The anniversary cake was still on the table when my husband threw the divorce papers at my face.
"Sign it, Amara."
Ethan King stood in front of me in his perfect black suit, his voice as cold as the winter rain hitting the windows of our mansion in Bel-Air. One year ago, this same man had put a contract on this same table and said, "Marry me for one year and I will save your mother."
My mother was alive today because of that contract. She was recovering in Cleveland, in a private suite at the Cleveland Clinic that cost twenty thousand dollars a month. A price I could never have paid working as a waitress in a small diner in Millbrook.
I had signed that contract with shaking hands. One year. Be his wife on paper. Attend his business dinners. Smile when his mother insulted my cheap dresses. Sleep in a separate bedroom. And after one year, we would divorce quietly and he would give me five hundred thousand dollars as compensation.
It was supposed to be simple. Business. No love.
Why was it so painful then, when he said the word divorce?
"Ethan, today is our anniversary," I whispered, my fingers holding the heavy cream envelope he had thrown. The cake I had baked myself, vanilla and strawberry, his favorite, was still untouched. I had written "Happy Anniversary Husband" in shaky red icing.
He didn't even look at the cake.
"Our contract ended yesterday. I am being generous by giving you an extra day," he said, checking his Rolex. He always checked his Rolex when he was bored with me. "My lawyer is downstairs. Sign it and you will get your five hundred thousand. You can go back to Millbrook."
He made it sound like a gift. Five hundred thousand to go back to where I came from. To be nothing again.
I opened the envelope. The paper inside was thick, expensive. DIVORCE AGREEMENT. My eyes blurred.
"Is it because of your mother?" I asked. His mother, Mrs. Margaret King, had never liked me. She called me a gold digger from the Midwest. Last week at a charity gala, she had introduced me as "Ethan's temporary arrangement."
"No," Ethan said flatly.
"Then why? I did everything you asked. I never embarrassed you. I never asked for more money."
He finally looked at me. His eyes were that deep brown that used to make my heart beat fast. Today they were empty.
"Vanessa is pregnant," he said.
The world stopped.
Vanessa. Vanessa Monroe. His ex-girlfriend from Stanford. The daughter of a Senator. The woman his mother always wanted him to marry. The woman who looked like a model and spoke with a soft British accent because she studied in London.
"Vanessa is three months pregnant," Ethan continued, as if he was reading a business report. "My mother took us to Dr. Anderson last week. You remember Dr. Anderson?"
I remembered. Dr. Anderson was the family doctor who had done my medical checkup when I married Ethan. He had been kind, but his report was cruel. Low AMH. Very low chance of natural conception. In simple words, his mother translated it for everyone at dinner: "Barren. She is barren. She can never give the King family an heir."
I was twenty-four and barren.
"Vanessa can give me what you cannot," Ethan said. "An heir. A real wife who fits in my world. Not a contract."
My hand went to my stomach unconsciously. A flat stomach. An empty stomach. A useless stomach.
So this was it. I was being replaced because my womb was broken.
"You promised me one year," I said, my voice cracking. "We still had two weeks left according to the contract."
"I am changing the contract. I am the King. I can," he said arrogantly. This was the Ethan King that Forbes wrote about. Ruthless. Cold. A billionaire at thirty-one who destroyed competitors without blinking.
He walked to the door. "Sign it, Amara. Don't make this ugly. You were paid to be a wife, and you failed at the one job a wife is supposed to do."
Failed.
The word hit me like a slap.
I picked up the expensive gold pen he had left on the divorce paper. My hand was shaking so much I could barely write my name. Amara Carter. The girl from Millbrook who thought she could be a billionaire's wife, even for a year.
I signed.
The ink bled on the paper because my tears fell on it.
Ethan didn't see my tears. He had already left the room, talking on his phone to Vanessa, his voice suddenly soft and warm, a voice he had never used with me.
"Ethan!" I called after him, running out of the dining room with the signed paper.