Chapter 4
Mason sent the first message at nine the next morning.
It is one ring, Claire. Do not blow this up.
A minute later, another one came.
I will buy you ten. Whatever you want. Just come back before the press makes it ugly.
Ten rings.
As if the number had ever been the point.
You can buy ten rings. You cannot un-melt the one my mother wore for thirty years.
I did not answer the ten rings, or the apology he thought he could buy. I sent back three words.
Send the papers.
Three minutes passed. Then his reply came.
Fine.
I could almost hear the anger under it. Mason still thought I was throwing a tantrum. He could not have been more wrong.
His lawyer's email came an hour later.
The divorce agreement.
Generous — the apartment, the cars, a settlement most women would fight a year for.
I signed the first page and every page after, and I did not ask for one thing on the list. He could keep all of it.
I only ever brought one thing into this marriage he could not buy back — and it was hanging off another woman's ears.
I sent the signed pages back before noon. I blocked every number he had.
The reporter's message from the gala I left unopened.
That one could keep.
* * *
Across town, Mason opened the attachment once. Then again. Then a third time, slower.
Every page was signed. Every initial was hers.
For a moment he only stared, waiting for the second message he was sure would follow — the apology, the anger, the line she always came back to in the end: I cannot do this. I do not want the divorce.
But nothing came.
Claire had taken her name back and left the rest on the table.
He picked up his phone to call her. The call did not ring.
Blocked.
He tried the apartment line. Disconnected.
He had his assistant pull the house — she would expect him to come for her there, she always—
"Mr. Vale, the house sold this morning. Ms. Hart left a forwarding address with the buyer. Not with us."
For the first time in five years, Mason reached for Claire and closed his hand on nothing.
He was still staring at the blocked number when the office door opened.
Not Claire.
Stella.
She stood there with her phone in one hand, the red-carpet clip already open, and the signed agreement still glowing behind him.
For once, she did not sound sweet.
"Mason, now that she signed it, you can finally tell everyone what I am, can't you?"
For the first time since Stella came into his life, Mason hesitated.
Stella played the line once: "After five years, I finally get to introduce my first choice." Then she locked the screen and looked at him.
"You said it in front of the whole city."
Mason did not answer.
"Tell them I am the woman you chose," she said.
Last night, he would have. He had seated her beside him, posed with her under the banner, and wiped her tears while Claire stood in front of them with glass cutting into her palm.
But now, with Claire's signature glowing on the screen, the word chose did not come out clean.
"This is not the right time," Mason said.
Stella went still. "Not the right time? You did not think it was worse when you said first choice on the red carpet."
Mason had no answer for that.
"Say it again," she whispered.
For the first time, the tremble in Stella's voice did not make him want to protect her. It made him tired.
Then his computer chimed.
A new alert slid across the corner of the screen.
Claire Hart speaks after the Vale anniversary gala.
The thumbnail was not Stella in gold. It was Claire, sitting in front of one camera, with the anniversary portrait laid on the table between her and the reporter.
"Mrs. Vale," the reporter asked, "what do you want people to know about this picture?"