Blake
The folder is still there. An innocuous rectangle of beige cardboard on a desk that costs more than most cars. It’s an alien object in my world of steel and glass. An insult. I stare at it, expecting it to spontaneously combust. It does not.
My world, which runs on logic, on leverage, on the immutable law that everyone has a price, has just been fractured by a single sheet of paper that says her price is zero.
I should be relieved. A clean break. No messy asset division, no protracted legal battle played out in the tabloids. It’s the most efficient divorce in the history of billionaires. I should be calling my lawyer to celebrate.
My hand rests on my phone, but I don’t pick it up.
The door to my office opens without a knock. Only one person has that privilege.
“I heard a rumor,” Liam Carter says, strolling in and dropping into one of the leather chairs opposite my desk. He doesn’t look at me. He looks at the folder. “That the quiet queen of the Harland castle just abdicated the throne.”
“It’s a stunt,” I say. The words sound hollow even to me.
Liam finally raises his eyes to mine. They’re sharp, missing nothing. It’s why he’s the best COO in the business. It’s why he’s the most irritating best friend. “A stunt? Blake, my assistant told me your assistant said the settlement clause is a single sentence waiving all claims. That’s not a stunt. That’s a declaration of independence.”
“She’s trying to get under my skin. To find a new angle for a bigger number.”
Liam lets out a short, humorless laugh. “A bigger number than what? The blank check you’ve given her for the last nine years? She had access to everything. She could have bankrupted a small country with her black card and you wouldn’t have noticed.”
“So what do you call this?” I demand, gesturing at the folder. “Charity?”
“I call it a woman who is done.” He leans forward, lacing his fingers together. “And what I’m more interested in is you. You look like your dog just died.”
“I don’t have a dog.”
“Exactly. You’re mourning something that wasn’t even real to you. That’s the fascinating part.”
My jaw tightens. “Don’t psychoanalyze me, Liam. It’s a business arrangement that has ended. That’s all.”
“Was it? Nine years is a long time to share a roof with a business partner. Thirty-two hundred and eighty-five days, give or take. You didn’t learn a single thing about her in all that time?”
I say nothing. I think of her quiet presence at breakfast, the rustle of her turning a page in the library. She was like elegant wallpaper. Pleasant, in the background, never demanding attention.
“What’s her favorite movie?” Liam asks, his voice soft, almost conversational.
I stare at him.
“Okay, easier one. Favorite food? Does she like Italian? Mexican? What does she order when you two go out?”
We never went out. Not like that. We attended functions. We were seen at galas. She ate what was placed in front of her, a picture of quiet grace.
“You don’t know, do you?” He shakes his head, a small, sad smile playing on his lips. “You have no idea who you were married to.”
“I knew everything I needed to know,” I snap, the anger rising, hot and fast. It’s a relief. Anger is familiar territory. “She was presentable, she had a good family name, and she was… compliant. She upheld her end of the contract.”
“And now the contract is over and she left without taking her severance package. That doesn’t bother you? That a person you had a deal with just decided the deal, and all the compensation that came with it, was worthless?”
Every word is a precision strike. He’s taking apart my argument, my reality, piece by piece. “People don’t just walk away from a fortune, Liam.”
“She did,” he says simply. “Which means she wasn’t there for the fortune. So what was she there for?”
The question hangs in the air between us, heavy and suffocating. I have no answer. The assumption was always the money. The lifestyle. The security. It was a transaction. I provided a gilded cage, and she… she what? Lived in it. What a fool I’ve been. A colossal fool.
“She’s gone, Blake. She took one box. One. Your security chief told me. One small cardboard box. What do you think was in it?”
I try to picture the contents of our massive home. The art, the furniture, the designer clothes I paid for, the jewelry I had my assistant buy for birthdays and anniversaries. None of it hers. Not really.
“I don’t know,” I admit, and the words feel like swallowing glass.
“There it is,” Liam says softly. “The truth. You bought a wife, but you never bothered to meet the woman.”
He stands up, brushing a piece of lint from his suit jacket. “My advice? Figure out why that’s bothering you so much more than the divorce itself.” He pauses at the door. “And for God’s sake, call your lawyer. You’re still Blake Harland. Act like it.”
He leaves, and the silence he shattered rushes back in to fill the void. It’s a different kind of silence now. It’s heavier. It’s filled with questions I don’t want to answer.
I stand and walk to the window, looking out over the city I own. A kingdom of glass and light. From up here, everything makes sense. The flow of traffic, the grid of the streets, the logic of commerce. Down there, everything has a price, a value, a purpose.
So why does the woman who just left my life feel like the only thing that doesn’t add up?
I run a hand through my hair, my composure, my entire world, feeling as fragile as the glass I’m leaning against. I feel… empty. It’s a foreign, deeply unpleasant sensation. A void has opened up where I didn’t even know something existed.
My phone buzzes on the desk. A sharp, insistent sound. I walk back and glance at the screen. It’s not a call. It’s a notification.
An electronic invitation. Sleek, minimalist design. Black text on a white background.
*You are cordially invited to the opening of the Vance Gallery and the exclusive premiere of ‘Urban Echoes.’*
I scan the details. Tonight. A chic address downtown.
And then I see the host’s name at the bottom, written in an elegant, familiar script.
*Chloe Vance.*
The name hits me like a jolt of electricity, a memory from a different life. College. Before the empire, before the contract marriage, before this sterile office. Chloe. All fire and ambition and passion. The woman I was supposed to marry. The woman I loved, before a stupid fight and a disastrous break sent me spiraling into the arms of a business deal.
She’d left for Paris nine years ago, vowing to conquer the art world. It seems she has. And now she’s back.
The timing is almost poetic. One woman walks out, leaving behind a confusing emptiness. Another walks back in, representing everything that was vibrant and clear and simple.
Suddenly, the void doesn’t feel so vast. It feels like a problem with a solution. A familiar solution.
I don’t need to understand Brooke. I don’t need to figure out the puzzle of a woman who wants nothing.
I just need to forget her.
I tap the ‘Accept’ button on the invitation. Tonight, I’ll go back to the life that was interrupted. I’ll see the woman I should have been with all along. I’ll replace the quiet, unsettling ghost of my wife with the vibrant, living memory of a love I actually understood.
