Chapter 1

For five years, Chloe Davis and Mark Stone were New York City' s most famous train wreck. Our marriage was a battlefield, and the whole city had front-row seats. We were the couple everyone loved to hate, a story of pure, unadulterated animosity that sold magazines and fueled gossip columns. They said we hated each other. They were right.

Our story didn't start with love, it started with a calculated decision. I married Mark on my twenty-second birthday. He was my older brother Liam' s biggest rival, a man who represented everything my family stood against. But he had Ethan' s eyes. That was enough for me back then.

The war began on our wedding night. I was standing in the penthouse he' d bought for us, still in my white dress, expecting a husband. Instead, Mark opened the doors to a pack of reporters.

Flashbulbs blinded me. Questions were shouted from every direction.

"Mr. Stone, is this marriage a merger?"

"Mrs. Stone, how does it feel to marry your brother's enemy?"

Mark stood beside them, a cold, triumphant smile on his face. He wanted to humiliate me, to show the world that I was just another one of his acquisitions. He wanted to break me on the first night.

He underestimated me.

I didn't cry. I didn't scream. I walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, opened it, and looked down at the glittering city below. Then I looked back at Mark, my smile wider and more genuine than his.

"Get a good picture," I said.

Then I jumped.

I landed in the decorative pool on the terrace three floors down. As security guards fished me out, dripping and laughing, the sprinklers I had tampered with earlier went off inside the penthouse. A small, well-placed fire I had set in the kitchen started to billow smoke. The headlines the next day weren' t about Mark' s triumph, they were about his crazy bride who set their new home on fire.

That set the tone for the next five years.

A year later, he showed up at a charity auction with a college student clinging to his arm. She was young, blonde, and looked at him like he was a god. He paraded her around, making sure every camera caught them together. He wanted to show everyone he had moved on, that I meant nothing.

I waited until he was on stage, bidding a ridiculously high price for a diamond necklace. Then, I strolled into the venue, took a champagne bottle from a waiter's tray, and started smashing things. I shattered display cases, tore down draperies, and overturned tables. The chaos was beautiful. When I was done, I walked up to the panicked event organizer.

"Send the bill to Mark Stone," I announced to the silent, shocked room. "He' s paying."

The fights only got more intense. In our fifth year, I found out he'd made a bet with his friends. He' d wagered a million dollars that he could produce a video of me, in bed, broken and begging for him. He thought he could finally win.

He recorded one of our typically violent encounters. It was all passion and pain, a tangled mess of limbs and angry words. The next morning, he left the camera on his desk, confident in his victory.

I found it, of course. I took the memory card, walked to his office, and played the raw footage on the massive screen in his boardroom, right in front of his board of directors. Then, I destroyed the card. As an encore, I leaked a series of scandalous photos of him to the press from an anonymous account. The bet was off.

But then, suddenly, he changed. A month ago, he started being... different. Quiet. He stopped bringing women home. Last week, he offered me a mansion in the suburbs and a portfolio of stocks.

"A gift," he' d said, his voice flat.

I was immediately suspicious. Mark Stone didn't give gifts. He took things. I called my brother, Liam, in London.

"He's giving me property, Liam," I said, pacing my bedroom. "Out of nowhere."

"Maybe he' s finally feeling guilty," Liam suggested, his voice warm and familiar over the phone.

"Mark doesn't have a conscience," I scoffed. "No, this is for someone else. He' s got a new love. Her name is Bella, I think. He's trying to buy me off, get me out of the way so he can play house with her." I paused, looking at my reflection in the mirror. "He's not the man I married, Liam. He's become someone I don't recognize at all."

That night, the carefully constructed walls between us crumbled into something raw and ugly. We fought, as we always did, but this time it was different. It ended in the bedroom, a desperate, angry clash that was more about possession than passion. In the heat of it, with his hands tangled in my hair, he gasped out a name.

"Bella."

The world stopped. All the air left my lungs. It was one thing to know about her, to see her name on credit card bills. It was another to hear it from his lips while he was touching me.

A sharp, searing pain shot through me, and my first instinct was to hurt him back. I bit down hard on his shoulder, tasting blood.

He recoiled, his eyes wide with shock, then narrowed with fury. He got out of bed, his back rigid, and returned a few minutes later, throwing a folder onto the mattress.

"What's this?" I asked, my voice trembling.

"Divorce papers," he said, his tone clipped and businesslike. He wouldn't look at me.

My heart stuttered. It was what I wanted, what I had been fighting for. But hearing the words felt like a punch to the gut.

"Don't look so surprised, Chloe," he sneered, finally meeting my eyes. "This is just for show. A temporary separation. It will cause a dip in the stock price. I' ll buy back a controlling interest, and then we can call it off. It' s just business."

I almost believed him. He was a master manipulator, and this was exactly the kind of game he would play. But as he turned to leave the room, his phone, left on the nightstand, lit up.

A calendar reminder.

Finalize union with Bella. One month from today.

The lie was so blatant, so cruel. He wasn't manipulating the stock market. He was getting rid of me to marry her. All the fight went out of me, replaced by a cold, heavy emptiness.

I picked up a pen from the nightstand, signed the papers with a steady hand, and left them on his pillow. I would play his game for one more month. Then I was leaving the country. I was done.

As I stood up, a sudden, excruciating pain ripped through my abdomen. It was so intense I doubled over, gasping for breath. I collapsed onto the floor, my body seizing.

"Mark," I choked out, my vision blurring. "Something's wrong."

He turned at the door, his face a mask of annoyance. "Stop it, Chloe. I'm not falling for another one of your tricks." He looked at his watch. "I have to meet Bella."

He walked out, closing the door behind him, leaving me alone on the cold floor.