Gilded Revenge: The Ex-Wife's Billion-Dollar Empire novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Papers
The day before their third anniversary Alden tells Lucinda he wants a divorce for his returning first love and offers two million. She asks once, signs, leaves the check and walks out, then learns the filing was pulled that morning and a black SUV pulls up at the bus stop.
"Let's get a divorce."
Alden said it to the window, not to her.
He stood in the master bedroom with his back to the bed, and he stood without his cane.
Lucinda had spent eight months of nights teaching those legs to hold him.
She was by the door with the tray of his evening pills.
Tomorrow was their third anniversary.
The tray rattled once in her hands, and she set it down on the dresser.
"Why?" she said.
"Daphne is back."
He still hadn't turned around.
"She came home from Paris last month. I'm going to marry her."
Lucinda knew the name.
It belonged to the woman in the one photograph he kept in his desk drawer.
"Alden, please." She hated how thin her voice was. "Can we reconsider this?"
"No."
"Three years ago you couldn't lift your head off a pillow. I was there for every day of it."
"I know what you did." He finally turned. "That's why the offer is generous."
He took a thick envelope off the dresser and held it out.
Inside were the divorce papers and a check.
Two million dollars, made out to her, already signed.
"My lawyers filed the petition this morning," he said. "My mother lands tomorrow. I want this finished before she can interfere."
"Your mother chose me."
"My mother chose a nurse with no family and no trouble. I agreed for the same reason."
He said it plainly, without looking at her.
"It was always convenient, Lucinda. Nobody lied about that."
She waited for one more sentence.
A single soft one would have done.
He looked at his watch.
The night he first stood by himself, she had gone out into the hallway and cried with her hand over her mouth.
He had found her there and said, "Don't make a scene. Nurses don't cry."
She had washed her face and gone back in and finished his exercises.
That was the moment she should have counted as an answer.
She picked up the pen.
The signature line read Lucinda Marsh Ferrars.
Only the first name was entirely hers.
She signed it, and her hand did not shake.
Then she slid the check back into the envelope and laid it on his pillow.
"I won't need this."
"Don't be dramatic. Take the money."
"No."
"You have nowhere to go."
"I know where I'm going."
That was a lie, but only a small one.
She took the duffel bag from the bottom of the closet, the one she had never fully unpacked.
It held three sets of scrubs, a stethoscope and a phone she had kept charged in the lining for three years.
It did not hold a single gift he had given her, because he had never given her one.
Alden watched her zip it.
"At least wait until morning," he said. "It's raining."
He didn't ask her to stay.
He only asked her to wait.
So she stopped asking.
She walked down the staircase past the portrait of his father, past the housekeeper holding a dish towel and pretending to polish the banister.
At the foot of the stairs, a woman in a cream coat stood in the entrance hall with a suitcase beside her.
Daphne Fortescue was prettier than her photograph.
She looked at the duffel, then at Lucinda's face, and her own face softened.
"I'm sorry it ended like this," Daphne said. "You were good to him."
"He knows," Lucinda said. "He just didn't say it."
She went out the front door and into the rain.
The family driver was already waiting by the car with an umbrella.
Eleanor Ferrars had sent him with her to every pharmacy and every grocery store for three years.
On her first day in this house, Eleanor had said she was never to be photographed, and he had gone everywhere she went ever since.
"Mrs. Ferrars's rule," he said. "I can take you wherever you want, ma'am. Even tonight."
"Not tonight," Lucinda said. "Thank you."
She walked down the long drive alone, out through the iron gate, and onto the road.
The bus shelter at the corner was a quarter mile away.
By the time she reached it, her scrubs were soaked through.
She sat on the wet bench and pulled the old phone out of the lining of the bag.
It had one number saved.
It rang once.
"Miss Throckmorton," said a man's voice, tight with relief. "I was about to call you."
Nobody had said that name to her in three years.
"I'm leaving him," she said. "I'm ready. Tell me what I own."
"Miss Throckmorton, listen to me. His divorce petition was filed at the county courthouse at nine this morning."
"I know."
"It lists your full legal name and your date of birth. By eleven, someone had pulled the file."
Her fingers went cold on the phone.
"Who?"
"I traced the request. It came from your uncle Gordon's office."
"Gordon?"
"He has had an investigator looking for you since the funeral. He sends my firm a card every Christmas asking if there is news."
Down the road, headlights turned onto the street.
A black SUV slowed and stopped at the shelter, and its engine kept running.
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