Chapter 1 Let’s Divorce

Juliet’s POV

I woke up under the wrong ceiling.

Mine had a water stain shaped like Florida. This one was white, very high, and edged with plaster swirls that probably cost more than my car. I stared at it and waited for Florida to show up. It didn’t.

My head felt packed with wet wool. My mouth tasted like old coins. When I lifted a hand to rub my eyes, I found a slim, pale one wearing a diamond the size of a grape.

That was not my hand.

I sat up too fast, and the room swayed before it settled. Cream carpet. Silk curtains. A vanity crowded with perfume bottles. On the wall hung a photo of a man in a racing suit, holding a trophy and refusing to smile.

I knew that man. I knew this room, too. I had read it once, in a paragraph I skimmed on the bus.

Jeffery Stanton. Three-time Formula 1 world champion. Hero of the most popular novel on my reading app.

My legs shook all the way to the mirror. The woman in it had wide dark eyes, smudged mascara, and shadows under both eyes. She was beautiful the way a house is beautiful right after a fire.

Juliet Stanton. His wife. The villainess.

I used to hate her. Properly hate her. I once left a comment calling her “a human migraine in a designer coat,” and it got forty-one likes. I was so proud of that line.

I would very much like to take it back now.

Because I knew how Juliet’s story ended. Worse, I recognised the scene I had fallen asleep reading.

[In chapter eighty-seven, Abby collapses at a charity luncheon after a cup of tea. The hospital finds poison in her blood. Later, a little glass bottle turns up in the drawer of Juliet’s dressing table, with Juliet’s fingerprints on it. Abby survives because she was rushed to the hospital in time. The Stanton family doesn’t call the police, because a scandal would hurt the family name. They decide to handle it themselves.

So that evening, Jeffery climbs the stairs with a glass of the same poison. His family follows to watch. He pries his wife’s jaw open and pours it down her throat while she screams that she’s innocent.

She dies on the bathroom tiles. The comment section cheered. I cheered. I typed “finally” and added a clapping emoji.]

No.

Oh, no.

My throat closed up.

Somewhere downstairs, a door shut. Heels clicked across marble. Then came the heavier footsteps of a man who had never had to hurry for anyone.

I ran to the bedroom door and twisted the handle. Locked. From the outside, of course. I yanked it twice, slapped my palm against the wood, and heard how pathetic it sounded.

That was the book’s version, I realized. This was the part where Juliet screamed and clawed and threw things, and every reader nodded and said “see, she’s unhinged.”

I let go of the handle.

Rule one: don’t die. Rule two: don’t scream. If I screamed, I was dead. If I begged, I was probably dead too, because she had begged in the book and it hadn’t worked.

I had maybe thirty seconds, so I used them badly. I stood in the middle of the carpet with my hands pressed against my thighs, because they were shaking too hard to trust. Then I made myself think about the one thing I knew for certain. Nobody in that house wanted Juliet around. Nobody. In the book, her death was just the quickest way to get rid of her.

So what if I gave them gone, without the killing?

It wasn’t a plan. It was a lifeboat. But it was the only thing I had.

A key turned.

The door opened, and my heart tried to climb out through my mouth.

Jeffery filled the doorway. Black shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbow, jaw so tight it looked carved. In his right hand he held a glass of clear liquid. He carried it as if it weighed nothing, and somehow that was the scariest part.

The rest of the cast filed in behind him. His mother, Margaret, in pearls and a cold look . His father, hands behind his back, studying me like a bad investment. His younger sister, who stared hard at the carpet. And on Jeffery’s arm, pale in a cream cardigan with a hospital band still around her wrist, Abby.

She was dabbing her eyes with a tissue. She was alive. The word lit up in my head like a runway.

Jeffery’s lips parted.

“Let’s divorce!”

I got it out before he could say anything. My voice cracked in the middle, but it got out.

Everyone froze.

They stared at me as if the carpet had started talking.

