open door, and Romano’s head jerked up while his eyes flared with some indefinable emotion.

"Where...?" he began.

"I don't know how long I'll be gone." She dashed out before Romano could utter another syllable, grabbing her shoulder bag and car keys on the way out. 

She had her reliable silver Mini Cooper fired up by the time he eventually made it down to the front door.

 With a cheery little wave that she knew had to grate, she reversed out of the driveway and headed out.

Eliza had no clue where she was going and knew that there would be hell to pay when she got back—Romano liked to keep her in a little box labeled "his wife," to be brought out only for social occasions when he needed someone to act as his perfect hostess.

Any sign of mutiny from her was bound to have unpleasant and unforeseen consequences. Still, it felt good just to do something so defiantly out of character.

Her cell phone started ringing seconds later and when she stopped at a red light he switched it off and tossed her wedding ring, she didn't need it anymore.

It was still early, barely nine, and because it was Saturday, the roads were a bit congested. Still, she felt free and she headed from the relative tranquility of Chicago, one of the wealthiest and most beautiful cities in the Country, toward the metropolis. 

Usually she would go and spend the day with Ryan and Nadia...but she knew that it was the first place Romano would look. 

Romano knew how limited her social life was. Eliza had never made friends easily; her father had kept her isolated throughout her childhood, and her only real friend growing up had been her cousin Nadia.

Her family had founded one of the first banks in the country in the 1800s and had always been leaders in the rarefied reaches of society. Victor Harrington maintained that someone of Eliza’s "breeding and background" shouldn't be allowed to mingle with just anybody, which had left her options for companionship severely limited.

She had grown up playing by herself, with Nadia, or—when her father wasn't around to see—with the housekeeper's children. 

The loneliness and isolation had carried over into her adulthood and even now, she spent most of her free time with Ryan and Nadia or learning new recipes from Emilia, her housekeeper.

She spent more time chatting with Emilia than she did speaking with her husband. The loneliness was a cycle that Eliza didn't know how to break.

After driving for several miles, she saw a likely sign, finding a parking space within easy walking distance, not that she objected to exercise.

 It was just that his knees felt strangely weak…

Perhaps anyone going into the battle of their lives experienced the same sensation.

Upon entering the foyer of the office, he walked up to the desk where a motherly looking woman sat, a headset clamped to her white hair.

"May I help you?" The woman's eyes were anything but motherly, summing Eliza up in a quick glance.

"This is a divorce lawyer's office?" The 'd' word tasted foul on her tongue, but she spat it out.

"Divorce and family law."

"I'm only interested in the former." She amazed herself with how crisp and confident she sounded. 

Determined.

Head tilting to the side, the speculative glint increased in the other woman's eyes.

"Mr. Harper is in his office, pls follow me.."

The lawyer rose to a crouch behind his desk when she entered his office, and the receptionist shut the door firmly behind her.

He offered his hand. "I'm Steven Harper. Nice to see you again, Eliza." he said smiling.

Steven and Eliza had been good friends in university and the familiarity calmed her a bit.

"I'm here to get a divorce." Eliza said.

Steven blinked. "I see, straight to business, Eliza." He said, chuckling.

Eliza smiled sheepishly.

"As soon as possible," she added, and Steven nodded understandingly.

Pulling a legal pad toward Eliza, he asked for identifying information, jotting it down.

"May I ask what grounds you are basing your request upon?"

"Irreconcilable differences." Eliza heard that on a legal show and knew it applied.

"I see." Steven paused, then asked delicately, 

"Was there ... abuse involved?"

"What? Abuse? Oh, no. Nothing like that." Romano never raised a hand to her but how does one describe callous neglect?

Though she supposed Romano’s words were abusive, they were used like weapons. But that didn't matter anymore, being in the past.

 "I ... we simply don't get along, have nothing in common."

"Any children?"

"No." Eliza swallowed. "No."

"What have you considered for financial support? I know your husband's name. He's a wealthy man. We should work out alimony per month or as a lump sum—"

”I don't want anything from him." Eliza didn't need it.

