Unforgiven: The Billionaire's Amnesiac Ex-Wife novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Judas Wife
Lydia wakes believing she is twenty-two and learns on TV that she is a divorced, hated woman; she refuses to sign a settlement Sybil's lawyer brings, and her phone plays a voice memo of herself saying she cannot forgive him.
The first thing I learned about my divorce was that it was on television.
The screen was bolted to the corner of my hospital room with the sound turned low.
A woman in a red blazer stood outside a glass tower and said my name.
"Lydia Garrick, the so-called Judas wife of hotel heir Stefan Kingsland, remains in hospital after a street accident."
Behind her was a photo of me on a park bench, laughing, next to a man in a tan raincoat.
The caption said: WHO IS THE OTHER MAN?
I had a stitched eyebrow, a bruise down one side of my face and no idea who had taken that picture.
"Ms. Garrick," the nurse said, and turned the TV off. "You're awake. Stay still."
"What day is it?"
"The ninth. October. You've been out for nine days."
"I graduated in May," I said. "I'm twenty-two."
The nurse looked at the doctor who had just come in.
"You're twenty-eight," the doctor said gently. "You were hit by a delivery van outside your friend's bakery. You have a head injury, and I think you've lost about six years."
I laughed, because it was ridiculous.
Then I saw my left hand on the blanket.
There was a pale band on my ring finger, where a ring had been for a long time.
"Lyddie."
A woman in a cream cardigan stood at the foot of my bed.
She had an ash-blonde bob and pearl earrings, and she was holding a paper cup of tea in both hands.
"Oh, sweetheart," she said. "I've been here every day."
I had never seen her before in my life.
"I'm Sybil," she said. "Sybil Kingsland. You called me Mom for three years, and I hope you will again."
She set the tea in my hand.
It was chamomile with honey, exactly how I take it.
"Does she remember anything past the accident?" Sybil asked the doctor, in a low voice.
"Nothing of the last six years."
"And the old years? Her childhood, her family?"
"Those are intact," the doctor said.
"Intact," Sybil repeated. "All of them? You're sure?"
"As sure as I can be this early."
Sybil nodded, and her gloved fingers tightened on the strap of her bag.
She was wearing driving gloves, cream leather, in a hospital in October.
Then she smiled at me, and I decided she was just a nervous woman who loved me.
"You called me every Sunday," she said. "We'll get all of it back."
A man in a grey suit knocked and came in with a leather folder.
"Ms. Garrick, I'm Mrs. Kingsland's attorney. This is only a small amendment to your settlement."
"My settlement."
"Twelve million dollars," he said. "You received it two months ago."
I looked at Sybil.
She put a hand over mine.
"It's paperwork, honey," she said. "It makes the reporters go away. They're camped outside, and I can't stand them calling you names. Just sign where he's flagged."
"What names?"
"Judas," the lawyer said, and then coughed. "The press has been unkind."
The page he held out was twenty pages long.
He had flagged the last one in yellow, and a pen was already sitting on top of it.
"I'd like to read it first," I said.
"There's no need," Sybil said. "We have all had a week of this."
"Then it can wait another week."
The lawyer's pen stopped moving.
"Ms. Garrick..."
"My mom taught me never to sign a thing I haven't read," I said. "She died when I was seventeen. A car on Route 9. That part I remember fine."
Something clinked in the doorway.
A tall man in a black suit had set a coffee cup down on the cart, very carefully.
He had dark hair, grey eyes and a hard, set jaw.
He looked at me until I finished the sentence.
Then he turned and walked out of the room.
"That's Stefan," Sybil said. "He's taken it hard."
"Who is he?"
"Your ex-husband," said the man himself.
He had come back.
He stood in the doorway with his hands in his pockets, and he didn't come any closer.
"We were married three years," he said. "You left five months ago. Ms. Garrick, read it before you sign it. Every page."
He called me Ms. Garrick.
Sybil's smile slipped, and then it was back.
"Stefan, don't be difficult."
"I'm being practical, Mother."
I looked at the folder, at the pen, at the woman who knew how I took my tea.
I looked at the man who had been my husband and talked to me like a stranger.
"I'm not signing," I said.
The lawyer closed the folder.
"The friend in the waiting room, the baker," the nurse said quietly. "Jessamine. She's been here every day too. She was told family only."
"Let her in," I said. "And I want my phone."
The nurse brought my bag, and the screen lit up with a hundred notifications and a lock.
My thumbs typed my mother's birthday before I'd decided to.
It opened.
The last thing I had done on it was record a voice memo, nine days ago, at 11:48 at night.
I pressed play.
My own voice came out of the speaker, thick and cracked and crying.
"I can't forgive him."
Then nothing, only rain, and the file ended.
Nobody in the room moved.
Stefan was still in the doorway, and his face had gone white.
"You said that to me, too," he said. "Standing in my kitchen."
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