He Divorced Me in Front of Four Hundred People, So I Moved Into His Rival's Glass Penthouse novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Toast
Bryce divorces Margo in the middle of his toast on the roof of the tower she drew, crediting his new fiancee with her work. Margo signs on the spot, drops her ring in his glass, and in the mirrored elevator a stranger with silver hair watches her in the glass, puts a steady hand on her bare back and says he owns the building every window of Bryce's looks at.
My husband tapped a fork against his champagne glass at ten past nine.
Four hundred people stopped talking on the roof of the tallest building in the city.
I stood at the edge of the crowd in a green silk gown, holding a plate of oysters I had not touched.
Bryce was on the little stage by the glass railing, with the whole lit skyline behind him.
"Five years ago tonight, this tower opened," he said.
"Hartigan Tower is sixty-two floors of glass, and every pane of it is a promise I made to this city."
People clapped.
I clapped too, because the tower was mine.
I had drawn it at twenty-six, at our kitchen table, over two winters.
Every curve of the glass skin was my line, and every stamp on the plans said Bryce.
"I want to thank the person who made it possible," he said.
I put down my plate and smiled, because for one stupid second I thought he meant me.
"Sabine Richter," he said. "My chief of design. The mind behind this building."
A woman in a cream dress stepped up beside him.
She had a sleek dark bob, red lipstick and a hand already resting on his arm.
The crowd cheered.
Bryce kissed her on the mouth, in front of four hundred people, and the cheering got louder.
My face stayed exactly where it was.
I have always been good at that.
"And one more thing, before the fireworks," Bryce said.
He took a folded paper from his jacket and held it out over the crowd, looking for me.
"Margo, come up."
Heads turned.
I knew that voice.
It was the voice he used on waiters.
I walked through the crowd, and people leaned away from me.
At the foot of the stage, he put the paper into my hand.
"Divorce papers," he said into the microphone, so everyone could hear. "I wanted you to have them on a good night."
Someone laughed.
Someone else said, "Oh my God."
"The prenup is very clear," Bryce said. "You keep the clothes you're standing in. Nine years is a long time to be grateful."
Sabine looked at her nails.
I looked at the paper.
I could have thrown the drink in his face, and he would have enjoyed it.
He wanted a scene, because a scene would make me the crazy wife.
So I climbed the three steps onto the stage instead.
"Do you have a pen?" I asked.
Bryce blinked.
Sabine, who had not stopped smiling, pulled a gold pen out of her clutch and held it out.
I signed the last page against the microphone stand.
The scratch of the nib went through every speaker on the roof.
Then I pulled off my wedding ring.
It was a big square diamond that Bryce had picked out himself, without asking my size.
I dropped it into his champagne glass, where it sank to the bottom and sat there.
"Thank you for the toast," I said into the microphone.
"For the record, the mind behind this building ate takeout at a kitchen table for two years."
The roof went dead silent.
"Pane fourteen on the west face, sixtieth floor," I said. "Go and look."
I did not wait to see their faces.
I handed Bryce back the pen, which he took without thinking, and I walked across the roof to the elevators.
My hands did not start shaking until the doors were open.
The elevator was the big glass one with mirrors on three walls, built for photographs.
I stepped inside and the doors began to close.
A hand came through the gap, and the doors rolled back.
A man stepped in.
He was tall and lean, in a charcoal suit with no tie.
He had thick silver-white hair swept back off his forehead, and he could not have been forty.
He was not on the guest list I knew, and he did not look like a man who cared.
The doors shut.
Sixty-two floors of nothing began to fall under my feet.
I stared at my own reflection on the far wall.
A tall woman in green silk, with long honey-blonde waves coming loose, and a face I did not recognize.
She looked like somebody who had been struck and had not fallen down yet.
"Don't," the man said quietly.
His voice was low and dry.
"Don't what?" I said.
"Don't fix your face. Let it do what it wants."
I turned around.
He wasn't looking at the floor numbers, and he wasn't looking at my dress.
He was looking at me in the mirror, steadily.
Nobody had looked at me like that in nine years.
My knees went strange.
At floor forty the elevator lurched and my heel skidded on the polished floor.
His hand caught the bare skin of my back, low, between the straps of my gown.
It was warm, broad and completely steady.
I felt it all the way down to my feet.
He did not let go at once, and I did not step away.
In the mirror I watched his dark eyes move over my shoulders, my spine and my mouth.
"I knew you before you reached the door," he said. "You walk like a woman carrying a very full tray."
"Who are you?"
"Leighton Davenport."
I knew the name.
Davenport House stood on the other side of Alder Park, forty-eight floors of glass, and Bryce hated it more than he hated tax.
"You're his rival," I said.
"I'm the man who watched you sign that paper." His thumb moved once against my spine. "You drew that building. I'd know the hand anywhere."
My phone buzzed in my clutch.
I took it out with fingers that barely worked.
It was Bryce.
You'll be back by Friday. You have nowhere else to go.
The elevator slowed at the lobby, and through the mirror I saw Leighton read the screen over my shoulder.
"Where does your elevator go?" I asked.
He took his hand off my back and held the door with it.
"Up," he said. "Forty-eight floors. I own the building every window of his looks at."
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