Chapter 1 Sign It

"Sign it, Sarah. Stop making this harder than it needs to be."

Jason wasn't even looking at me. He was fixing his tie in the mirror like I wasn't standing right there. Like I hadn't been standing right there for three years.

The papers were on the bed. Thick. Official. Final.

I stared at them and felt something crack open in my chest.

"Three years, Jason." My voice came out quieter than I wanted. "I gave up everything for you. I stayed in this house. I was here every single night whether you came home or not. And this is what I get? A pen and a goodbye?"

"You didn't give up anything." He turned around and looked at me like I was being unreasonable. Like I was the problem. "You were a Miller. Your family owed mine a debt. The three year clause is done and honestly Sarah, I'm exhausted. I'm tired of coming home to someone who has nothing going for her."

Nothing going for her.

I had cooked his meals. Organized his dinners. Smiled at his business partners until my face hurt. Sat alone on anniversaries and birthdays and holidays telling myself he was just busy, he was just stressed, he was just going through something.

Three years of that and I had nothing going for me.

The bedroom door opened.

I expected a maid or one of his lawyers. Instead a man walked in who I had never seen before. Tall. Broad. Dressed in a dark suit that looked expensive without trying. He didn't knock. He didn't introduce himself. He just walked straight to the window and stood there looking out at the driveway like he owned it.

"You're late, Vanguard," he said. His voice was low and calm.

"Julian." Jason straightened up immediately. Something in his voice changed. He sounded smaller. "I'm almost done. She's being difficult."

The man, Julian, turned slightly and looked at me. He didn't look at me with pity. He just looked at me. Steady and quiet like he was seeing something he had been expecting.

Then he walked over, picked up the pen Jason had thrown on the bed, and held it out to me.

"She's not being difficult," he said flatly. "She's being thrown away. Those are different things."

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Insurance," Jason cut in, grabbing his briefcase. "He's here to make sure the paperwork is clean and the Miller assets go where they're supposed to go. Now stop stalling Sarah. Elena is in the car."

Elena.

He said her name so easily. Like she was already the woman of this house and I was just a tenant whose lease was up.

"You're really leaving me for her." I said it quietly. Not even as a question. "In our own house."

"It's not your house." He was already at the door. He didn't even turn around. "Julian will see you out. Don't take anything that wasn't yours when you came. Which if I remember right was just one suitcase and a lot of misplaced hope."

The door closed behind him.

I sat down on the edge of the bed. My legs just gave up. I sat there looking at my hands feeling the weight of everything I had swallowed for three years land on me all at once.

Julian was still in the room. He hadn't followed Jason out. He was standing right in front of me and when I looked up at him he didn't look away.

"Loyalty is only pathetic when the person receiving it doesn't deserve it," he said. "And that man has never deserved it."

"You don't know me," I said.

"I know you've been in this house for 1,095 days waiting for a man who was never going to choose you. I know your father sold you into this marriage to cover a debt. And I know you have twelve dollars in your personal account right now because Jason controls everything else."

I felt cold. "How do you know that?"

"Because I'm the one who approved the transactions." He said it simply. No drama. Just fact. "I've been watching the financial trail of your life for years Sarah. I know what was done to you."

"Then you should know I don't need another man standing over me telling me what he knows about my life." I stood up. The anger felt good. Clean. "Take your papers and go."

"With twelve dollars and your face on the news tomorrow as the gold digger who couldn't keep her husband, where exactly are you planning to go?"

I didn't answer because I didn't have one.

"Sign the papers," he said. "Walk out of here as Sarah Miller. Not as his wife. Not as his victim. And then let me help you make him regret every single day he wasted you."

"Why would you help me?"

He looked at me for a moment. "Because I've been watching you disappear inside this house for years and I'm tired of it. I want to see what you look like when you stop being quiet."

I took the pen.

I signed my name. Sarah Miller. Not Vanguard. I never felt like a Vanguard anyway.

"Pack your bag," Julian said, tucking the papers away. "Five minutes before the locks change."

"Where am I going?"

"Hotel first. Then we figure out the rest." He moved toward the door then stopped and looked back at me. "Do you own anything red?"

"No."

"We'll fix that." A small, dry smile. "On Jason's card. Before he realizes it's frozen."

I went to the closet and pulled out the same suitcase I had arrived with three years ago. I left everything he had bought me. The jewelry, the dresses, all of it. I only took what was mine before him.

When we reached the front door I saw his car pulling out of the gate through the window. He didn't look back. Not once.

I wasn't surprised. I think some part of me had known for a long time that he never would.

I stepped outside. The gate closed behind me and I didn't cry. I thought I would but I didn't. I just stood there in the afternoon air feeling something shift inside me like a door opening somewhere deep down that had been locked for a very long time.

Jason Vanguard thought he had just gotten rid of a problem.

He had no idea what he had just started.