“Enough.
You’d talk about her like that?” Nathaniel snapped out of whatever trance he’d been in and yanked irritably at his tie.
“Chloe.
Don’t try anything like this again, or you’re gone.
Immediately.”
He turned without another word and walked straight into the bathroom, stripped off the shirt now carrying her perfume, and dropped it in the trash without a second look.
Ivy never wore perfume.
What she carried instead was something faint and herbal, something that only deepened when she worked up, the kind of scent a man couldn’t shake once it got under his skin.
If she hadn’t already moved on to someone else, would she really be pulling away from him like this?
The thought that he’d almost tried to keep her tonight, that he was still replaying the sound she made underneath him, sent a fresh wave of fury through him.
He drove his fist into the wall.
Just tricks.
Just a woman who knows how to work a man over.
He could have any woman he wanted.
Plenty of them without a single manipulative bone in their bodies.
Ivy was a substitute who never even understood the game she was playing.
Chasing after someone like that was beneath him.
Chloe barely registered next to that.
Similar temperament to Wren’s, sure, but always reaching for the cheap tactic, the shortcut he’d never respected her much to begin with.
All he wanted was for Ivy to understand: the only thing he’d ever wanted from her was that face.
Wren’s face.
Nothing about losing her was going to cost him a single night’s sleep.
Ivy stumbled out of the Wolfe estate, disoriented, with nowhere obvious to go.
She’d taken Nathaniel at his word that he wouldn’t be back anytime soon, which meant she hadn’t bothered packing or arranging anywhere to stay.
She was still in thin loungewear, and the night air outside carried a real chill.
A gust of wind cut straight through her, and she shivered hard.
That’s when a familiar black sedan pulled up along the curb.
Her instinct was to run until she remembered Nathaniel was still back at the house.
There was no way he could have beaten her here.
“Mrs.
Wolfe.” Sure enough, Marcus stepped out of the car.
Taking in her shivering frame, the pale face, the disheveled hair, the swollen mouth, he grabbed a spare jacket from the trunk without hesitation.
“Please, put this on before you catch a chill.”
The cut and size were unmistakably Nathaniel’s.
Ivy shook her head anyway.
“Don’t call me that, Marcus.
Nathaniel and I already agreed on the divorce.
We’ll be strangers to each other soon enough.”
Marcus had no choice but to usher her into the car, crank the heat up, and try not to stare at the state she was in.
“Mrs.
Director Hart.
For what it’s worth, sir went to see Mr.
Barrow tonight specifically to help smooth things over for you…”
“I’m in this state because of him.” Ivy cut him off, voice flat.
“Keep defending him and I’ll be filing a police report next.”
Marcus stared at her, genuinely stunned.
He hadn’t imagined, even for a second, that Nathaniel would actually force himself on her.
The man had pride running through every inch of him.
Wren had broken his heart and walked away, and even then he’d never once bent that pride enough to chase after her.
Ivy had only ever been a stand-in the Sinclairs handed him to smooth over a scandal and tonight he’d thrown out every principle he’d ever claimed to have, just to have her anyway.
“Director Hart, let me get you settled somewhere for the night.” Marcus cleared his throat.
“You have work tomorrow.
It’s not safe for you to be out here alone like this.”
Ivy borrowed cash from his wallet and didn’t bother mentioning she’d pay it back.
She called a car to a hotel, checked in, and phoned the house to have the staff bring her clothes, phone, and wallet over first thing in the morning.
At least I won’t be late for work.
Picturing Nathaniel’s unraveling from earlier that night, and knowing Chloe would happily fill the space she’d left behind sliding into that same bed, playing the role Ivy no longer would, made something in her stomach turn violently.
She barely made it to the bathroom in time to be sick.
Once it passed, she didn’t let herself sit with it; she got straight into the shower and scrubbed herself raw, over and over.
Filthy.
All of it.
“Sorry, baby.” Once the shaking finally stopped, Ivy lay down and pressed a hand to her stomach, breaking into a cold sweat just replaying how close tonight had come to going wrong.
“I’ll keep you away from him from now on.
I promise.
One more month, and we’ll get your grandmother somewhere safe, somewhere far from all this.”
She’d put away a real amount of savings over the years.
She’d never touched the money Nathaniel tried to force on her, but her actual salary, the one she’d earned, was more than enough to get the three of them settled comfortably for a good while.
Her phone rang.
A private investigator she’d hired answered before she could speak.
“Sent you everything: communication logs, account activity, all of it.
Usual rate, transfer whenever.
I’ll check in again in the morning.”
She opened the file, scanned it once, and went cold.
“It couldn’t be him.”
By morning, the city outside had already come alive, traffic pouring endlessly down every street.
One black sedan sat parked across from the hotel entrance, unmoving, for longer than it should have.
“Sir, the staff already delivered Director Hart’s things.” Marcus studied Nathaniel’s unreadable expression, unable to make sense of whatever he actually felt toward Ivy.
“Would you like to give her a ride to the office?”
He offered his boss a graceful excuse to take it.
“She’s the one who brought the Barrow deal back single-handedly, after all.
Quite the accomplishment ah, there she is now.”
Nathaniel rolled the window down without a word, eyes locking onto the entrance.
A sleek sports car pulled up right beside Ivy, and the man stepping out of it was, predictably, Desmond dressed like he’d rolled straight out of a magazine.
Marcus stared at his boss in alarm.
“Desmond?
Has he had someone tailing her?”
He’s everywhere.
Constantly.
Even a man who prided himself on control had a breaking point, and this looked dangerously close to it.
“Whatever she does from here doesn’t concern me, as long as it doesn’t touch the company.” Instead of the reaction Marcus braced for, Nathaniel rolled the window back up, expression carefully blank, as if he hadn’t just watched her climb into Desmond’s car.
“The office.
Let’s go.”
He’d spent the whole night turning it over and finally landed somewhere solid.
However much Ivy tried to wear that face, tried to fill that space she was never going to be Wren.
Three years under the same roof had tricked him into mistaking familiarity for something else entirely.
That illusion needed to end here.
Wren was the only one who’d ever mattered.
No one measured up to her, and Ivy certainly wasn’t owed whatever leftover feeling he’d been carrying.
They aren’t the same person.
They were never the same person.
The car eased back into traffic, and no one behind them registered that it had ever stopped there at all.
Something made Ivy glance across the street on instinct.
Nothing there but a steady stream of cars, indistinguishable from one another.
As if a man that proud would show up here after last night, after everything he said.
I’m reading too much into the shadows.
She pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose, suddenly exhausted down to her bones.
Desmond, meanwhile, was already performing concern.
“Didn’t sleep well?
Did he actually throw you out?
Please don’t tell me he brought his girlfriend home and let her sleep in your bed, wear your clothes, even.”