Chapter 3

Julian came home after midnight smelling like champagne, rain, and Sienna Cole.

Milo was asleep on the couch, still holding the birthday card Julian had not opened. The dinosaur cake sat on the kitchen table. Three blue candles had melted sideways into the frosting.

Julian saw it all.

For one second, I thought shame might find him.

Then his phone buzzed.

He checked it before he looked at our son.

"You embarrassed me tonight," he said.

I laughed once. It did not sound like me.

"Our son waited two hours for birthday candles, and I embarrassed you?"

"You brought him into a business event. Sienna spent half the night keeping investors focused because you made everything look unstable."

"Unstable," I repeated. "That's what you call a little boy asking his father to come home?"

Julian rubbed a hand over his face.

"Elena, nothing happened. Sienna is my assistant. My colleague. She is the only person in that room who understands what this company needs right now."

"She had her hand on you all night."

"It was a crowded room. People hug. People touch. Adults don't turn every professional relationship into an affair."

"Adults also don't leave their child waiting for a woman wearing their wife's place like a dress."

His jaw hardened.

"That is exactly what I mean. You hear everything as an attack. Sienna knows how to separate business from emotion. You used to."

"Before I had your child?"

"Before you decided every sacrifice meant I owed you the rest of my life."

Milo stirred on the couch.

Julian lowered his voice, finally aware of him.

"You put him in the middle of this."

I looked at the small body curled beneath his dinosaur blanket.

"He was already in the middle. He was sitting at a birthday table waiting for you."

Julian looked away, not because he understood, but because he had decided I was impossible.

"By tomorrow, Sienna will be running the brand," he said. "Maybe then you can stop fighting for a room you chose to leave."

A room I chose to leave.

Milo opened his eyes.

"Daddy?"

Julian froze.

Milo lifted the crushed card toward him.

"If I make better card, you come next time?"

Something inside me went still.

Julian could humiliate me. He could replace me. He could call me jealous and difficult and unstable.

But he would not teach my son that love had to be earned.

Not from his father.

Not from anyone.

I carried Milo to bed without another word.

When I came back downstairs, a notification was waiting on my phone.

Someone had posted a video from the sponsor wall.

The caption read: Not the wife, apparently.

Sienna stood close to Julian in the clip. Too close. Her fingers curled around his sleeve.

"You know I would follow you anywhere," she whispered.

Julian gave a low laugh.

"Sienna, not here."

Not no.

Not stop.

Not my son is right there.

Just not here.

Then Sienna rose on her toes and kissed the corner of his mouth.

Behind them, blurred but unmistakable, Milo's birthday card sat unopened on the registration table.

DAD.

I did not wake Julian.

At 1:12 a.m., I booked the first appointment a divorce attorney had in the morning.

Then I plugged in the old launch drive.

One folder lit up on the screen.

ANNIVERSARY RAW FOOTAGE.