Ex Husband, You Will Beg Me

CHAPTER 1

Aria's POV

Chapter One: The Contract's Ends…

The pen trembled in my hand as I signed the final page, the ink bleeding into expensive paper like a wound. My palm was slick with sweat despite the aggressive air conditioning that made the lawyer's office feel like a mausoleum.

Six years. Six years of being the perfect wife to a man who looked through me like I was made of glass. Three years of dinner plates growing cold while I waited for Damien Cross to come home, the smell of rosemary and garlic turning rancid as hours stretched into darkness. Six years of sleeping in a bed that felt more like an ocean, with him on one shore and me drowning somewhere in between, the sheets always cold on his side, my hand reaching across the emptiness until I learned to stop reaching at all.

"Initial here," the lawyer said, tapping a manicured nail against the paper. The sharp click-click-click felt like a countdown to my execution.

I complied, my movements mechanical. My fingers had gone numb; whether from cold or shock, I couldn't tell. Across the table, Damien sat with his jaw carved from stone, his grey eyes fixed on some point beyond my shoulder. Even now, even at the end, he wouldn't look at me. The familiar ache in my chest intensified, that hollow feeling I'd carried for so long it had become part of my anatomy. I wanted to scream at him, to flip the table, to demand he look at me just once. Instead, I pressed my nails into my palm hard enough to leave crescents.

The lawyer gathered the documents with practised efficiency.

"The divorce will be finalised in thirty days. Mrs Cross… Ms Winters, you'll receive the settlement we discussed. The apartment in Manhattan, the vehicle, and the credit card."

Damien's phone buzzed, the vibration obscenely loud in the silence. He glanced at the screen, and something flickered across his face. Something that looked almost like relief. My stomach twisted with a nausea I'd grown to recognise; the sickness of being someone's burden finally lifted. Of course. She was probably calling.

Vanessa Laurent. The woman who'd been Damien's "childhood friend", his "business partner", and his "completely platonic confidante" who somehow always needed him at midnight. Who sent him photos of dresses, asking for his opinion? Who touched his arm just a little too long at every charity gala while I stood there in my designer prison, smiling until my face ached and my feet bled in my Louboutins. I could still smell her perfume, something expensive and heady with jasmine from the last time she'd hugged him in our foyer. In our home. While I'd watched from the stairs like a ghost haunting her own life.

"Sign here, Mr Cross."

Damien signed without hesitation. No trembling hand for him. No moment of pause to consider what we were ending. The scratch of his pen was firm, decisive. Final. Each stroke felt like a blade against my skin.

The lawyer clicked her briefcase shut, the sound sharp and absolute.

"Congratulations on your amicable dissolution."

Amicable. What a pretty word for a marriage that had died so quietly; no one had even noticed it was sick. My throat tightened, tears threatening, but I'd be damned if I'd cry here. Not in front of him. Not when he was already checking his phone again, his thumb scrolling with the casual indifference of someone freed from an inconvenience.

I stood, smoothing down my black dress with shaking hands. Not mourning clothes; I'd done my mourning alone in that big empty penthouse for six years, sobbing into bathroom tiles while he worked late. This was my funeral outfit for a marriage that had been a corpse long before today.

"Aria."

I froze, my heart stuttering. It was the first time he'd said my name in weeks. My name in his voice used to make me melt. Now it just made me cold.

"The apartment," Damien continued, his voice as flat as his expression. "It's in a good neighbourhood. Safe. You should be comfortable there."

Comfortable. As if I were a pet he was rehoming. The words burned in my chest, acrid as bile. After everything, after the nights I'd waited up, after the anniversary dinners eaten alone, after convincing myself that love could exist in the margins of someone's life, this was what I got. Real estate advice.

"How thoughtful," I said, and I was proud when my voice didn't c***k, though my fingernails bit deeper into my palms.

I turned to leave, my heels clicking against the marble floor of the lawyer's office. Each step echoed in the cavernous space. I could feel his eyes on my back now; now that I was walking away, now that it was over, he finally looked. The weight of his gaze made my spine straighten. Let him look. Let him see what he was losing now that it was too late.

"Oh, and Aria?"

I paused but didn't turn around. My hand tightened on my purse until the leather creaked.

"I hope you find what you're looking for."

The words should have been kind. Instead, they landed like stones. Because what I'd been looking for was standing right behind me, and he'd never once thought to offer it. Love. Partnership. A husband who came home. A man who looked at me the way he'd looked at his phone just now, like I mattered.

"I already have," I lied, tasting the bitterness of it on my tongue, and walked out.

