SORRY EX-HUSBAND, I AM NEVER COMING BACK

CHAPTER 6 - THE PLAN

ROBERT

The moment the words left my mouth, I watched her face change.

I held her gaze from where I knelt and I felt relief at once. Her expression showed that she still felt something for me and that meant this was going to be easier than I thought.

"Natalia," I said again, keeping my voice low. "I need you to hear me out. Everything I said that night, everything I did, none of it was me. I wasn't in my right mind."

She didn't say a word in response and I ranted on.

"Ciara gave me something," I continued. "I don't know exactly what it was, but I wasn't myself. I haven't been myself for weeks. She's been manipulating me, twisting my thoughts."

I shook my head, letting the show of false regret seem more realistic.

"I said things that night that I never would have said to you if I had been in my right mind.

I paused, letting that sink in.

"Natalia, I love you. I have always loved you."

For a long moment, the office was completely silent.

Then she sighed. The pain I had seen in her eyes suddenly disappeared and when she spoke, her words were cold.

"Did you come here to write the company a cheque for Ciara's debt?" she asked. "Because if you didn't, I'll be placing a call to the police right now."

I rose slowly from my knee and looked her dead in the eyes.

"Do whatever you have to do with Ciara," I said. "I want nothing to do with her anymore."

I moved toward the chair across from her desk and rested my hands on the back of it.

"She's not who I thought she was, Natalia. She used me. She manipulated me and poisoned everything I had with you, and I was too blind to see it until it was too late."

I sighed before continuing. "She almost destroyed my marriage. She almost destroyed the best thing that ever happened to me."

Almost immediately, she stood up from her chair, and when her eyes met mine, they were blazing with anger.

"Do you think I'm stupid?" She snapped. "You dragged me out of this office with your own hands less than an hour ago, you tried to humiliate me in front of your brother and half the staff of this building."

She tilted her head slightly. "And now that you've found out I'm the Carson heir, you're suddenly on your knees telling me you love me? How stupid do you actually think I am?"

"That was Ciara," I mumbled. "I was angry and confused and she had me convinced that you showing up here was some kind of scheme."

Natalia stared at me for a long moment. Then she pointed at the door.

"Get out of my office, Robert."

Her voice had gone flat. The fire was gone and what replaced it was finality.

"Get out of my office and out of this building," She snapped. "I have already signed those papers and so there is no marriage left to save. Whatever you think you're doing here, it's over."

I stared at her for a while and then, a light chuckle escaped my lips.

"Actually," I said, "that's not entirely accurate."

She frowned.

"The final legal procedures haven't been completed," I explained. "I spoke to my lawyers this morning so keep it in mind that the divorce filing can still be contested. I initiated those proceedings under duress, and there are legal grounds to have them reviewed."

I let a small teasing smile cross my lips. "Legally, Natalia, you are still my wife."

The look of disbelief on her face was something I would have enjoyed in a different context.

"I know what I did was wrong," I continued, before she could find the words to respond. "And I know that saying sorry isn't enough. But I'm going to make it up to you. Whatever it takes and no matter how long it takes."

And just like that, I turned and walked out of her office, pulling the door shut behind me.

I took the elevator down two floors and made my way to Ciara's office.

When I pushed open the door, she was already packing.

"I told you she couldn't touch me," she said, folding a silk scarf and placing it carefully into the box. "Fifty million is nothing. We've already pulled more than that out of this company over the past year and a half. She can have her little invoice."

"Stop."

She paused and looked up at me.

"What?"

"Put it down," I said, nodding toward the item in her hands. "All of it. Put it back."

Ciara set the scarf down slowly, her eyes narrowing as she studied my face. She was trying to read me, trying to figure out what I had walked out of Natalia's office with.

"Robert, what happened up there?"

I pulled out the chair on the visitor's side of her desk and sat down, crossing one leg over the other.

"I made a mistake," I said finally.

She crossed her arms. "What kind of mistake?"

"I underestimated her."

I said it plainly because there was no point hiding it.

"When I married Natalia, I thought I understood exactly what she was. A quiet girl who wanted a simple life...someone easy to manage."

Ciara said nothing. She was listening now.

"I never once considered that she could be anything other than a sheltered little girl under my watch," I continued. "I thought she was nothing and I was wrong."

Ciara's arms dropped slowly to her sides.

"And now that I know who she is, I have to do something," I continued. "Losing her means losing the position I had inside the Carson network. It means losing the leverage we've spent the last six months building."

Ciara stared at me, and I could see the shock on her face.

"So we're not leaving," she said.

"No," I grunted. "We are not leaving."

I leaned forward slightly in the chair. "We are changing strategy. Because if we want the Carson Group to eventually become ours, then we cannot afford to walk away from the one person who is the key to all of it."