Chapter 3 Mrs. Pierce Is Done Playing

Harbor House had originally been the home where the two of them began their marriage.

After Vivienne came back and wormed her way in, it became hers.

Naomi's eyes settled on her son, and her voice was even. "I came to see Lucas and bring him some gifts."

She set the strand of cedar beads and the smooth piece of amber she had prepared on the table.

Her son was frail and sensitive to airborne irritants, and a little dust could make him faint. The cedar and amber eased it, a remedy her grandmother had sworn by. They were expensive, and Naomi had spent a long time collecting them.

Lucas swept them to the floor without even looking.

"Mom, can you stop being so cheap? Keep the junk you brought back from the sticks."

"You're the junk!" Mia couldn't stand his attitude and smacked him on the back of the head. "Mom prepared this specially for you. It helps your condition. Lucas, would you stop biting the hand that feeds you?"

Lucas turned red with fury. He snatched the things up and threw them into the trash.

"I don't want them! Mia, you lived in the middle of nowhere so long you think garbage is treasure. The things my godmother gives me are way better than this!"

"You"

Mia's eyes widened in anger.

Naomi stopped her daughter. She looked at Lucas and at Graham and felt a dull ache, then a numbness, spread through her heart.

The child she had carried and borne had, in the end, chosen to follow Graham.

"That's fine," she said, suddenly smiling. "Since you don't want it, I'll give you something you will like."

She walked up to Graham and met his eyes. "After all, the word godmother feels strange to me. Why don't we make Miss Sterling's place in this house official?"

Graham's face turned cold. "Naomi, what are you talking about?"

"Mr. Pierce, I'm sorry. I'm just granting your wish, and your son's."

The hardship of the past year rose up before her eyes, and she was calm. "Graham, give the title of Mrs. Pierce to whoever you like. I have one condition. Mia comes with me. I won't leave her in a family like this."

"What drama is this now?" Graham gripped her wrist hard, his stare icy. "Naomi, a whole year away and you haven't learned your lesson?"

"I have."

Naomi looked at the man she had loved for so many years, and her heart felt firm and quiet. "Graham, the biggest lesson I learned is that I should never have married you."

If she hadn't married him, she wouldn't have been sent to the mountains. She wouldn't have spent a year in a place where living was worse than dying.

When she finished, everyone in the room froze.

In their eyes, Naomi had always been the doormat of the father and son, the woman whose whole life revolved around them. And now she was talking about divorce, and risking everything for it?

Lucas stared for a moment, then accused her. "Mom, can you stop being so childish? I didn't want your gift, so you're going to divorce Dad over it?"

"Isn't that reason enough?"

Naomi lowered her eyes and looked at the child formed from her own flesh and blood. He didn't understand the world yet, but he already knew how to sharpen a blade and plunge it into her.

"I took care of your meals, your playtime, and your schoolwork every day... Now you're free. Play with whoever you want."

Just don't come crying to me afterward.

Lucas flushed red, like someone caught saying cruel things behind her back. "Mom, how can you listen to what other people say! You're so uneducated!"

Naomi didn't want to be dragged into it any longer. She only glanced at Graham. "My lawyer will send you the divorce papers. As for Miss Sterling's wedding reception, I won't be there to disturb it."

She took her daughter's hand and walked out quickly.

Vivienne hid a flicker of pride, then looked at Graham as if speechless. "Naomi has misunderstood me so badly... I'm busy making money. Who has time to fall in love? Ha, that's ridiculous! Go and coax your dramatic wife."

"No need," Graham said impatiently. "You just got back, and she's already making a scene. Who does she think she is? A woman with a child. Let's see how much trouble she can really cause."

"You still don't understand Naomi? She's doing this on purpose, to make a show for Graham!"

Even Lucas comforted Vivienne with disapproval. "Godmother, Mom just likes making trouble. She's been in the mountains for a year and she's gotten pettier. Ignore her. She'll apologize in two days."

Everyone jeered.

Only the man in the corner, who had been silent all along, tapped the ash from his cigarette, picked up his coat, and stood.

"Mr. Pierce, since you have a divorce to deal with, I imagine you have things to discuss with young Lucas and Miss Sterling. I have somewhere else to be, so I won't intrude."

His dark eyes were lazy and charming, and when he looked at Graham there was a careless edge to them that almost seemed deliberate.

Adrian Kessler.

Among Manhattan's old-money crowd, he was known as a heartbreaker, and the same people who sneered at him as new money also knew he stood at the very top of the pyramid of power and wealth.

Vivienne looked at him, and when their eyes met, she blushed. Her heart skipped half a beat.

She bit her lip, then felt annoyed with herself.

Why is he here?

With the show she had just put on, could Adrian have misunderstood her relationship with Graham...

But Adrian didn't even lift his eyelids. He

seemed to be nodding a casual goodbye.

Before Graham could answer, he had already walked out.