The late September air hit my face like a baptism, cool and crisp with the promise of autumn. New York City rushed around me, taxi horns blaring, street vendors calling out in a dozen languages, and the subway rumbling beneath my feet like the city's heartbeat. Life, loud and messy and real. So different from the hermetically sealed world of the Cross family penthouse, where even my breathing had felt too loud.

My phone buzzed against my hip. Maya's name flashed on the screen, and just seeing it made something in my chest loosen.

"It's done," I said before she could ask, my voice rough with unshed tears.

"How are you feeling?"

I looked up at the sky between the skyscrapers, at the small rectangle of blue that was all this city ever offered. The sun was warm on my face, and for the first time in years, I let myself feel it without guilt.

"Free. Terrified. Both.”

“Both are good. Both are normal. Are you still meeting me at the gallery tonight?"

The gallery. I'd almost forgotten. Maya's art show, the one she'd been working toward for over a year. The one I'd promised to attend months ago.

"I'll be there," I said, surprised by how much I meant it. "Wouldn't miss it."

"Good. Because I invited someone I want you to meet."

My stomach dropped. "Maya, I just signed divorce papers an hour ago…"

"Not like that, you disaster. His name is Julian Shaw. He runs an investment firm, and he's looking for someone to head his new philanthropic division. I told him about your work with the literacy foundation."

My chest tightened, but this time with something other than pain. My work with the literacy foundation. The one thing I'd built for myself during the marriage, the one thing Damien had called my "little hobby" with that patronising smile that made me want to scream.

"I don't know if I'm ready to..."

"Aria." Maya's voice went soft, the way it did when she was about to say something that would hurt because it was true. "You've been ready for six years. You just weren't allowed to be."

The words hit too close to home. My eyes burned.

"Fine," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. "But I'm not promising anything."

"You never do. That's your problem. Don't be late."

The call ended, and I stood there on the sidewalk, people flowing around me like water around a stone. I pulled out the apartment key the lawyer had given me, my new key to my new life in my new apartment that wasn't a home yet, but might be someday. The metal was warm from my pocket, solid and real in my palm. Proof that this was happening.

My phone buzzed again. Unknown number. My pulse quickened.

I almost didn't answer. But something made my thumb hit the green button, maybe the recklessness of someone with nothing left to lose.

"Hello?"

Silence. Then breathing: slow, deliberate, like whoever it was wanted me to know they were there. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

"Hello?" I repeated, my voice sharper now.

"Congratulations on your divorce." The voice was smooth as poisoned honey. Each word precisely enunciated, almost amused.

"Signing those papers. You have no idea what you've just unlocked and set in motion."

My blood ran cold. The busy street suddenly felt too exposed, too open. "Who is this?"

"Someone who's going to change your life, Aria Winters. Check your email. I sent you a file."

The line went dead with a click that felt like a door slamming.

My hands shook as I opened my email, my thumb slipping on the screen twice before I managed it. I refreshed once, twice, three times, my heart hammering against my ribs. A new message appeared. No subject line. No sender name. Just an attachment. The phone felt slippery in my sweating palms.

I clicked it.

The photo loaded slowly, line by line, like a nightmare taking its time. Each pixel was a small death.

It was Damien. In a restaurant I recognised, the one where he'd proposed to me six years ago, where he'd gotten down on one knee and promised me forever while violin music played and I'd cried happy tears into my champagne. But he wasn't alone.

He was with Vanessa.

And Vanessa's hand was resting on her stomach, her smile radiant, knowing, and triumphant. Her body angled just so to show the gentle curve beneath her silk dress, a curve that made my breath stop in my lungs.

Below the photo, three words in elegant script:

He was never yours.

My phone slipped from my fingers, clattering on the concrete. The screen cracked with a sound like breaking ice, spiderwebbing across Vanessa's smiling face.

I stared at it, my vision blurring at the edges. The world tilted. When was this photo taken? How long had I been the fool? The blood roared in my ears, drowning out the traffic, the voices, everything. My chest heaved, but I couldn't get enough air. Six years. Six years of pretending, of hoping, of waiting for him to love me, and she'd been there all along. She'd been there, and she'd been carrying his child, and I'd been….

Something inside me shifted. Not broken; I'd been broken for too long. This was different. This was the moment the broken pieces started to remember they were once sharp. This was rage, pure and clean and clarifying, burning through the shock like wildfire through dead wood.

Mr Cross, Damien’s father, had made us sign a marriage contract that required us to stay married for at least six years before even considering separation. It was his way of keeping his reckless son grounded and committed. That contract had been the only thing holding our marriage together.

I'd thought Damien loved me, but he'd only married me to please his father. And now, seeing the woman he'd claimed was just a friend, just a business partner, pregnant with his child, it finally dawned on me that I'd been played. It had taken me so long to realise it.