Chapter 1

Brett Sanchez's junior secretary liked her little pranks.

While I was in the shower, she planted a dead rat to scare me out onto the balcony, then locked the door behind me.

Three days, wrapped in nothing but a towel.

I called out and no one came.

By the time they let me back inside, I was starving.

I saw the day-old cake on the table and shoved a bite into my mouth.

Brett shot me an ice-cold look.

"Let's get divorced."

I lifted my red, swollen eyes to him.

"Because I ate one bite of cake?"

"Yes."

Brett was forcing me to sign the divorce papers in front of everyone.

And he wanted me to walk away with nothing.

Everyone in the room was outraged on my behalf.

"Brett, it was your own junior secretary who locked your wife out on the balcony."

"She was stuck out there three days. What's wrong with her eating one bite of cake?"

Brett's voice came out cold.

"If it isn't hers, she has no right to touch it."

"And anyway, wasn't this the exact trick she used to become Mrs. Sanchez in the first place?"

Everyone turned to look at me, some with pity, some with sympathy.

I lowered my head and dragged out a pale smile.

"Fine. I'll sign."

1

I reached for the pen.

But after three days without food, I was too weak to even hold it.

"Brett, before I sign, could you let me eat something first?"

I looked at that piece of cake.

I rubbed my hollow, growling stomach and swallowed.

"No."

Brett didn't even glance at me. He reached out, picked up the cake,

and dropped it into the trash without a second's hesitation.

The color drained from my face until I looked like a corpse.

The others couldn't stand it anymore.

"Brett, what could she possibly have done that's so unforgivable you have to humiliate her like this?"

"Exactly. She was locked out on that balcony for three days without a meal."

"It's one bite of cake. There's no need to torture her over it."

Brett looked around the room.

He spoke as if none of it touched him.

"She deserves it."

"I've said it before. I can't stand anyone around me having no sense of boundaries."

"She knew perfectly well the cake was Bianca's. Even if she was going to throw it out, no one else was allowed to touch it."

Bianca Fox was his junior secretary.

The root of countless fights between us.

And the person he sided with for no reason at all.

Even as he said this, he seemed to have forgotten.

That it was Bianca who'd pulled the prank, who'd dropped a dead rat in the tub and set me up to be locked out on the balcony.

I was left to starve for three days.

I called him seventy-two times.

Not one call went through.

And now he stood there like a bystander with nothing to do with any of it, saying these cruel, cold words.

"I can agree to the divorce."

I tugged at Brett's sleeve.

"Please, just not in front of all these people, okay?"

"At least let me go back and change my clothes."

I was so ashamed I wanted to disappear.

Since they'd let me off the balcony, I'd spent all three days wrapped in this same pink towel.

And Brett had brought this whole crowd here to watch.

He hadn't even given me time to change.

I could feel more than a few oily stares clinging to my body.

I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me.

All I asked was that he leave me one last shred of dignity.

What I got instead was a flat, unquestionable refusal.

"No."

"What if you run off?"

Brett looked at me with cold eyes.

"Yvonne Larson, I want you to sign these divorce papers in front of everyone."

"I want to tell every single one of them, this exact way."

"Bianca is not the mistress."

He flung my hand away, cold as ice.

I stumbled two steps back and nearly fell to the floor.

My face went even whiter, not a trace of color left.

And in that instant, I understood.

Brett was doing this to get back at me.