Chapter 5 - An Empty Wardrobe
Emma wasn't in the village.
When Damian roared back to the estate forty minutes later after finding the village market empty, he tore through the house like a hurricane.
He ran into her dressing room.
The drawers were open.
She hadn't taken the jewelry he bought her. The diamond necklaces, the emerald drop earrings, the Cartier bracelets—all of them sat untouched in their velvet-lined trays, gleaming in the grey light like cold monuments to a dead life.
She hadn't taken the designer coats or the shoes from Paris.
She had taken three cotton shirts, two pairs of jeans, a wool sweater her late mother had knit for her, and an old canvas duffel bag she had owned before she ever met Damian Romano.
She had left her house keys on the kitchen island.
Beside the keys was an envelope.
Damian walked toward the island slowly, his boots leaving wet, muddy tracks across the white Carrera marble. He picked up the envelope. His name wasn't on it.
Inside was a signed quitclaim deed for her share of the estate, and a single sheet of paper from a legal pad.
*Damian,*
*You don’t have to defend me to Olivia anymore. You don't have to carry the burden of an inconvenient wife who feels too much and contributes too little.*
*I am releasing you from the performance.*
*Please do not look for me. Not because you cannot find me—I know who you are, and I know the reach of your men—but because for the first time in five years, my chest does not hurt as much as it did when I was standing in your house.*
*Emma.*
Damian dropped to his knees.
The sheet of paper slipped from his fingers and floated to the cold marble floor.
*My chest does not hurt as much as it did when I was standing in your house.*
May you like
A sound tore out of his chest—a raw, broken howl that shocked the staff huddled in the hallway. Damian Romano, the undisputed king of the northern docks, the man who had buried rivals in unmarked graves and stared down federal indictments without blinking, pressed his forehead against the cold floor and wept until he couldn't breathe.
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