Chapter 4 The Folder on the Counter

Damian POV

I get back to the penthouse just after ten. Olivia stands at the kitchen island in her pajamas, pushing eggs around a pan. Coffee steams next to her.

She looks up the second the door closes. There are shadows under her eyes dark enough that I know she must have bathed herself in tears throughout yesterday. But right now, her face doesn’t do anything I expect. No tears. No shouting. Just a stillness that’s somehow worse than either.

“Talia collapsed yesterday,” that’s the first thing I managed to say. “The doctors think it’s terminal.”

“I know,” Olivia says. “Isabelle called.”

“I should have called you myself.”

“You should have done a lot of things yesterday, Damian.” Her voice stays level, but her hands grip the edge of the marble hard enough that her knuckles go pale. “Do you want to keep pretending I don’t know what I walked in on at the Ashcombe, or are we doing this honestly for once?”

“I’m not proud of what you saw,” I say. “I never wanted you in that room.”

“That’s not the same as being sorry it happened.”

“Olivia, I told you where I’d be. I told you I’d meet you at the clinic.” My voice comes out sharper than I mean it to. “If you’d waited the way we agreed, none of this would have happened the way it did.”

She stares at me, genuinely stunned.

“Are you seriously standing in this kitchen trying to make this about timing? I didn’t walk in on you two sharing a quiet coffee. I walked in on you inside her. On a conference table. With the blueprints still sitting there.” Her voice climbs, cracking at the edges. “There is no version of ten minutes earlier or later that makes what I saw not that.”

“I know what you saw.”

“Do you?” She steps back from the island, arms wrapping around herself. “Because you’re standing here acting like the problem is that I found out, not that there was anything to find. You’re blaming me for finding you.”

“I’m saying you didn’t have to come looking.” I hear how it sounds even as I say it. “You could have waited right there at Lumen and none of this would be sitting on this counter between us right now.”

“So if I’d just stayed patient and small and out of the way, like I have for five years, I never would have had to know.” Her laugh comes out short and disbelieving. “You cheated on me, Damian. In a building with your family’s name on it. And somehow the person who did something wrong this morning is me, for walking through a door.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“It’s exactly what you’re saying.” Her voice finally breaks. She presses the heel of her hand hard against one eye. “You’re not sorry you did it. You’re sorry I saw it. Those are not the same apology.”

I don’t answer, because there isn’t an answer that doesn’t confirm it.

“Five years,” she says. “Five years of being told this family needed patience from me, needed me to be useful and undemanding and never once make a scene, and I gave you every single day of that patience. And when I finally do the one unreasonable thing I’ve done in this entire marriage — I show up early — you make that the problem instead of what I found when I got there.”

I don’t have anything to put against that. She looks smaller than she did a minute ago, arms still wrapped around herself, eyes rimmed red, I know I did that to her. Not Talia. Me.

I reach into my jacket, take out the folder, and set it on the marble between us.

Petition for Dissolution of Marriage.

Olivia stares at the heading. The color drains from her face.

“Wait, what? These are divorce papers.”

“Yes.”

“You’re serving me divorce papers. In our kitchen. The morning after I watched my husband inside another woman.” Her laugh comes out short, close to breaking. “At least have the decency to let me be the one who asks for these.”

“Sign it. Talia needs me in a way you never will,” I say. “It was never going to be love between us. I see that clearly now. You deserve someone who can give you that. I can’t.”

Olivia steps around the island, closing the space between us. Up close, the tiredness in her face is worse — not just the shadows under her eyes, but something behind them, like she’s been holding herself together with nothing but willpower and it’s finally running out.

“At least wait. Just wait until the IVF results come back. Please. One week. Please Damian, You can’t decide the end of this marriage before we even know if it worked this time.”

“The results don’t change anything.”

“They might change what happens next.” Her voice rises, cracking. “Please, Damian. I’m begging you. Just wait for the call from Dr. Nazari. Okay, forget about whatever happened at Ashcombe...”

I look at her. The eggs have gone cold in the pan behind her. Her eyes are wet now, and she’s shaking, and she is still standing the way she’s stood through every hard thing I’ve ever put in front of her.

“It’s going to fail again,” I say, “the way it always does.”

Olivia flinches like the words hit her in the chest.

I place the pen on the signature line and slide it toward her.

“I’ve fulfilled my responsibilities to you. Now I have one I can’t ignore.”

She paused for about ten seconds, then slowly picks up the pen. Her fingers shake so hard the tip scrapes the paper before it writes. She signs her name in small, uneven letters. A tear drops onto the page near the date line. She does not wipe it away.

On the counter near the coffee maker, her phone lights up. I’m not close enough to read all of it, but I catch the shape of the words — “Lumen Fertility Institute.”

It rings once.

It rings twice.

It rings a third time.

Neither of us moves toward it. She sobs silently, but I don’t look back. I step out of the kitchen and leave her shattered, because it’s the only thing left I know how to do without making it worse.

I make it halfway down the hall before I hear her finally pick it up.

“Hello?”

Then silence.

I stop walking.

I don’t turn around.

For some reason, I suddenly want to know what they told her.