Elena's Pov:

I drove for a long time with only one destination in mind. I'd walked away briskly from the multi dollar home I'd helped build.

He didn't follow me, of course he'd always never rated me, I thought with a smile as I turned a corner.

I got to my destination, killed the engine and walked into the building. The receptionist welcomed me with a warm smile.

“Is Brad in ?” I asked with a small nod to her greetings.

“Yes…

“I want to see him immediately”.

She looked at my face and understood this wasn't a good time for protocols and questions. She nodded and I opened the door walking into the office.

Bradley was sitting, his legs on his desk and laughing loudly at whatever the other person on the end of the line was saying.

He saw me and quickly composed himself.

“I'd call you later. Mrs Kingston…a pleasant surprise”.

“Hi Brad”.

“Have a seat”.

“No. Brad, I need divorce papers immediately”.

He raised a brow and I could see his brain immediately running on clockwork.

“Mrs Kingston…

“No questions. I'm divorcing Adrian, he's aware. I need the papers”.

He swallowed hard and immediately got to work.

In a couple of minutes, I'd penned my signature.

“You're my attorney, send this to him”.

And I walked out of the law firm and into my car.

The city moved past as I drove, both hands on the wheel, eyes on the road, because if I stopped moving I would have to think about what had just happened and I was not ready for that.

The only sound I could hear was the engine and the occasional rush of another car passing and somewhere underneath all of it, the sound of my own breathing.

I willed myself to think

I had nothing with me. No bag, no documents, nothing I would need. I had walked out of that house with only my car keys and the clothes on my back. I could not go to a hotel without my cards. I could not start anything without my papers. And I had nowhere to go except…

My parents.

I gripped the wheel and turned the car north.

My mother answered the door in her robe, her reading glasses pushed up on her head. She looked at my face and I watched a confused expression form on her face.

“Elena.”

“I left him.” My voice was steady. I was proud of that. “I need somewhere to stay tonight. Just tonight.”

She looked at me for a long moment.

“Left who?”

“Adrian”

Then she stepped back slightly, not to let me in but to turn her head toward the living room.

“David.” She called.

My father appeared in the hallway. He took one look at me and crossed his arms.

“What happened?” He asked.

“I found him with someone else.” I kept my eyes on his face. “I left. I just need one night.”

Neither of them moved from the doorway.

Something cold started to settle in my stomach.

“Are you going to let me in?”

My father exhaled through his nose. “Elena. You know how these things work. Marriages have difficulties. That does not mean you walk out in the middle of the night.”

I stared at him. “He was in bed with my best friend.”

“And I’m sorry for that,” my mother said, her voice was careful and measured, the voice she used when she was trying to manage a situation rather than feel it. “But you have a son. You have a family. These things can be worked through if both people are willing…”

“Cut the crap mom.”

“You chose that marriage, Elena.” My mother’s voice was firm.. “You fought for it. You cannot abandon it every time something goes wrong. This is not how we raised you.”

Every time something goes wrong. I heard the words and I felt something go very quiet inside me.

“I need one night,” I said again, softer this time. “Please. Just let me in this once.”

My mother’s eyes dropped briefly. That was the only answer I needed.

“You were the one that arranged this marriage for me. You convinced me that Adrian would be good to me. Was all that a lie just to secure that contract? You sold me? And I foolishly agreed to it because I loved Adrian too.”

“You brought this on yourself,” my father said. “Go back to your husband. Talk to him in the morning when things are calmer.”

He closed the door.

I stood on the step stunned, I did not move for a long time.

I thought about knocking again. I thought about what I would say. And then I thought about all the times I had stood in different doorways waiting for people to choose me, and I turned around and walked back to my car.

I had one option left.

Adrian’s office building was forty minutes away. I drove there on autopilot, parked in the underground lot, and took the elevator to the floor where most of my investment documents were kept. Contracts in my name and certificates. The paper trail of everything I had poured into a marriage that was already a lie before it started.

The lobby guard stepped in front of me before I reached the elevator.

“Mrs Kingston.” He did not move aside. “I’m sorry, you’re not on the access list tonight.”

I kept my voice even. “Those are my documents upstairs. I just need ten minutes.”

“I have instructions.” He said it flatly with no apology in it.

Adrian. Of course. He had moved fast.

“I’m asking you to step aside,” I said.

He did not. Instead he reached for my arm and I pulled back sharply.

“Do not touch me.”

“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to leave the premises.” His grip tightened. He was bigger than me by a significant amount and he had already decided how this was going to go.

I should not have been surprised. I had spent eight years watching Adrian erase me in small ways. This was just the first time he had done it out loud.

“Let go of her.”

Elena's POV

The guard’s grip loosened immediately. I turned around.

The man standing a few feet away was tall, composed, and dressed in a dark coat like he had just stepped out of a manhwa series.

