Chapter 22
Nicholas was looking out at the gray sky beyond the window.
For no reason he could name, his chest felt tight and restless.
“Katherine is generous,” he said distractedly. “She won’t.”
He forced a smile.
“When we go back, I’ll make it up to her.”
Just then, a servant rushed in, soaked with rain.
“Sir—”
Nicholas stood at once. “What is it? Is Katherine worse?”
The servant shook his head and handed him a sealed envelope.
“It’s from the courthouse.”
Nicholas’s heartbeat slammed once, hard.
He tore it open.
Inside was the official copy of the divorce decree.
His fingers began to shake.
Stamped in bright red.
Final.
Binding.
Attached as evidence was the old handwritten note he had scrawled in drunken bitterness years earlier.
If feelings are gone and hearts have parted, then let Katherine Calhoun return home.
The moment Nicholas saw the words, the color drained from his face.
“No,” he said.
The paper fluttered in his unsteady hand.
“No. This is fake. It has to be fake.”
The servant dropped to his knees.
“I already checked with the courthouse, sir. It’s real. Mrs. Padilla went herself this morning with the original letter you wrote.”
Nicholas’s mind detonated into white noise.
Fragments of that old night returned—the whiskey, the rage, the loneliness, the casual cruelty of writing words he thought would never matter.
He had assumed Katherine was asleep.
He had never known she was outside the door.
Never known she heard every word.
Never known she had kept that page for three years.
“Katherine…”
He shoved Samantha away when she reached for him.
He ran.