Divorcing The Billionaire: Watch Me Shine

Graves turned his head just enough for her to catch the hard line of his profile. "Wasn't I enough for you tonight?"

The crudeness of it—reducing everything between them to that single, brutal act—made her stomach clench. He spoke to her of nothing but beds and bodies, as if she were a service provider who had failed to meet his standards. Her fingers curled into the sheets, knuckles bleaching white.

"No," she said, lifting her chin with a defiance she didn't entirely feel. "You didn't eat a single thing I made. You think you performed so well? You're not going anywhere tonight."

It was childish. She knew it. But it was the first time in three years she had pushed back like this, her desperation shaped into the prickly armor of a cornered hedgehog.

A flicker of something—surprise, perhaps even reluctant amusement—ghosted across his features. But it vanished before it could take root.

He finally looked at her then, and his eyes held a sliver of cold pity. "Don't make a scene, Cleone. It's unbecoming."

His words were a scalpel, expertly slicing away the last of her dignity. He reduced her heartbreak to a childish tantrum.

The final, soft click of the penthouse's main door shattered the last shard of hope Cleone had been clinging to.

She collapsed onto the bed like a deflated balloon, all strength leaving her limbs.

Three years ago, on their wedding day, Graves had done the exact same thing—summoned away by a single phone call from that woman.

She had begged him not to go then, tears streaming down her face, but he had walked out without a backward glance.

She had stood alone at the altar, completing the entire ceremony by herself under the weight of the guests' pitying stares.

Even their marriage certificate had been picked up by his assistant, signed by proxy as if their union were a corporate footnote.

Cleone lifted her head and looked at the clock on the nightstand. The hands were frozen at 1:35 a.m.

He was gone. Home for barely a few hours after three months away, and already gone again—because of that woman.

Barefoot, Cleone walked into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. When she came out, she picked up her phone and dialed a number.

“Sloane, that case you mentioned—send me the files. I’ll take it.”

Three years she had wasted playing the devoted wife for Graves Mills, and now she finally understood: if that bastard didn’t treasure her, she would treasure herself.