Divorcing the Disloyal Billionaire CEO

The key stuck halfway, the way it always did when the humidity crept above sixty. I jiggled it left, then right, and the deadbolt gave with a reluctant click.

Before I even pushed the door open, I heard her.

A laugh — high, loose, the kind that floated through walls. Not Eric's. His laugh was a low rumble that stayed in his chest. This one spilled out like champagne from a tipped glass, bubbly and careless and completely at home.

I stepped inside.

The shoe rack sat against the wall to my left, the same narrow wooden shelf Eric had complained about for three years because it didn't match the rest of the entryway. My eyes went to it the way they always did — muscle memory, the automatic scan of someone returning to a place that used to be theirs.

The bottom row was wrong.

My slippers were gone. Both pairs — the gray ones I wore on weekday mornings and the pink ones Eric had bought as a joke on our first anniversary, the ones with the ridiculous pom-poms that I'd ended up wearing every single night. In their place sat a pair of nude stilettos, size seven, the red sole scuffed at the heel. They were angled neatly toward the door, toes pointing out, as if their owner planned to leave in a hurry but wanted to look good doing it.

I stared at those heels for three full seconds. Then I closed the door behind me and walked toward the living room.

She was on the couch.

Vivien Cheney, legs tucked beneath her, wearing my ivory silk pajama set — the one with the scalloped lace trim I'd ordered from a boutique in Paris two Christmases ago. The top button was undone, the fabric pooling loosely around her collarbones. On her feet, crossed at the ankle and propped on the armrest, were my pink slippers. The pom-poms bobbed gently as she shifted her weight.

In her left hand, she held my mug. The ceramic one with the chipped handle, the one I'd made in a pottery class during a weekend I'd taken for myself when Eric canceled our trip to Vermont. She was drinking from it. Tea, from the look of the string dangling over the rim.

Her right hand dipped into a bowl of grapes on the coffee table. She tossed one into the air, caught it in her mouth, and chewed with her eyes half-closed, like she was savoring something far more expensive.

She saw me and didn't flinch.

"Oh." A grape paused halfway to her lips. "You're here."

I said nothing. My gaze moved from the slippers to the pajamas to the mug and back to the slippers. Each item registered like a line on an inventory sheet — stolen, stolen, stolen.

Vivien set the grape bowl down and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Eric said you wouldn't be back until next week. Something about the lease timeline—"

"Those are mine."

She blinked. "Sorry?"

"The pajamas. The mug. The slippers on your feet." I kept my voice flat. "All mine."

Vivien looked down at herself as if noticing for the first time. A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth — not apologetic, not embarrassed. Amused.

"Eric said I could borrow whatever I needed. I didn't bring much when I came over last night, and these were just sitting in the closet, so—"

"Last night."

The words landed between us. Vivien's smile didn't waver.

A door opened down the hallway. Footsteps. Eric appeared in the living room entrance wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt I didn't recognize, his hair still damp, a towel slung over one shoulder. He was mid-yawn when he saw me, and the yawn died on his face like a candle snuffed out.

His jaw tightened. His shoulders squared. The transformation took less than a second — from a man padding around his own apartment to a man preparing for a fight.

"What are you doing here?"

"I still have a key, Eric. My name is still on the mortgage."

"You listed the apartment for sale without telling me. You don't get to walk in here like nothing happened."

"I walked in here like someone who owns the place. Because I do."

He crossed his arms. The towel slipped off his shoulder and hit the floor. He didn't pick it up.

"You were supposed to be at the office today. Karen told me you had handover meetings through Friday."

"I finished early."

"You didn't finish. You quit." He pointed at me, his finger rigid. "You walked out in the middle of a critical project cycle, left the entire Orion team scrambling, and now you show up here — unannounced — while I'm trying to manage the fallout you created."

"The fallout I created."

"Yes. Yours. You think disappearing without a transition plan is professional? You think freezing my credit card in front of a client is something a rational person does?"

"Your card." I tilted my head. "Funny. The bank says it's my card."

His nostrils flared. Behind him, Vivien shifted on the couch, pulling her knees closer to her chest. My slippers disappeared beneath the hem of my pajama pants — my pajama pants — and she wrapped both hands around my mug like she was settling in for a show.

"Eric," she said softly. "Maybe we should all just calm down."

She stood. The silk caught the light as she moved, shimmering the way it used to when I wore it on Sunday mornings. She walked toward me with small, careful steps, the pink pom-poms brushing the hardwood with each stride.

"Hayley, I know this looks bad." Her voice was warm. Gentle. The voice of someone offering a hand to a child who'd scraped her knee. "I didn't mean to overstep. Eric and I have just been spending more time together, and things moved faster than either of us expected."

She reached out and touched my arm. Her fingers were cool against my skin.

I looked down at her hand. Then up at her face. Her eyes were wide, earnest, perfectly calibrated.

"You're wearing my clothes," I said. "In my apartment. Drinking from my cup. And you want me to believe you didn't mean to overstep."

Vivien withdrew her hand. The warmth drained from her expression, replaced by something thinner — a flicker of irritation she smoothed over almost instantly.

Eric stepped forward. He positioned himself slightly in front of Vivien, one hand resting on the back of the couch, his chin lifted. The posture of a man granting an audience.

"Since you're here," he said, "we need to discuss the living arrangements."

"Living arrangements."

"Vivien is going to be staying here for a while." He gestured toward the hallway, toward the guest room at the end of it — the room I'd used as a home office, the room where I'd spent late nights finishing reports he took credit for. "You can clear out the spare room by tonight. She needs the space."

I looked at him. Then at Vivien, who had clasped her hands in front of her waist, her head tilted at a sympathetic angle, her lips pressed together in a thin line of manufactured concern.

"Please, Hayley," Vivien murmured. "I don't want to cause any trouble. If it's too much, I can always find somewhere else—"

"No." Eric's voice cut through hers. "This is settled. Hayley, clear the room."

The apartment was quiet for a moment. The refrigerator hummed. Somewhere outside, a car horn blared and faded.

I looked at the pink slippers on Vivien's feet. The pom-poms had flattened on one side from wear — my wear, months of padding between the kitchen and the couch, the couch and the bedroom, the bedroom and the door.

I met Eric's eyes.

And smiled.