(Serena's POV)

My legs were still shaking when I pushed through the coffee shop door and stepped out onto the street.

I stopped on the sidewalk and pressed my back against the brick wall. Breathed in. Breathed out.

Julian Hastings.

For six years, I'd kept that name buried. Locked away in the part of myself I never looked at directly, the way you avoid a wound that's healed badly. The breakup had been brutal - not because he'd done anything wrong, but because I had. I'd handed him back everything he'd ever given me and told him it wasn't enough. I'd done it cleanly, deliberately, and I'd never let myself look back.

I hadn't expected to see him again. Not like this. Not sitting across from me in a coffee shop on an ordinary Tuesday, watching me with those cold eyes while I fell apart.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

I pulled it out. The name on the screen made my chest loosen, just slightly.

Clementine.

I answered immediately.

"Mommy." Her voice was bright and unhurried, the way only a five-year-old's voice can be. "When are you coming home?"

"Soon, baby." I steadied my voice. "I'm on my way right now."

"Chloe let me water the plants," she announced. "I didn't spill any."

"That's my girl." I flagged down a cab. "I'll be there in twenty minutes, okay? Stay with Chloe."

"Okay." A pause. "Mommy, can we have mac and cheese for dinner?"

"We'll see." I climbed into the cab and gave the driver Chloe's address. "Be good."

I hung up and let out a slow breath.

The shaking in my legs had stopped.

Chloe's penthouse was on the forty-second floor of a building in the financial district. I'd called her last night at two in the morning, barely coherent, with Clementine asleep against my shoulder and a bag I'd packed in under ten minutes. She'd had the elevator waiting for me before I even reached the lobby.

That was Chloe Carmichael. No questions, no conditions. Just the elevator, already waiting.

Arthur had vanished after he'd hit me. That was his pattern - destroy something, then disappear before anyone could hold him accountable. The police had been useless. Domestic dispute, ma'am. We can file a report. As if a report would stop him from coming back.

I wasn't going back to Sterling Estate. Not tonight. Not ever.

Chloe's door was unlocked. I pushed it open, and before I'd even set my bag down, a small body collided with my legs.

"Mommy!"

I crouched down and caught Clementine, pulling her in. She smelled like the lavender soap Chloe kept in her guest bathroom, and her hair was slightly damp, still curling at the ends.

"Hey," I murmured. "Hey, I've got you."

She pulled back to look at my face, and I instinctively angled my cheek away from her. The concealer had held reasonably well, but I didn't want her to look too closely.

I looked at her instead.

And then I went very still.

I don't know why I hadn't seen it before. People had been complimenting her looks since she was an infant - she's the image of you, Serena, she's got your eyes, your smile - and I'd believed them, because I'd needed to believe them. But today, with Julian's face still sharp in my memory, I looked at my daughter and felt the ground shift beneath me.

The line of her jaw. The particular set of her brows. The way her eyes caught the light - not warm brown like mine, but something darker, more direct.

She looked like Julian.

Not a little. Not vaguely. She looked like him the way a photograph looks like the person it's taken from.

How did I not see this?

"Mommy, you're squeezing too hard."

I loosened my grip immediately. "Sorry, sweetheart."

I kissed her forehead and stood up before she could read anything in my face.

Chloe emerged from the hallway bathroom, drying her hands on a towel, and raised an eyebrow at me. "There she is. How'd it go?"

"Give me a minute." I turned to Clementine and kept my voice light. "Hey, I brought your pop-up book. The one with the castles, remember? It's in my bag. Why don't you go find it and show Chloe later?"

Clementine's eyes went wide. She dove for my bag without another word.

I caught Chloe's eye and tilted my head toward the living room.

She followed me around the corner, and I pulled the pop-up book out of my bag first, walking it back to Clementine in the guest room. She was already cross-legged on the bed, completely absorbed in something on Chloe's tablet.

"Here." I set the book beside her. "Don't come out until you've gone through every single page."

"Every single one?"

"Every single one."

She grabbed it without looking up.