And a small, dangerous line appeared between Jeffery’s brows. “What did you say?” He pushed each word out slowly, like he was checking it for traps.

“Let’s get a divorce.” I pressed my nails into my palms to keep my voice level. “I’ll sign whatever your lawyers write tonight. I’ll leave this house, and this city if you want. You won’t see me, hear from me, or read my name ever again. I promise.”

Margaret’s breath hissed through her teeth. Jeffery didn’t blink. A muscle ticked in his jaw.

“Is this another act?”

“No.” I made myself meet his eyes, then glance at the glass, then come back to his face. My knees had turned to water, but my voice held. “Abby is alive. She’s standing right there. Nobody died. Whatever you think I did, you can’t kill me for something that didn’t kill anyone.”

The room went very still.

Something crossed Jeffery’s face. It wasn’t doubt, not yet. It looked more like the face of a man who has kicked at a locked door for years and finally finds it standing open. He had come ready for screaming. For begging. For the same hysterical woman who'd been obsessed with him for years.

He wasn’t ready for me to offer him exactly what he wanted.

“Think about it.” The words tumbled out, because silence was getting dangerous. “You wanted me gone. Fine. I’ll go. No court, no police, no headlines. If you pour that down my throat, you’re not a champion avenging someone. You’re a man who killed his wife in her own bedroom while his family watched. Divorce is cleaner. Divorce is free.”

Abby’s lower lip trembled right on cue. “Juliet, you poisoned me. How can you stand there and—”

I finally gave her my full attention. It hurt my chest to look at her, so soft and wounded and perfect. “If you’re sure I did, call the police. That’s what people do when someone’s been poisoned. They don’t hand the suspect a drink and invite the whole family to watch.”

Abby’s mouth snapped shut.

Margaret recovered first, which didn’t surprise me. She was the sort of woman who recovered first from everything. “She’s stalling,” she snapped.

“I’m offering.” I kept my voice small and steady. “You’ve wanted me out since the wedding. I’m saving you the legal fees.”

A muscle jumped in her cheek. I watched her do the math. Her son, free. Her favorite girl, waiting. No court case, no mess. For one second, hatred and relief fought on her face, and relief won.

And I understood something that made my skin crawl. They had never needed her dead. They had needed her gone. Dead was just the shortest road the book could find.

Jeffery lowered the glass. Only an inch. But I saw it, and my knees nearly gave out.

“You expect me to believe you’ll just walk away,” he said, and his voice had gone dangerously flat. “You, who screamed at me in front of the entire paddock last month. Who called me every hour on race weekends until I turned my phone off.”

Okay. So that was canon. Noted.

“People change,” I said. “Near-death experience. Very clarifying.”

He stared at me as if I had started speaking another language. Maybe I had. The woman he knew would have been on her knees by now. The woman in front of him had folded her hands to stop them shaking and was explaining things like an accountant.

In all those chapters, nobody had ever shown what Juliet looked like when she stopped fighting.

His father cleared his throat. “Jeffery. Perhaps—”

Jeffery didn’t turn. His eyes stayed on mine, narrow and searching, and whatever he was hunting for, he didn’t find it. That seemed to bother him more than any scream would have.

At last he set the glass down on the nearest table. Gently. As if it might go off.

“Draw up the papers.” He said it to his father, but he never looked away from me. “Tonight.” Then, to me, cold and quiet: “If this is a game, Juliet, you’ll regret it.”

“It’s not a game.” I let my shoulders sag, just a little, because I couldn’t hold them up any longer. “I just want to go.”

He turned and walked out. His mother followed, then his sister, then his father. The doorway emptied like a drain.

Abby was last.

She paused with one hand on the frame and glanced back. Her eyes were still wet. Her face was still the picture of wounded innocence.

But the corner of her mouth had curved. Just slightly, just for a heartbeat.

It was gone so fast I almost thought I’d imagined it.