Chapter 22
Christopher
Trisha didn’t say hello. She said, “The photos are everywhere.”
I was in the middle of a meeting with the CFO about quarterly projections. I stood up and walked out. The CFO kept talking for three seconds before realizing I was gone.
“What photos?”
“You and Seraphina. Hotel bar. Two images. Every entertainment outlet in the country is running them. The headline on TMZ is ‘Vale’s Secret Hotel Meeting With Ex.’ CNN picked it up twenty minutes ago.
Someone is calling it cheating allegations.
” A pause, then Trisha’s voice went flat as she shoved the tablet in front of me. “Christopher, who took those photos?”
Esmeralda. I didn’t even have to think. The photos were taken through the hotel bar window from a distance, surveillance-angle—shots that required knowing where I’d be before I got there. Esmeralda had people following me. She’d seen me meet Seraphina and she’d weaponized it within hours.
But the photos alone weren’t enough. They showed two people at a table, close but not touching, incriminating only if you added context—and the context had been added.
Someone had tipped the press. Someone had framed the narrative.
And the only person with the motive, the resources, and the ruthlessness to orchestrate this was the same woman who’d spent thirty years trying to erase me from the Vale name.
I thought about Seraphina, about her timing. She’d come back from London “briefly,” said she’d heard about the marriage, and said she wanted to talk.
What if the conversation wasn’t coincidental? What if Esmeralda had reached out to Seraphina first?
I couldn’t prove it. But the architecture of it was Esmeralda’s. Every piece.
“Kill the story,” I said.
“I’m already working on it. Legal is drafting cease and desists. PR is preparing a statement. But Christopher, the photos are out. They’re shared. They’re trending. Killing the story now is like trying to put a fire back in the match.”
“Then contain it. Statement from my team. Seraphina was an old friend. The meeting was brief. The marriage is strong.”
“Is it?”
I stopped walking. “What?”
“Is the marriage strong? Because I need to know what I’m defending before I defend it.”
“Trisha.”
“I’m being practical. If this is a real marriage, I’m fighting for it. If it’s still a contract, I’m managing optics. Those are different strategies.”
“It’s real.” I said it without hesitation. “Fight for it.”
“That’s all I needed to hear. Go back to your meeting. I’ll handle the press. But Christopher? Call your wife. She needs to hear this from you, not from a news anchor.”
I called Miley. It rang five times and went to voicemail.
I called again. Voicemail.
Again. Voicemail.
I texted. Called again. Nothing.
The rest of the day was a war on two fronts.
Trisha managed the press while I managed the board.
Paul Hargrove called an emergency session to discuss the optics.
Three board members wanted a statement. Two wanted to know if Seraphina was available for the company’s holiday party, which I chose to believe was a joke because the alternative was committing a felony.
I sat in that boardroom for four hours while the woman I loved wasn’t answering her phone. Every fifteen minutes I checked the screen under the table. No missed calls. No texts. Nothing.
At six, I left the office. Drove home faster than I should have.
The whole way I rehearsed what I’d say. The truth.
All of it. Seraphina was closure. The papers were for the contract, not the marriage.
The ring was in the dresser drawer wrapped in velvet.
I’d planned everything. I’d had it all figured out, which should have been my first warning because nothing in my life had ever gone according to plan and the universe apparently wasn’t about to start making exceptions.
The house was dark.
I opened the front door and the silence hit me before the cold air did. No sound of anyone existing in a space that had become alive in the last two months because of the woman who lived in it.
“Miley?”
Nothing.
I walked through the house, kitchen empty, her shoes gone from the hallway, living room untouched. I took the stairs two at a time, into our bedroom. The bed was made—not as I’d left it that morning, with the sheets tangled and her pillow still dented from where she’d slept. Made. Smooth. Empty.
I went to the study.
The letter was on my desk, beside the divorce papers. Her name was signed on the line.
I picked up the letter and read it standing. My hands started shaking by the second paragraph and didn’t stop.
You can’t compete with history. You can’t make someone choose you when their heart is still in someone else’s hands.
The floor went out from under me. Every certainty I’d built in the last few weeks dissolved. She thought I was choosing Seraphina. She thought the papers were my exit.
The divorce papers weren’t for ending us. They were for ending the contract. So I could marry her for real.
