The fear and pain of dying still clung to her like soaked clothing she couldn't shake off.
She could almost feel the moment Liam's car hit her. The nauseating crack of bone. Blood soaking through her skirt, warm and sticky against her skin, and then everything going cold. Ice cold. Her blood cooling along with her body temperature until there was nothing left but darkness.
But she was back.
Impossible, undeniable, and real.
She was back at this exact moment, the moment the catastrophic mistake happened.
Clara had used her. Clara had whispered in her ear, coaxed her into slipping something into Dominic's drink, told her it was her only chance to finally get close to the husband who had never once reached for her on his own.
And what had Ella gotten for it? Nothing but his contempt.
---
The air in the room was thick and heavy, charged with something hot and suffocating that seemed to press against every surface.
The soft wet sounds of mouths moving together filled the silence, quick and uneven, hungry in a way that sent heat crawling across her skin before she was even fully conscious.
Ella surfaced slowly, awareness seeping back in pieces, and the moment she understood what was happening she opened her eyes.
Her husband, Dominic Vaughn, was still kissing her.
"Dominic," she breathed.
His eyes opened. The second he focused on her face, desire burned out and fury took its place. "Get out! I'll never touch you."
His voice hit the room like a crack of a whip.
Ella went still. Her eyes were burning, tears right at the edge but not falling yet, her expression still carrying the raw desperation of someone who had just come back from the dead.
He was stretched across the bed, collar open, shirt pulling away from his shoulders. Broad shoulders, hard chest, defined stomach. That perfect face that made people stop and stare on the street was flushed deep red right now, and it looked devastatingly good on him.
Dominic's breathing was ragged and uneven. The drug was still moving through his blood. A few seconds ago he had almost lost control completely, almost closed the distance between them and let it happen.
Her lips had been impossibly soft. Sweet in a way that short-circuited his thinking.
But damn it. She was his grandfather's choice.
No love between them, no history. They hadn't even met before the wedding.
“Don't read anything into this,” he told himself, forcing his eyes away from the curves visible through that sheer nightgown.
"I made this clear the day we got married," he said. "This is a transaction. Nothing more."
He pushed himself upright, hands not entirely steady as he worked the buttons of his shirt.
"If you ever pull something like this again," his voice dropped low and hard, "you don't want to know what happens next."
Just as he was about to leave, Ella suddenly spoke up.
"Wait a minute!" Her voice rang out sharp and clear, and it stopped him.
Dominic turned his head. The negligee hid nothing. The curve of her hips, the fullness of her chest, the faint mark his own hand had left at her waist.
His jaw tightened. His throat moved.
But when he looked up and met her eyes, he went still.
Her gaze was steady. Calm and clear and completely resolved.
"I want a divorce."
The room dropped into silence.
"What did you just say?"
"You don't love me. I spent a long time being stupid enough to think I could change that." Her voice didn't waver once. "I'm done wasting time on it. We can end this today."
She meant every word. She was back, and she was never going to spend another day chasing after Dominic Vaughn. Four years of love with nothing returned; that story was finished.
She had a career to rebuild, a entertainment company to start, and the life she'd walked away from at Faelorn Military Academy waiting to be reclaimed.
"Say that again."
He was staring at her like she'd switched languages mid-sentence.
For months she had followed him around, pushed for scraps of his attention, panicked every time he threatened to cut her off entirely. Even tonight, even after degrading herself like this, he had expected tears. An apology. Another desperate attempt to claw her way back into his good graces.
Instead she was standing in front of him like she'd already made her peace with all of it. That kind of calm was something he had never once seen from her before.
He held her gaze. She held his right back, steady and unshakeable.
"If tonight doesn't work, tomorrow is fine too."
His jaw tightened. The nerve of it irritated him.
But underneath the irritation was something else, quieter and harder to name.
Was this another play for his attention? Or had she genuinely accepted, finally, that he was never going to give her what she wanted? What bothered him most was that both possibilities unsettled him in equal measure.
He walked out. Then stopped in the doorway.
"Nathan."
He called for his most trusted assistant. "Get the marriage agreement from the study drawer and show it to her."
Then he kept walking.
He wasn't going to sit there with his head splitting open and let his wife look at him with those eyes, like she'd already decided he wasn't worth staying for.
By the time Nathan knocked with the agreement in hand, Ella had changed into proper clothes.
"Before you make any more announcements," Nathan said, his tone carrying the particular contempt of someone who had already decided how this would end, "you should read this carefully first."
Just another tactic to get the boss's attention, he thought. She can't function without him. She never could.
Ella looked down. Her eyes found the termination clause.
$1,000,000,000.
