42. Dominic #2
“You don’t just yield,” Logan insists, his fingers digging fiercely into my forearm. “That’s not how you operate. You evaluate the loss, you restructure the approach, and you fight for the relationship. You go to Queens and you win her back.”
“She isn’t a goddamn acquisition, Logan!” I snap, the sudden volume echoing off the walls.
Audrey flinches, and I instantly hate myself for it. I drop my head, the fight draining out of me as I stare at the pristine white paper of the annulment.
“That’s exactly the problem,” I say, my voice dropping to a gravelly rasp. “That’s exactly why she’s sitting at O’Hare right now. I treated her like an acquisition. I played the game, and I won, and I made her feel like a trophy. I can’t fix that by launching another offensive.”
“Dominic, please,” Audrey pleads, moving closer until her hand rests gently over Logan’s tight grip.
Her eyes are bright with unshed tears. “Just wait. Give it twenty-four hours. Let the alcohol wear off. Let her cool down. You love her. You should be fighting for what you have, not throwing it away because of one terrible night.”
“I’m not throwing it away,” I say, forcing myself to look at my two best friends. They’re standing in my office, actively trying to save me from myself, and it’s breaking my heart all over again. “I’m giving her what she wanted in the beginning.”
Logan frowns. “No, Dom.”
“When we put the rings on. I asked for sixty days. And I swore to her—I gave her my absolute word—that if she didn’t want to stay married at the end of it, I wouldn’t fight her. I wouldn’t deploy my lawyers, I wouldn’t trap her, and I wouldn’t try to manipulate her into staying.”
“But it was just one night,” Audrey insists. “Everything between you has been—”
“It doesn’t matter, Audrey.” I cut her off, my tone flat and absolute.
“It was the only reason she trusted me enough to try. She knew I was a shark, and I told her I wouldn’t bite her.
If I go after her now, if I show up in Queens and try to charm my way out of this .
. . I’m just proving her right. I’m proving I’m exactly the man she thinks I am.
A guy who only cares about getting my way and winning no matter the cost.”
“But the sixty days aren’t over,” Audrey says.
“She resigned from Mercer and boarded a plane to Queens. She gave me an answer.” I force myself to look at them. “I don’t get to invalidate it because the calendar says I have four more days.”
Audrey shakes her head, a single tear spilling over her lashes. “But she loves you. I know she does.”
“And I love her,” I whisper. The truth of it hollows out my chest, scraping against my ribs until there’s nothing left but a gaping void. “I love her enough to let her walk. I love her enough to give her the one thing she actually asked for.”
I look down at Logan’s hand. He stares at me for a long, agonizing moment, his brilliant mind processing the absolute devastation in my eyes. Slowly, reluctantly, his fingers loosen.
I pick up the pen. The silver is cold against my skin. I press the nib to the paper, right on the line that severs Jenna Pemberton from Dominic Cruz forever, and I sign my name.
I was never going to sign these papers. An annulment is a lie with a court stamp—no valid marriage ever existed—and it did, it existed, it existed in a bathtub and a workshop, it existed in the office, and around our friends and family. In front of the whole fucking city.
Twenty-four hours ago, it was the best thing I had. I’d have gone to trial to protect it.
Last night, in her bedroom, she offered me the divorce instead—my terms, my record, the truth preserved, you win.
And it turns out I don’t want that. Forcing her to stand in a courtroom and dissolve a real marriage, making her carry divorced through the rest of her life like a stone in her coat, all so my version of the story survives on a government form—that’s not truth.
That’s just winning. It’s the shittiest win ever offered to me, and I’ve been offered some beauties.
I slide the manila folder across the polished wood toward Logan.
“Sign the witness line, Professor.”
Logan stares at the document like it’s a virus about to infect his mainframe.
He looks at Audrey, whose face is buried in her hands, and then back to me.
His jaw clenches. But he knows me well enough to understand that the negotiation is over.
He takes the Montblanc from my fingers, his hand jerky and reluctant, and scratches his name on the line.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
I pull a yellow Post-it note from the dispenser next to my monitor. I grab the pen back and stare at the tiny yellow square. There are a million things I want to say, a million airtight arguments I could formulate. But I don’t.
I never wanted to win.
I just wanted you.
You’re free.
I slap the sticky note onto the front of the annulment papers, slide them back into the folder, and walk out to the foyer. Logan and Audrey follow me in heavy silence.
I crouch next to her weekender bags, unzipping the front compartment of the smaller one. I slide the manila envelope inside. I’m about to pull the zipper shut when a sharp ache hits my chest. I pause, my hand hovering over the nylon.
Slowly, I get up and find the velvet box containing the custom rings I was supposed to give her last night.
I stare at it for a second before dropping it directly on top of the folder.
Then, my fingers go to my left hand. I twist the gold band off my own finger—it feels like peeling off a layer of skin—and drop it into the bag alongside the box.
I zip the compartment shut just as the doorbell rings again.
I swing the door open. A courier in a dark blue polo stands on the porch, tablet in hand.
“Pick up for Cruz?”
“Yeah,” I say, my voice dead. “These two bags. They’re going to the address in Queens.”
He scans the pre-printed tags I attached earlier, has me scribble a digital signature on his screen, and hoists the bags over his shoulder.
I stand in the doorway, the wind biting through my shirt, and I watch him load the last pieces of my wife’s life in this house into the back of a cargo van.
The doors slam shut. The engine turns over.
He drives away, taking the best thing that ever happened to me with him.
I close the front door and lean my forehead against the heavy wood.
“The fries are getting cold,” Logan says gently from the hallway.