But she didn’t know that. And I hadn’t told her. And now she was gone.
I called my grandmother.
“Is Miley with you?”
“No. She called this morning and said she wasn’t feeling well. I assumed she was resting at the house.” A pause. “Christopher. What happened?”
“She’s gone. She found the divorce papers and she saw photos of me with Seraphina and she thinks I’m choosing my ex over her. She left a letter. She signed the papers. She’s gone.”
The silence that followed was the loudest thing I’d ever heard from my grandmother.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know.” Her voice was steel. “Find her, Christopher.”
“I’m trying—”
“Don’t try. Do. That girl is my daughter-in-law. I don’t care what the contract says. She is family. You find her and you bring her home and you tell her the truth and you do not let your pride or your fear or whatever broken thing lives inside you get in the way.”
“I will.”
“Am I clear?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. Call me when she’s safe.” Her voice softened then, the steel giving way to something that was just a grandmother who was scared. “Please, Christopher. Bring her back.”
I hung up and called Trisha.
“Miley left. I need you to find her.”
Trisha didn’t ask unnecessary questions. That was why she was the best person I’d ever hired. She said, “Give me twenty minutes,” and hung up.
I spent those twenty minutes standing in the kitchen staring at a smiley face on a sticky note and making promises to a God I wasn’t sure I believed in.
If she was safe. If I found her. If she let me explain.
I’d tell her everything. That I was terrified and in love and had bought a ring and called my grandmother for help picking it and had been planning to propose to a woman who was currently on a plane believing I’d thrown her away.
Trisha called back.
“Charlotte, North Carolina. She booked a flight this afternoon. Anna Hunter’s parents live there. Anna is visiting for a family anniversary.”
“Book me on the next flight.”
“Already done. You leave in ninety minutes from Miami International. Gate 14B.”
“Trisha—”
“I know. Go get her, I’ll handle things here as much as I can. And Christopher?” Her voice changed. “I’m rooting for you. So you get on that plane and you say whatever you need to say and you bring her home. Because if you don’t, I will personally resign and go work for her instead.”
“Noted.”
I grabbed my phone. My wallet. The letter. I folded it into my jacket pocket because it was the last thing she’d given me and I was going to carry it until I could give it back and tell her she was wrong about every word except the part where she said she loved me.
Jace Hunter opened the door.
Six-foot-three. Barbecue apron. Tongs. The same expression he’d worn every time he’d seen me since we were fifteen—the expression of a man who found my existence mildly inconvenient and was too well-bred to say it directly.
Jace and I had history. Not the good kind.
Our grandmothers were friends, which meant we’d been forced into each other’s orbit at charity events and holiday gatherings for years.
I’d spent my teenage years trying to befriend him the way I befriended everyone—through charm and strategic conversation. Jace was immune to both.
The man sanitized his hands after every handshake and kept a radius around himself that he defended like a sovereign border. Every casual comment I’d ever made was met with a monosyllabic response and the distinct impression that he was counting down to my departure.
Then, years later, at an awards ceremony, I’d met Anna. Beautiful, warm, charming. I’d flirted with her for exactly ninety seconds before Jace appeared beside her like a six-foot-three apparition and looked at me with an expression that suggested he was mentally selecting a burial site.
I hadn’t been interested in Anna. I’d just wanted to see if Jace Hunter was capable of an emotion other than contempt. He was. The emotion was murderous rage. It was the most personality I’d ever seen from him and I found it genuinely entertaining.
He had not forgiven me for those ninety seconds. I was fairly certain he would never forgive me.
“Hunter,” I said.
“Vale.” He didn’t move. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m looking for my wife.”
“Your wife.” He said it like something bitter. “The one who showed up crying? That wife?”
“Yes.”
“She’s in the backyard.” He didn’t step aside. “I don’t appreciate you intruding on my family’s gathering.”
“I’m not here for your gathering. I’m here for Miley.”
“You’re standing on my in-laws’ porch.” He looked at me. Then at my shoes. “Take those off before you come inside.”
“You want me to take off my shoes.”
“Is that a problem?”
I kicked off my shoes because arguing with Jace Hunter about footwear while my wife was fifty feet away was not how I was going to spend this day. I muttered something about him being the most annoying human being on the planet.
“I’ve been told,” he said, with zero indication that he cared.