Divorcing Adrian Sterling

Chapter 1

You had spent five years caring for Adrian Sterling’s cat with more patience than anyone could have asked of you. Yet the moment you opened the door tonight, Midnight still sank its teeth into your wrist without warning.

Blood welled in bright beads against your skin.

Sitting in the back of a cab on the way to the hospital, you suddenly understood.

Some cats were born impossible to tame. Just like some people. No matter how much of your heart you handed over, you could never warm the cold buried in their bones.

So when you returned to the empty villa, you placed the divorce papers in front of Adrian Sterling.

Your voice was calm. So calm it carried no ripple of emotion at all.

He frowned. His fingers were still absently stroking Midnight’s tail as he looked up at you, baffled. “Because Midnight bit you?”

“Yes.” You lifted your eyes, your gaze sliding over the cat nestled obediently in his arms, rubbing against him as if it had never bared its teeth at anyone. There was no longing left in you. “Because of that.”

“You’ve thought this through?” Adrian’s voice held a faint, almost imperceptible edge of scrutiny. “In one month, it will be our fifth wedding anniversary.”

Strange, really.

In five years of marriage, Adrian had barely come home. The number of times he had seen Midnight could be counted on one hand. You were the one who fed it every day, cleaned its litter box, brushed its fur, changed its bed when the seasons turned, and took it to the vet whenever it got sick.

And yet Midnight only ever clung to Adrian.

With you, it was always wary, distant, ready to unsheathe its claws the moment you came too close, as if you were its sworn enemy.

You withdrew your gaze and pushed the divorce papers a little closer to him. “I have. I’m walking away with nothing. Sign them, and we’ll file everything tomorrow.”

Adrian glanced at the signature line. His brow tightened. “Chloe Bennett, you’re giving up on five years of marriage because Midnight bit you once?”

As if it understood its own name, Midnight tipped its head back and let out a soft, sweet meow at Adrian. It was nothing like the vicious animal that had bitten you moments earlier.

“Yes.” You nodded, your tone unchanged. “Because of Midnight.”

And it was true.

That bite had been the thing that finally woke you from your own stubborn delusion.

Yesterday had been the opening day for your new project. In front of the entire film crew, Director Carter had told you, “You’ve been replaced.”

Chapter 2

The actress taking your role was the same woman whose name had been tied to Adrian’s all over the trending searches lately.

And Sterling Group was the largest investor in the production.

You had gripped your phone so hard your knuckles went white. When you called Adrian, your voice was shaking. “Was it your decision to have me replaced?”

On the other end, his tone had been flat. Almost impatient.

“Yes.”

“The Sterling family doesn’t need you going out to earn money,” he said, each word cold as ice. “Stay home and take care of Midnight.”

One careless sentence crushed all the nights you had stayed up preparing for that role, all the scenes you had rehearsed, all the other offers you had turned down.

Nathan Brooks, following Adrian’s instructions, had forced you back to the villa. As you bent in the entryway to change your shoes, Midnight suddenly shot out from behind the sofa and bit down hard on your arm.

Looking at the bleeding wound, something in you broke.

The cat you had raised for five years had always treated you like an enemy.

The man you had been married to for five years had always treated you like you were invisible.

Adrian had never been willing to make your marriage public. To everyone else, he was the unmarried heir to Sterling Group: polished, elegant, and impossibly wealthy.

You were a forgotten actress no one could quite place, ordinary in talent and ignored by the industry.

The only time the two of you had ever appeared in the same frame, paparazzi had caught you leaving a restaurant one after the other late at night. Adrian’s rumored girlfriend at the time had labeled you the other woman, and the internet had torn you apart for half a month.

During those days, you were cursed so viciously you didn’t dare leave the house. Your private messages were filled with malice and threats.

Adrian had only told you, mildly, “Online harassment happens to entertainers all the time. If you can’t handle it, leave show business.”

You were done living in the dark.

You were done being an unpaid caretaker for a cat that would never love you back.

And more than anything, you were done wasting yourself on Adrian Sterling.

You had no children, and there were no assets to divide. The divorce was as simple as the marriage had been.

Chapter 3

Back then, you had gone together to collect a certificate, then eaten one meal with his parents. Adrian Sterling’s only condition for marrying you had been that it remain secret. So there had been no wedding, no bridal photos, no ceremony of any kind. You had not even told your friends.

When the paperwork was finished and you stepped out of the courthouse, Adrian gestured toward his car.

“Grandma wants to see you.”

For a moment, the world blurred around you.

It felt as if time had folded back nine years.

Your family had just gone bankrupt then. Your parents had died in a sudden car accident. Relatives avoided you like a disease, terrified you might cling to them for help. You had stood alone on the street with nowhere to go.

Then Adrian had appeared as if descending from another world.

He had been wearing a crisp white shirt, spotless against the dust and exhaust of the street. He stopped in front of you, reached out, and took your filthy hand in his.

“Come home with me,” he said. “Grandma wants to see you.”

When a person was desperate, even the smallest warmth offered out of pity could expand until it filled the whole heart.

So many years later, even after Adrian had hurt you again and again, even after he had made you miserable, you still remembered the warmth of his palm that day. You still remembered the way he had said, Come home with me.

Margaret Sterling had taken pity on you. She brought you into the Sterling Estate, paid for your schooling, and treated you like her own granddaughter.

Until you and Adrian came of age, and she suddenly brought up the old childhood betrothal between your families.

“The engagement was arranged when you were both very young,” she said. “But I still want to ask you first. Chloe, are you willing to marry Adrian?”

Your face had gone hot all at once.

Of course you had known about the engagement. Before the Bennetts fell apart, back when you were still young enough to dream without shame, you had imagined marrying Adrian Sterling more times than you could count.

He had been the golden heir. Brilliant, untouchable, everything you had admired when you were young.

But later, you had stopped daring to dream like that.

Your family had collapsed. You were living under someone else’s roof. Adrian, meanwhile, was still Adrian Sterling, heir to the Sterling Group, standing in a light you could never reach.

You still liked him. More than before, even.

But you also knew very clearly that an impossible distance had opened between you.

“Maybe you should ask Adrian first,” you said softly.

You knew Adrian had someone he loved. Serena Hart, the first love he had placed on a pedestal. So this engagement had been doomed to be canceled.

But you had never expected Adrian to agree.