Chapter four
1130 Words
AMELIA'S POV
The penthouse elevator opened and Gabriella answered the door.
Not a maid or a housekeeper. Gabriella, in a silk blouse I did not recognize, holding a glass of wine like she had been standing in my living room long enough to forget it was not hers.
We looked at each other.
"Amelia." Her voice was warm and perfectly surprised, the specific warmth of someone who had been practicing it. "I didn't know you were coming back tonight."
"I live here," I said and walked past her.
The penthouse was exactly as I had left it that morning except for the second wine glass on the coffee table and Gabriella's jacket draped over the arm of my chair and the particular ease with which she closed the door behind me like she had done it a hundred times before.
Maybe she had.
Damien was standing at the window with his phone in his hand and he turned when he heard me and his expression did the thing it always did, moved from whatever it was before I arrived to something more managed and appropriate for my benefit.
"You're late," he said. "I tried calling."
"I know."
"Where were you."
"I had an appointment."
He looked at me for a moment. "You look pale. Are you alright."
"I want a divorce Damien."
The room went completely still.
Damien stared at me.
Behind me I heard Gabriella set her wine glass down on the counter very carefully, the specific careful movement of someone who had just decided to pay very close attention.
"What did you say," Damien said.
"I want a divorce. I want you to call the lawyer tomorrow morning and I want the papers drawn up by the end of the week."
He looked at me the way he looked at quarterly reports that had come back wrong, like this was a problem with a solution he simply had not identified yet.
"Amelia—"
"I am not asking Damien. I am telling you."
He set his phone down slowly on the windowsill. "This is not a conversation we are having right now."
"We are absolutely having it right now."
"You are clearly upset about something and I understand that but this is not the way to—"
"I am not upset," I said. "I am very calm. I have been calm about this for approximately three hours and I intend to stay that way so please do not tell me what I am."
He looked at Gabriella briefly, so briefly that anyone who was not watching for it would have missed it entirely.
I had been watching for it.
"Gabriella," he said, "could you give us a minute."
"Of course." She did not move toward the door immediately. She picked up her wine glass first, unhurried, and then she looked at me with that warm composed expression. "Are you sure you're alright Amelia. You really do look pale."
"I am perfectly fine thank you."
"It's just that you seem—"
"Gabriella," I said, "I did not ask for your assessment."
She smiled the smile of someone absorbing a small unpleasantness gracefully and moved toward the hallway and I turned back to Damien.
Tonight she could wait.
"The pack's image," Damien said the moment she was gone, moving toward me, voice dropping into the register he used when he wanted to sound reasonable. "You understand what a divorce does to the pack's image right now. The timing alone—"
"I do not care about the pack's image."
"Well I do. And as my wife you have a responsibility—"
"I will not be your wife by the end of the week so that particular responsibility is going to resolve itself."
"You are not being rational."
"I am being extremely rational. I have possibly never been more rational in my life."
He stopped in front of me and looked at me with that gray gaze that used to make me feel like I was being assessed and found wanting and now just made me feel nothing at all.
"What is this actually about," he said. "Talk to me."
"I just did."
"Amelia." He reached for my hand and I stepped back and something moved across his expression that was not quite hurt but was adjacent to it, the look of a man who had just discovered that something he took for granted had stopped being available. "Whatever has happened we can discuss it. We can work through it. But divorce is not—"
"Did you know that I came to the clinic eighteen months ago," I said. "Headaches. Blackouts. And I came home and you did not ask a single question about the appointment."
He frowned. "What does that have to do with—"
"Not one question Damien."
"I don't remember you mentioning a clinic appointment."
"I know," I said. "That is exactly what I mean."
He stared at me.
I picked up my bag from the chair.
"Have the lawyer call me," I said and walked toward the door.
"Amelia I am not signing anything."
"Then I will find a lawyer who does not need your signature." I opened the door. "Either way I will not be here when you wake up tomorrow."
I stepped into the hallway.
Gabriella was standing there right there in the hallway with her wine glass in hand, close enough that there was no version of events in which she had not heard every single word.
We looked at each other.
I tilted my head slightly.
"The locket," I said. "Where did you put it after you picked it up that night."
The smile on her face did not disappear but something underneath it shifted in a way she could not quite control, something that moved through her eyes for just a fraction of a second before she got it back under.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.
I looked at her for a long moment.
"Yes you do," I said. "And now so do I."
I walked to the elevator and pressed the button and stood there with my back to her and my hand wrapped around the locket through the fabric of my jacket and I did not turn around even when I heard her set the wine glass down again behind me, harder this time, not carefully at all.
The elevator doors opened.
I stepped in.
"Amelia." Her voice came from behind me, the warmth completely gone from it now, something else underneath it that she had been keeping very carefully out of sight for three years. "You have no idea what you're starting."
I turned around and looked at her as the doors began to close.
"Yes I do," I said.
- Writer
