The Billionaire’s Regrets, I Don't Care

The Lie

I stood in the restaurant until my legs went numb.

The waiter had approached twice, asking if I needed assistance, if I was waiting for someone, if perhaps I would like to sit. I had waved him away with a hand that didn't feel like my own. My body had become a stranger to me, a puppet with cut strings, swaying in the draft of the air conditioning.

I should have left. I knew I should have left. But some masochistic part of me—some broken, desperate fragment of the girl who had loved Mason Sterling for half her life—needed to see it. Needed to sear the image into her retinas so she could never again lie to herself about what this marriage was.

They looked like a family.

Mason sat with his back to me, but I knew his posture by heart: shoulders straight, spine rigid, the casual arrogance of a man who had never been told no. Chloe Hartwell leaned into him, her blonde head resting on his shoulder, her hand on his chest. She was wearing a dress I recognized. Pale blue silk. I had one just like it in my closet at the Sterling estate, tags still on, bought for a charity gala Mason had canceled at the last minute.

Wendy sat across from them, her small face lit up with a grin I hadn't seen in months. She was feeding Chloe cake with a fork, chocolate smeared on her chin, giggling as Chloe pretended to bite her fingers.

"Again, again!" Wendy squealed.

"Wendy, don't play with your food," Mason said. But his voice was warm. Amused. The voice of a father who was happy.

He had never used that voice with me.

I don't know how long I stood there. Long enough for the waiter to bring them a second bottle of wine. Long enough for Chloe to lean up and whisper something in Mason's ear, her lips brushing his jaw, her hand sliding higher on his chest. Long enough for Wendy to clap her hands and say, "Daddy, Chloe Auntie is so pretty! Prettier than Mommy!"

The words hit me like a physical blow. I stumbled back, knocking into a chair. The scrape of wood against tile was loud enough to make Chloe look up.

Our eyes met across the room.

For a split second, her mask slipped. The delicate, wounded doe routine vanished, and I saw what lived beneath: a sharp, glittering hatred. A predator's triumph. Then she blinked, and she was soft again, shrinking against Mason's side as if I had raised a hand to her.

Mason turned.

When he saw me, his expression didn't change. No guilt. No surprise. Just irritation, as if I were a creditor showing up at a party.

"Luna." He said my name like it was a burden. "What are you doing here?"

My mouth opened. Closed. I had rehearsed a hundred speeches in my head on the flight over, a thousand conversations in the seven years of our marriage. But standing there, watching my daughter laugh with the woman who had replaced me, I found I had no words.

"I asked you a question," Mason said.

"I—" My voice cracked. I swallowed, tried again. "You said you had a client dinner."

Chloe's lower lip trembled. She looked up at Mason with wide, watery eyes. "Mason, I'm so sorry. I didn't know she would be upset. I just wanted to celebrate with Wendy. She's been such a sweet girl..."

"Don't," I said. The word came out sharper than I intended. "Don't pretend this is innocent."

Wendy's head snapped toward me. Her small face twisted into a scowl I didn't recognize.

"Mommy!" she shouted. "Stop being mean to Chloe Auntie!"

The restaurant went quiet. Heads turned. I felt the weight of a dozen stares, curious and pitying, and wanted to sink through the floor.

"Wendy," I whispered. "Baby, I'm not—"

"Yes, you are!" Wendy stood up on her chair, her fists clenched, her face red. "Chloe Auntie is nice! She plays with me and reads me stories and lets me have ice cream before bed! You never do that! You're always busy or tired or on your phone! Chloe Auntie is better than you!"

Each word was a knife, and Wendy didn't know how to pull them out gently. She plunged them in with the careless cruelty of a child who has never been taught to fear loss.

I looked at Mason. Begging him, silently, to say something. To defend me. To tell our daughter that those words were cruel and untrue.

He sighed. "Wendy, sit down."

That was all. No reprimand. No correction. Just a weary sigh, as if I were the one causing a scene.

Chloe dabbed at her eyes with a napkin. "Mason, maybe I should go. I don't want to cause trouble..."

"Stay," Mason said. His hand covered hers on the table. A casual, intimate gesture. The kind of touch he had never given me. "Luna, you're embarrassing yourself. Go back to the hotel."

I waited for the anger. I had been angry before—at the dry cleaner who ruined his shirts, at the contractor who overcharged for the pool house, at the traffic on the 405. Anger was familiar. Anger was safe.

But what rose in me now wasn't anger. It was something colder. Something final.

I looked at Wendy, at her tear-streaked, furious face. I looked at Mason, at his hand on Chloe's, at the exhaustion in his eyes. I looked at the white roses in the center of their table, at the cake with the single candle, at the life I had been excluded from.

"Enjoy your dinner," I said.

My voice sounded strange. Calm. Empty.

I turned and walked out of the restaurant. My heels clicked against the marble floor, steady as a metronome. I didn't run. I didn't cry. I walked with my head up and my shoulders back, the way Arthur Sterling had taught me when he walked me down the aisle seven years ago.

A Sterling never shows weakness in public, Luna. Remember that.

I remembered.

The cold hit me like a wall when I stepped outside. New York in April was still winter's reluctant cousin, the wind cutting through my silk dress like it was tissue paper. I walked without direction, past the bright windows of Fifth Avenue, past the steam rising from subway grates, past couples huddled under shared umbrellas.

I walked until my feet blistered. Until the city lights blurred into streaks of gold and red. Until I found myself standing at the edge of Central Park, staring at the dark skeletons of trees, and realized I had nowhere to go.

The hotel suite was occupied by my husband and the woman he loved. The LA mansion was a tomb. The apartment I had bought at twenty-five was a forgotten memory, buried under years of we and us and our that had never really included me.

I sat on a bench. The wood was damp, seeping through my dress, but I didn't care. I pulled my knees to my chest and rested my forehead against them.

Then, finally, I let myself cry.

It wasn't the dramatic sobbing of a woman scorned. It was quiet, ugly, exhausted. The kind of crying that comes from a well so deep you didn't know it existed. I cried for the girl who had believed love was enough. For the woman who had ironed shirts at midnight hoping for a smile. For the mother who had been replaced by a stranger in a pale blue dress.

And when the tears ran out, when my throat was raw and my eyes swollen shut, I opened my mouth and whispered the word into the dark.

"Divorce."

It tasted like the first true thing I had said to myself in seven years.