CHAPTER 1: The Door He Thought He Owned

Mark planted one hand on the doorframe like a man posing in a house magazine, confident that the threshold behind him still belonged to him.
“I already changed the locks,” he said.
The words were meant to humiliate her.
Emily stood in the rain with wet hair plastered to her face, calm in the way people become calm after being hurt too many times in one night.
“You changed locks in a house that isn’t yours?” she asked.
Mark laughed once, low and irritated. “Everything in this marriage was mine.”
Ashley said nothing. Her silence was louder than shame. She kept glancing at Emily’s stomach, then at the suitcase, then back at Mark as if deciding when exactly this had begun to feel ugly.
Emily rested her palm over her belly. The baby moved, or maybe it was only the tremor of cold running through her body.
Inside the mansion, warm light spilled through the open front door, across the marble threshold, and down onto the wet steps where Emily stood.
It would have looked like an invitation if not for the man blocking the entrance.
Mark took one step forward and lowered his voice. “You should have left quietly.”
Emily met his eyes. “You should have remembered who paid for this place.”