Divorce Me If You Dare: The Hidden Queen's Revenge novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Green Notebook

Cora packs one suitcase, recites her whole tonic notebook from memory to Marguerite, and leaves with Alexander. His mother goes white at the name Lenhart, and Cora learns she owns 62% of Brooks's company.

"The Lakefront Hotel," Cora said into the phone. "I need one hour at the townhouse for my things, and then I need a place to sleep."

"I'm four minutes away," Alexander said. "Stay inside the lobby."

She waited by the revolving door with her hands empty.

Her phone buzzed against her palm.

A video of her own back, walking up the ballroom carpet, already had two million views.

Under it a stranger had written: SHE TOLD HIM TO DIVORCE HER IN FRONT OF EVERYONE.

Another had written: THE APRON. HE MADE HER WEAR THE APRON.

Cora put the phone in her pocket.

A black car stopped at the curb, and a tall man in a dark suit got out before the driver could.

He had short dark hair and gray eyes, and he did not look at the cameras across the street.

He looked at her.

"Miss Lenhart," Alexander Easterling said, and held the door.

Of everyone in her life, only he still used her real name.

She sat down in the back seat.

"Take me to the Farwell house first," she said. "Then wherever you want."

The townhouse on Lake Shore Drive was dark when they pulled up.

Alexander stayed with the car, and Cora went up the steps alone with the key she had used every day for five years.

She packed in nineteen minutes.

There was one gray suitcase.

She took her cookbooks, her three plain dresses, her mother's old watch and nothing else.

She left the shirts she had washed that morning folded on the bed.

She was zipping the bag when headlights swept the bedroom wall.

Marguerite came through the front door first, still in her pearls, with Brooks and Delaney behind her.

"There she is," Marguerite said from the foot of the stairs. "Packing like a thief."

"I'm packing my own clothes," Cora said.

"Your clothes were bought with my son's money."

"No," Cora said. "They weren't. I wore these dresses when I met him."

She came down with the suitcase in one hand.

Brooks stood by the coat rack with his tie pulled loose and his jaw tight.

"Don't be dramatic, Cora," he said. "Go sleep somewhere, calm down, and we'll talk Monday."

"We will not."

"You're going to look very foolish when your friend's couch gets old."

"I don't have a friend with a couch," Cora said. "You made sure of that."

He opened his mouth and shut it again.

Delaney touched his sleeve.

"Brooks, please," she said quietly. "Let her go. She's upset."

Her voice was gentle, and Cora's chest still ached at it, because it had been gentle for three years.

Marguerite stepped forward.

"The notebook," she said. "The green one, with the tonic recipes. It stays in this house."

Cora looked at her.

"The cinnamon bark and ginger, two full hours, on low," she said. "Licorice root added at the end. Marshmallow root for the lining on bad nights. Peppermint only after he's been drinking."

She did not stop.

She recited all forty-one pages from memory, in order, down to the margin notes.

When she reached the last line, Marguerite's mouth had gone thin.

"Keep the paper," Cora said. "I don't need it."

Brooks stared at her.

"You never said you could do that."

"You never asked me one question about myself, Brooks," Cora said. "Not in five years."

Marguerite stepped closer, and her eyes went over the suitcase and the cookbooks and the plain watch.

"Where will you go?" she said. "You have no people, no job and no money."

"I'll manage."

The doorbell rang once.

Alexander stood on the porch with his hands folded in front of him, and he looked past Marguerite at Cora.

"The car is warm, Miss Lenhart," he said. "Whenever you're ready."

Marguerite Farwell went white to her lips.

It was a small change, and it was gone in a moment, but Cora saw it.

She saw Brooks's eyes snap to his mother, too.

"Lenhart," Brooks said slowly. "Who is that man?"

"The man driving me," Cora said.

She picked up her suitcase and walked out past him.

Nobody tried to take it from her.

Alexander put the bag in the trunk and opened the door, and she sat down and shut it.

The townhouse stayed lit behind them as they pulled away.

"Did you see her face?" Cora asked.

"I saw it," Alexander said. "I'd like to know what she's afraid of."

Cora looked at the dark lake beyond the glass.

"Tell me where we stand," she said. "All of it. I only ever read the one-page summaries you sent."

Alexander took a folder from the seat between them.

"Larkspur lent Farwell Capital its first eleven million five years ago," he said. "Over time that turned into stock. We hold sixty-two percent of his company through the silent proxy."

He waited a moment.

"Brooks has spent five years believing a foreign fund backs him. He's been bragging about us. He calls us his lucky angel."

Cora almost laughed.

"His lucky angel scrubbed his bathroom floor this morning," she said.

"I can pull the funding tonight," Alexander said. "Call the loan, vote the shares, and have him out of the building by Monday."

Cora held out her hand, and he put the folder in it.

She opened it and read the first page once, and she had it.

"Not yet," she said.

"Miss Lenhart."

"Not yet, Alexander. First I want to watch him try to divorce me."

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