He had silver-grey eyes and this aura that screamed of importance. I squinted at him, I had seen him before at a company dinner two years ago, briefly, across a crowded room.

Lucien Kingston. Adrian’s older brother.

I remembered scraps of that dinner now, how he'd stood near the windows the entire night, a glass in his hand that he never seemed to actually drink from, watching the room like he was cataloguing it rather than enjoying it.

Adrian had introduced him briefly, almost reluctantly, and Lucien had said maybe ten words to me before excusing himself. I remembered thinking he seemed like a man who didn't belong to the family he was standing in.

“Sir…” the guard started.

“If you lay your hand on her again,” Lucien said, still looking at the guard with the same quiet deadly expression, “you will not enjoy what comes after it.”

The guard stepped back immediately, bowing down in fear.

I almost felt sorry for him. Almost. A minute ago he had his hand on my arm like I was nothing. Now he couldn't even look up. It was strange, watching someone go from cruel to scared that fast, all because of one man's voice.

Lucien turned to me then. There was this look in his eyes when he looked at my face — not pity, it was something I couldn't read and then he said, quietly, “Play along.”

Before I could ask what that meant, he placed one hand lightly on my waist and walked forward.

“My apologies for the delay,” he announced softly like this was a minor inconvenience rather than what it was.

“She’s with me.”

No one dared to stop us. That alone explains the power he had.

We rode the elevator in silence. I stood with my arms around myself and stared at the numbers climbing and told myself to hold it together for ten more minutes. Just ten more minutes.

“You don’t have to explain anything,” he said, without looking at me.

I glanced at him. “You don’t even know why I’m here.”

“I know enough.”

I said nothing, just stared at the steel door before me.

He waited outside while I went in. I moved quickly and without hesitation — I had always known exactly where everything was.

My hands didn't shake until I reached the second drawer. I made myself stop, breathe, and keep moving. Every folder I touched was a piece of the last eight years; contracts I'd negotiated at midnight, deals I'd closed while Adrian was elsewhere, proof of a life I'd built with my own hands and handed to him without a second thought.

I'd been so foolish, I muttered with a small shaky smile.

I pulled every contract with my name on it, canceled two investment deals on my phone while I was still standing at the desk, the kind of cancellations that would take a long time for Adrian to untangle.

I gathered the documents I needed for the divorce filing. When I came back out, Lucien was leaning against the wall across from the door with his hands in his pockets, exactly where I had left him.

He looked at the folder under my arm and said nothing.

I expected him to ask what was in it, or why it mattered so much. He didn't. He just pushed off the wall and started walking, like whatever I'd needed in there was already none of his business.

I followed him, holding the folder a little tighter than before. It was the only thing that would vindicate and console me right now.

We took the elevator back down and he walked me to his car.

“I can take you home,” he said quietly as he opened the car.

I almost laughed. “I don’t have one.” I looked down, trying to hide the tears that were forcing themselves to come out.

He turned to really look at me then. “Your parents?” He asked.

“They chose profits over me.” I said and lifted my head, tucking my hair behind my ears and also to keep the tears from falling out.

I wasn't even surprised, really. That was the worst part. Some small part of me had already known what they'd say before I knocked. I just hadn't let myself believe it until I heard the door close shut in my face.

I just wasn't going to fall apart before him.

“I’m fine. I just need to find a hotel that will

….”

“Elena”, Lucien began softly.

My name in his mouth was different from the way Adrian said it. It made me wonder if Adrian ever called my name with such affection for 8 years.

He reached into the inside pocket of his coat and placed something on the car hood, before me.

A folded document. I picked it up and opened it slowly, and I read the top line and then I read it again because the first time did not make sense.

A marriage certificate with two names on it, printed and waiting to be signed.

His and mine.

“What is this?” I asked, my voice filled with both confusion and silent rage.

“Exactly what it looks like.”

I set it down on my knee and looked at him. “You’re his brother.”

“Half-brother,” he said. “We share a father. Nothing else.”

I stared at the paper, at the neat printed lines and the blank space where a signature should be. “You cannot be serious.”

“I’m not someone who says things I don’t mean.”

The city was still going on, hustling and bustling —headlights sweeping past, a siren somewhere far off, the world carrying on like nothing had changed.

And I was standing here in front of Kingston and Co holding a marriage certificate with a man I barely knew who was watching me with those calm grey eyes like he had all the time in the world and was cock sure of his proposition.

He reached into his coat's pockets and brought out a small box and placed it before me.

He opened it and a diamond ring sparkled right back at me.

“Marry me”.

Elena's Pov:

I blinked, convinced that somehow I'd unknowingly wished on a genie and was caught up in the madness of a poorly made wish.

I looked up at him, he looked serious.

“Why?”

“Because you are going to need help getting back on your feet. You are going to need leverage, a stable address, a name that carries weight in a courtroom. And you are going to need someone Adrian cannot dismiss.” He paused. “I can be all of those things.”

