Chapter 4 - The Diamond Cut
Grant looked around the room, realization finally crashing down on him like an avalanche. He looked at Harold, who refused to meet his eyes. He looked at Marcus Vance, who was already preparing legal notices for process servers. Then, finally, his gaze settled on me.
I hadn't moved. I hadn't raised my voice once. I sat in my emerald dress, sipping my ice water, calm as a winter morning.
"Claire," Grant choked out, his voice dropping an octave, slipping into the pleading, manipulative cadence he had used every time he apologized for missing an anniversary or forgetting a doctor's appointment. "Baby, please. Let's talk about this. Just you and me. We can fix this. I made a mistake. Madison meant nothing to me—she manipulated me! You heard her! She lied about being pregnant!"
"She didn't force you to take my Paris earrings from my jewelry box, Grant," I said softly, gesturing toward Madison’s ears.
Grant turned fiercely on Madison. "Take them off."
Madison sobbed, her mascara running down her cheeks in dark, ugly streaks. "Grant, please—"
"Take them off right now, you greedy little snake!" Grant snarled, stepping toward her with his hand outstretched.
"Don't touch her, Grant," I ordered, my voice dropping with absolute authority.
Grant stopped in his tracks, panting, looking back at me with wild, desperate eyes.
"Take them off and put them on the table, Madison," I instructed quietly. "They don't belong to you. And quite frankly, they look cheap on your ears."
With shaking, clumsy fingers, Madison unhooked the two-carat diamond drops. The metal clinked as she dropped them onto the white tablecloth next to the anniversary cake. The silver number ten stood between the candles, a mocking monument to a decade of betrayal.
"Ten years," I whispered, looking down at the sparkling stones. "Do you remember what you told me on our wedding day, Grant? You stood at the altar in Savannah, held my hands in front of four hundred people, and promised that no storm would ever touch our home because you would always be my shelter."
Grant’s eyes welled with tears. He fell to his knees beside my chair, grabbing the hem of my dress. "I meant it, Claire! I swear to God I meant it! I lost my way. The pressure of the company, the board, the expansion... I broke under the weight. But we have a baby coming. Our daughter! Think about our daughter, Claire. She needs her father. You can't raise her alone in the middle of a public scandal!"
I looked down at the man I had loved for ten years. For months, I had feared this exact moment. I had worried that seeing him beg would shatter my resolve, that the memory of who he used to be would make me crumble.
Instead, looking at him now, sprawled on the carpet of Bellamy’s private dining room, I felt nothing.
No hatred. No burning grief.
May you like
Just profound, absolute emptiness.
"She won't be raised in a scandal, Grant," I said, gently pulling my dress from his grip. "Because by tomorrow morning, you won't be a Holloway anymore."
