Chapter Three
Mandy
Caroline was getting a divorce.
The party thinned out in waves—goodbyes at the door, cars pulling up outside, the noise of the evening slowly draining out of the room. By the time the space had nearly emptied, Caroline finally crossed the floor toward us, unsteady on her heels.
Her eyes were rimmed red. Her fingers had twisted the silk of her dress into a death grip at her side. Tears slid down her face without a sound, like she'd had a lot of practice crying quietly.
I stood beside Damon and felt something cold settle low in my chest. Gold diggers, scheming clients, women who circled my husband like Chloe had earlier tonight—those I knew exactly how to handle. I could dismantle them with a smile and a diamond ring and not lose a wink of sleep over it.
But a woman standing in front of me, genuinely broken? Every weapon I owned turned useless against that. I couldn't find a single angle to send her away.
So we stood there, the two of us, and let her tell it.
Her French billionaire husband—the one the tabloids had called the catch of the decade—had dropped the act almost the moment the ring was on her finger.
Affairs, in the open, no attempt to hide them.
And worse than that, his hands hadn't stayed where they belonged either.
His family owned half of French high society, old money running generations deep, and not one lawyer on that side of the Atlantic would touch her case.
"I told everyone I was visiting family in New York."
Caroline's voice cracked on every other word, her pale face lifted toward us, eyes pleading in a way that made something twist uncomfortably in my stomach.
"He's too busy with his mistress to even notice I'm gone. Damon—you're the only person in this city I trust. Please. I have nowhere else to go."
Watching her fall apart in front of us, I swallowed the knot rising in my throat and tried to be the version of myself that deserved the name Mrs. Walker.
"Caroline, I'm so sorry." I kept my voice level, warm, the way I would with any client walking into my own office in pieces.
"International divorce and asset disputes are brutal—especially with a family that powerful involved. I can put you in touch with the best cross-border matrimonial team in the city. They specialize in exactly this. I promise you'll be in good hands, they can—"
"I'll take the case."
Damon's voice cut clean through mine like it hadn't even registered I was speaking.
Crisp. Final. Almost surgical.
Every alarm bell I owned went off at once.
I understood the situation was ugly—if I'd walked past this scene as a stranger, I'd have felt for her too.
But if I detonated right here, in front of her, in front of what was left of our own guests, I'd be the jealous wife making a scene at her own anniversary party.
The easiest, most convenient excuse in the world for the two of them to lean on each other.
So I swallowed it. Every ounce of it, down to the bottom of my stomach.
I didn't let it show until Caroline's car pulled away and the ballroom doors closed behind the last caterer, leaving just the two of us in a room gone suddenly, brutally silent.
The air between us went cold enough to bite. I turned to face him, and my voice came out shaking despite everything I did to steady it.
"You just told your ex-girlfriend, to her face, in front of me, that you'd take her divorce case. No warning. Not one conversation beforehand. Did it even occur to you to ask how I'd feel about that, Damon? Or did that thought not make it into the equation at all?"
Damon shrugged out of his jacket, tossed it over the back of the sofa without a glance, and looked at me with something maddeningly close to amusement tugging at his mouth.
"You don't actually think I still have feelings for her. Do you?"
He laughed—short, dismissive, like the accusation was beneath answering. "Caroline is ancient history, Mandy. I didn't realize your opinion of me had sunk that low."
He crossed to the bar, poured two fingers of whiskey, and turned back to face me with that look I recognized from every closing argument he'd ever delivered—sharp, calculating, already three moves ahead.
"Her husband is one of the wealthiest men in Europe. Win this, and the fee alone puts me in a different tax bracket. And that's before you factor in what it does for the firm—it's my foot in the door to every courtroom on that continent. This is the kind of case that shows up once in a career,
Mandy. I'm not walking away from it because it makes you uncomfortable."
He watched my face not move, not soften, and something in his expression shifted. He set the glass down and closed the distance between us, and the shark's edge in him gave way to something quieter, gentler—something that almost looked like honesty.
"Okay." His hands came up to my shoulders, warm through the thin silk of my dress, his eyes holding mine without a flicker of retreat.
"If it really bothers you this much—I'll report back. Every meeting, every filing, every development on her case, straight to you. Within what privilege allows, obviously, but nothing hidden. No blind spots."
His thumb moved slow against my collarbone, his voice dropping low enough that it was just for me.
"This is business, Mandy. A stepping stone. Nothing else. Outside the case, there's no reason for me to see her, call her, think about her at all."
A beat. "Does that put your mind at ease, Mrs. Walker?"
He always knew exactly which words would land, exactly which look would talk me down off a ledge. It had worked on me a hundred times before tonight.
But standing there under the low lights, staring into eyes that had never once lied to a jury without me knowing it, the cold thing coiled in my chest didn't loosen.
It tightened.