“And what do you get out of it?” I asked because men like this usually have more to gain from a situation like this than me. Nothing is for free. That I had come to know of..

He held my gaze. “Nothing if you must know.”

“You're a business man, Lucien. I refuse to believe there is nothing in it for you”.

He said nothing, just looked away and stared up at the glass windows of the company.

I looked back at the document. I thought about Ethan’s face when he pushed me away. I thought about my father closing the door. I thought about Adrian’s voice saying leave, like I was a guest who had overstayed a welcome I was never actually given.

I had nothing. No home, not a family, not even a room for the night. I had a folder of documents and a car and whatever was left of myself after this evening had finished taking pieces of me.

But I had not walked out of that house to become someone who needed saving. And if I was going to sign anything tonight, I was going to understand exactly what I was signing.

“You said you’d help me get what I need” I said, my heart racing.

I had promised myself to make Adrian pay for what he did, and I was going to make sure I do. I didn't know how, but I would. Maybe taking this step was the first step to my revenge.

“Yes.” he replied.

“And my revenge.” I asked, turning to really look at him.

Up close, he was devastatingly handsome with his sharp jaw, silver grey eyes that made him look like some A list actor.

He looked nothing like Adrian, and that made me quickly look away from him.

“Every last piece of it.” He reassured me.

I looked at him for a long moment.

I brought out a pen from my purse. I looked at the document one more time.

Then I signed it.

He took the certificate back without a word and folded it carefully along the original crease. I had walked into this evening as Elena Kingston, wife of Adrian. I was still leaving it as Elena Kingston, wife of a Kingston, one of the most powerful men in the city.

“Fine,” I said quietly, more to myself than to him. “I’ll marry you.”

********************

The drive back was quiet and somehow therapeutic. Billie Eilish’s Lovely was playing in Lucien’s car.

There were so many questions pressing up against the inside of my chest that I did not know which one to let out first.

He drove me to a building in the heart of the city. A huge mansion, much larger than I and Adrian's.

We rode the elevator up without speaking and when the doors opened directly into the apartment I stepped out and stopped.

I had been bracing for something cold. Maybe only a black and white minimalist decor suited for his personality. But this was warm. There were bookshelves along one full wall. Low, even lighting. Floor to ceiling windows that gave me a perfect view of the city lights.

Lucien set his keys on the counter and turned around. He held a key card out toward me.

“The whole floor is mine,” he said. “Choose whichever room you want.”

I took the card but did not move. “What do you actually expect from me?” I asked. “I need to know.”

He looked at me for a moment. “Tomorrow," he began, "you're going to tell me about the event company you've wanted to start for years. The one you never mentioned because you didn't think anyone would back it." He paused at the door. "I already made a call about office space. You don't have to use it. But it's there.”

And he left.

I found a room, still in a daze and entered, then I sat on the edge of the bed.

The room was large and beautifully furnished.

I picked up my phone.

The lockscreen photograph looked back at me. Adrian in the centre with Ethan on his shoulders, and me standing beside them, smiling. I remembered that day. A company event two summers ago. He had put his arm around me briefly for the photograph and I had held onto that for weeks afterward.

Thirty seconds. One arm around me for thirty seconds and I had treated it like proof that things were getting better.

I looked at my own face for a long time.

She had loved him so much that she had made excuses for every forgotten anniversary, every cold dinner, every night she waited alone. She had given and given and given and told herself it was what love was supposed to look like.

It was not supposed to look like that.

I set the phone face down on the bed and pressed the heels of my hands hard against my eyes. Ethan had turned five today and I had not been there. And my son had run straight past my open arms and pushed me away with both hands.

The phone lit up.

It was Adrian.

I watched it ring and I did not move. Then it stopped. Then it rang again. Then again. Then the messages began arriving one after the other, each one landing before I had finished reading the last.

Where are you?

Answer your phone.

Stop being ridiculous and come home.

We need to talk, Elena.

I read every single one. Not a single sorry. Not one acknowledgment of what I had walked into that evening. Just Adrian, fully convinced that I would do what I had always done before and come back.

I sighed softly and turned my phone so that the screen faced the bed.

Then I heard a knock at the door.

I sat up straight. “Come in.”

Lucien opened the door halfway. He was holding a glass of water with two tablets balanced on the rim.

“You look exhausted,” he said simply. He set the glass and the medicine on the nightstand. “Get some sleep.”

He left before I could respond to him.

I sat there for a while, trying to gather my thoughts and a plan for my life when he burst in again, the expression on his face tinkering between amusement and disgust.

“What happened?” I asked.

He looked at me for a few seconds.

“Adrian just received the divorce papers.”

“And?”

“He doesn’t believe you’re serious.”

I looked away with a chuckle.

Lucien's phone vibrated again. He glanced down at it, and this time I watched his lips curl in a smirk.

"He says if you don't come home tonight," Lucien said slowly, "he's coming here himself.”