Chloe had arranged a small plate of macarons on the coffee table, pink and pale green, next to two cups of black tea. She was already sitting when I came back, legs tucked under her, watching me with the particular expression she reserved for situations she knew were serious.

I sat down across from her and picked up the tea.

"Victor Vance," I said. "He wasn't there."

"I know, I tried calling him this morning. It went straight to voicemail." Chloe leaned forward. "What happened?"

"His license was revoked. Ethical violations." I set the cup down. "Apparently it happened this morning."

"This morning." Chloe's eyes narrowed. "That's convenient timing."

"Someone else showed up instead."

She waited.

"Julian Hastings," I said.

The silence that followed lasted about three full seconds.

"I'm sorry," Chloe said. "Julian - your Julian?"

"He's not my anything."

"Serena." She sat up straight. "Julian Hastings walked into that coffee shop and sat down across from you?"

"He said the case had been reassigned to him."

"That makes absolutely no sense." Chloe reached for her iPad from the side table. "Hold on." She tapped at the screen for a moment, then turned it toward me. "This is him now."

It was a Forbes digital feature. The photo showed Julian at some kind of industry conference, standing at a podium, looking exactly like he had this afternoon - composed, immovable, like the room had arranged itself around him rather than the other way around.

Julian Hastings, Founder and CEO of Apex Global Group.

I stared at the headline.

"That's the one," Chloe said. "Top-tier corporate law and investment. Thirty-plus offices worldwide. Thousands of lawyers and analysts on payroll. Annual revenue in the billions." She paused. "Julian Hastings does not handle divorce cases, Serena. Julian Hastings has people who have people who handle divorce cases."

I looked at the photo for another moment, then set the iPad down.

"I know," I said.

"So why was he there?"

"He wanted to see me fall apart." I said it flatly. "That's all. He wanted to see what I'd become."

Chloe tilted her head. "Or he still has feelings for you."

"Chloe-"

"I'm serious. His time is worth millions. Literally. Why would he personally show up to a coffee shop meeting with his ex-girlfriend unless there was something pulling him there?"

"Because he hates me." I picked up a macaron and put it back down without eating it. "That's a feeling. It counts."

"There's a difference between showing up to watch someone suffer and showing up because you can't stay away."

"It doesn't matter which one it is." I shook my head. "I'm a married woman with a child, Chloe. I've been through two years of hell, and I look like it. He's a billionaire who could have anyone he wanted. Whatever this was today, it wasn't lingering feelings. It was closure, maybe. Or revenge. But not feelings."

Chloe was quiet for a moment.

Then she said, "Can I ask you something?"

I looked at her.

"Six years ago." She kept her voice careful, measured. "You were crazy about him. I remember, Serena. You used to audit law school lectures you had no business attending just to be in the same room as him. You fought for that relationship. And then one day you just - ended it. And three weeks later you were engaged to Arthur." She paused. "I never pushed you on it. But I've always wanted to know. What happened?"

I didn't answer right away.

The macaron plate sat between us, untouched. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city was starting to go gold in the late afternoon light.

There were things I'd never told Chloe. Things I'd never told anyone. The conversation my father had with me the week before I ended it with Julian. The numbers he'd laid out on the kitchen table - the debts, the creditors, the names of the men who were owed money and what they would do if they weren't paid. The name Arthur Sterling, offered like a solution.

He's the mayor's son, Serena. He's already agreed. The family needs this.

I'd told myself I was being practical. I'd told myself Julian would be fine, that he was brilliant and driven and he'd build something extraordinary without me dragging him into my family's disaster.

I hadn't been wrong about that last part.

But I'd been wrong about everything else.

"It doesn't matter now," I said. "It's done. It was six years ago."

Chloe looked at me for a long moment, reading my face the way she always did. Then she let it go.

"Okay," she said quietly. "Then what's next?"

I exhaled. Straightened my spine.

"I need a new lawyer," I said. "A good one. Someone Arthur's family can't touch." I met Chloe's eyes. "I don't care what it costs. I don't care how long it takes. I am getting out of this marriage, Chloe. Whatever it takes."