I Died Divorcing Him. Then I Woke Up Married Again. Chapter 04

I Died Divorcing Him. Then I Woke Up Married Again. Chapter 04

I opened it in my bathroom with the door locked and the shower running like a woman in a spy movie.

One page. His handwriting Dated eleven days ago.

Ava – if you’re reading this, I’m dead, and you need to know three things.

I have never been unfaithful to you. Not once, not in thought.
The tabloid photographs were purchased. I traced the payments to a shell company. I know who owns
You are being poisoned. Thallium, in trace doses. I had your hairbrush tested on March 3rd. The lab result is in the Wexler & Coyne safe deposit, box 41, in your name.
I haven’t told you because the moment he knows I know, he’ll accelerate, and I can’t protect you from

something that fast. Ten more days and I’ll have enough to bury him.

If I’m dead, he moved first. Take the box. Take the shares. Run to Zurich.

I’m sorry I was never brave enough to tell you the rest.

– R.

I sat down on the edge of the tub in a cloud of steam and cried so hard I made no sound at all.

He knew. Eleven days before the timeline I remembered, my glacier of a husband had already found the poison, hired a lab, traced the smear campaign, and written his own obituary-and still slept forty feet away

without asking me for a single thing.

And then Julian had moved first. Of course he had. In my old life, Roman never got his ten days.

Ten more days. I did the math with wet, ruined mascara. In that life, I died on day thirty. Which meant Julian struck fast-and it meant that somewhere in this house, right now, there was a version of my

husband walking around with a countdown in his chest, being polite to me at dinner.

Not this time.

Dinner was at eight. I came down at 7:55.

Roman stood when I entered he always stood, six years, every time, and I’d read it as formality instead of what it was. The table was set for two at opposite ends, a football field of mahogany between us. Another thing I’d never questioned.

I picked up my plate, walked the entire length of the table, and set it down next to his.

He went very still.

“The seating chart’s changed,” I said.

“…Evidently.”

I sat. Our elbows were maybe six inches apart. He was staring straight ahead at the wall like a soldier at inspection, and a muscle ticked in his jaw.

“Roman. Can I ask you something and can you not lie?”

“I don’t lie to you.”

“Why do we live like this?”

The silverware in his hand stopped. When he answered, his voice was so carefully neutral it made my

chest hurt.

“Because you asked me to.”

“When?”

“Before the wedding.” He set the fork down. “Clause nineteen of our prenuptial agreement. Your family’s counsel added it three days before the ceremony. The parties agree that the marriage shall remain without physical intimacy or shared residence in the marital sense, at the bride’s express request, in perpetuity.” He recited it like scripture. Like he’d read it a thousand nights. “I signed it. I’d have signed anything to marry you, Ava, even that.”

The room tilted.

“Say that again,” I whispered.

“I’d have signed anything-”

“No. The clause. At the bride’s express request.”

“Yes.”

I heard my own heartbeat in my ears.

“Roman.” I turned to face him fully, and I must have looked insane, because his hand finally, finally came up and touched my wrist. “I never requested that. I have never seen clause nineteen in my life. I signed a forty-page prenup in the middle of my mother’s engagement party with a hangover, because your family’s counsel handled the final consolidation.”

His face drained of color.

Because we both knew who Vale family counsel was.

We said it in the same breath, like a curse.

“Julian.”