Lexy
Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
Stop it. Just stop.
She forced her fingers to slow, to breathe, to function like they were supposed to. One item at a time. Fold the blouse. Place it in the suitcase. Reach for the next thing.
The hotel room felt too large around her. Too quiet. The afternoon light slanting through the floor-to-ceiling windows turned everything golden and soft, completely at odds with the sharp-edged confusion tearing through her chest.
In the car ride back from Shayla’s office, she’d tried to make sense of it. Tried to logic her way through the impossible equation that didn’t balance.
An amendment to their marital agreement.
Six years ago.
With her consent.
But she had no memory of consenting. No memory of discussing a mistress. No memory of agreeing to monthly financial provisions for another woman’s residential and personal expenses.
She couldn’t see Leonidas lying to her. Forging her signature. Eight years of marriage, and he had never once broken his word. Never once deceived her. Their entire arrangement was built on honesty, on promises kept, on mutual respect for the boundaries they’d drawn together.
And Tio Samuel...no. Impossible. The older man had been a friend to both her late father and to Leonidas’s family for decades.
He’d held her when she cried at her father’s funeral.
He’d walked her through every clause of her marital agreement with patience and care, making sure she understood what she was signing.
He would never deceive her.
Which left only one possibility.
She had signed it herself.
Too humiliated to call Tio Samuel and confirm what she already suspected, she’d asked Shayla for a copy of the amendment instead. The lawyer had provided it within the hour, sent directly to Lexy’s phone as a PDF.
And there it was.
Her signature. Dated six years ago. Witnessed. Notarized.
She remembered signing it. Or rather, she remembered sitting in Tio Samuel’s office, jet-lagged from a research conference in Tokyo, listening to him explain something about “updated terms” and “standard provisions” while her mind was still half-occupied with calibration formulas she’d been working on during the flight.
She’d trusted him. Trusted that whatever needed signing was routine, administrative, nothing that required her full attention.
She’d signed without reading.
Because she trusted.
Was this some kind of conspiracy? Had they planned it together, the three of them? Leonidas, Tio Samuel, and the faceless woman in Milan whose existence had been carefully hidden from her for six years?
No.
That didn’t make sense either.
But nothing made sense anymore.
She just felt so hurt. So empty. So shamefully, stupidly naive.
The blouse slipped from her trembling fingers. She pressed her palms flat against the suitcase, trying to ground herself, trying to breathe through the tightness in her chest.
A knock sounded at the door.
Room service. Finally. She’d ordered coffee hours ago, before Shayla’s office, before the world had tilted sideways and refused to right itself.
Lexy crossed to the door, wiping at her eyes even though she hadn’t realized she was crying. Her reflection in the entry mirror showed a stranger. Smudged makeup. Hair escaping its careful arrangement. The four-inch heels she’d insisted on wearing now felt like instruments of torture.
She opened the door.
And froze.
Leonidas stood in the hallway, golden hair slightly disheveled from travel, tawny eyes searching her face with an intensity that made her want to step back. He was still wearing his suit from Monaco, though the jacket was gone and his shirtsleeves were rolled to his elbows.
In his hands, he held a bouquet of roses.
Red. Perfect. Absurdly romantic for a man who’d never pretended their marriage was anything other than a business arrangement.
On their third year of marriage, over breakfast one morning, they had somehow gotten to talking about the past. She’d shared how her father used to give roses to her mother every time he did something wrong. A peace offering. An apology in petals.
The next day, Leonidas had given her roses.
The note card had said: I’m sure I’ve done something wrong by now. But if I haven’t yet, keep track. I like to pay in advance.
It had made her laugh. Actually laugh, the kind that caught her by surprise and left her smiling for the rest of the day.
He’d been giving her roses out of the blue since then. No occasion. No reason. Just...roses. And it always made her laugh. Always. She had thought of it as their private joke, had even made her feel secretly special because she knew Leon wasn’t the type to indulge in cozy little traditions.
Roses made her smile because of him.
But now, as she accepted the bouquet with numb fingers and stepped back to let him in, all she could think about were the words that had turned her world upside-down in a blink.
Long-term companion.
Monthly financial provisions.
Six years.
And suddenly the roses in her hands felt like a lie. Like every rose he’d ever given her had been part of some elaborate performance she’d been too stupid to see through.
“Lexy.” His voice was low, edged with the kind of fierce protectiveness that she used to cherish. But now it made her wonder if she had misread this all along, and it was simply...guilt.
Tawny eyes tracked over her face, taking in the smudged makeup, the tear-tracks, the trembling hands. “What’s wrong?”
She looked at him.
Really looked at him.
The golden hair with its single silver streak. The leonine features that made strangers step aside without knowing why. The broad shoulders and sleek power barely contained in expensive fabric. A modern-day monarch who commanded billions with quiet authority.
Her husband of eight years.
A stranger.
The words rose up her throat before she could stop them. Before she could think them through or plan what came next. They just...came. Whispered into the space between them like a confession she hadn’t known she needed to make.
“I want a divorce.”