Didn't want anything from Romano aside from the one thing he would never give her.

The stress of not thinking about Romano all day, rose up and smacked her in the face.

"Liz?" Steven got up and rushed around his desk when she put her hand over her mouth, willing her stomach not to revolt.

Eliza had to stop losing her sh*t like this.

Waving Steven away, she fished in her purse and powered on her phone.

"I'm fine. Long day, and this is ... difficult."

"Of course." Steven returned to his seat and took up his pen.

"You're financially stable, then?"

"I am." Her mother had seen to that, undermining her father at the last. She had a small trust fund under her maiden name.

Eliza would never be rich but could live comfortably, if simply, and planned to find a job in any event.

"I'll have no problem covering your fees."

"Don't worry about that liz, we can discuss that later"

Eliza nodded.

"A divorce can be quite simple as long as your husband doesn't demur." Steven said speculatively.

"He won't." Eliza could envision Romano punching the air with glee, right before he informs her father that Eliza had once again met all wrong expectations.

Romano could legally take up with one of those models he normally roamed with, without any censure, not that her father had taken any issue.

If her mother had lived, would Eliza have made the same mistake, or would Mom have cautioned her, having chosen an unavailable man herself? And a cheater too.

Steven had outlined a process that should free her from this marital prison within the space of several months and she listened numbly, she took the page scribbled with notes in both their hand writings, and tucked it in her purse, for her own research.

Steven named a figure she barely raised an eyebrow at, Eliza knew she had got an appropriate discount and Steven had decided against pointing it out, but it was still a handsome amount of money.

Freedom at any price.

Eliza wouldn't use Romano’s card—it was childish to use his account to pay Steven, even if satisfying—she'd pay for her own divorce.

She would write a check from the slender stack she kept tucked in her wallet.

Romano was indeed a wealthy man, and he probably didn't even know about her small trust fund.

They'd built nothing together since their marriage—that house wasn't even on her radar—and Romano had no claim to her money as she wouldn't have on Romano’s.

While the receptionist prepared an invoice and receipt, Eliza went to her contacts to call Nadia, stilling when she noted the number of missed calls and texts.

One was from her father, but the majority from Romano, Eliza, decided to ignore them fearing what they held.

Honestly confused, then worried, she blinked and scrolled through the rest.

Her father's message was disgruntled and peremptory.

I expect you to call your husband.

A wave of relief made her belly hollow. Her father was her only surviving relation, except Nadia, if one didn't count some distant cousins, and she didn't, but obviously, Romano’s calls weren't related to something going wrong with her dad.

She dialed her voicemail and nearly dropped the phone at the tirades of messages.

Romano never phoned her. She might receive a brief text if it was compulsory for her to accompany him to an event that required his actual Omega on his arm.

But she had never heard his voice on the line since the period of time when they ...Courted.

The last call advised her Romano was notifying the police and she fumbled to a chair in the waiting room.

 The cell chimed and he squeaked before he recognized the name.

"Hello, Nadia."

"Good grief, Liz. I get off work and my phone lights up. That husband of yours wants to know where you are."

Romano had called Nadia? Eliza would have doubted Romano even had her cousin's phone number but then again they were in business together, sort of.

"I had my phone turned off”

"And you're surprised he called." Nadia didn't know the fullness of her humiliation but was aware she wasn't happy.

 It was impossible to hide her feelings from Nadia, but she hadn't revealed all her shame.

"I am. I was also at a lawyer's office. I'm still there. Here."

Seconds ticked by, and Eliza felt them pulse in her temples until Nadia asked, "Does he know about the lawyer?"

"Not yet."

"We should get some dinner."

How like Nadia not to interrogate her over the phone. 

"I'd like that."

Now she found herself contemplating all the things she could do with this unexpected time and freedom and opted for the most out-of-character thing she could think of: going to the movies. 

It was the purest form of escapism, and if there was anything that Eliza desperately wanted, it was to escape from her life.

So she spent her day going from one cinema to the next— laughing, crying, cringing, or jumping, depending on the plot. It was the most unproductive day she had ever spent in her life and she loved it.