Aurora POV:
The penthouse lights came up on their sensors when I opened the door, throwing cold white light across forty feet of marble.
I kicked off my heels. The rug was thick and warm and the apartment still felt like an empty rink.
I walked past the portrait in the foyer without looking at it. Half a million dollars of custom oil paint, the two of us during his first Cup run, my hand on his arm and my face doing exactly what the publicist had told me to do with it.
In the study I pulled the hockey encyclopedia forward off the shelf, and a keypad lit up behind it. I punched in the sequence and the safe door clicked.
I ignored the velvet boxes. Diamonds, emeralds cut to match the team colors. I reached past all of it to the very back and pulled out a yellowed manila envelope.
Prenuptial and Fixed-Term Marriage Agreement. Duration: Seven Years.
I flipped to the last page and put my thumb on the signature at the bottom. Not Darrel's.
Baron Stark III. His father. The man who built the franchise, and the man who brokered this marriage two months before he died.
Darrel had signed the front page in a hotel lobby without reading a word of it, because his father told him to, and because he had never in his life believed that a piece of paper could cost him anything.
I copied it on the printer in the corner, stapled the pages, and set the stack in the exact center of his desk.
The keypad at the front door beeped. Heavy footsteps came across the marble.
Darrel came into the living room yanking his tie loose. The hospital's VIP candles were all over his suit, that cloying vanilla, cut with sterile alcohol.
He saw the light in the study and came in.
"You left your shift early," he said.
I pushed the stapled contract across the desk until it stopped at his fingertips.
He glanced at the cover page and rolled his eyes.
"Another trust fund amendment?" He laughed, put both hands on the desk, and leaned over me. "That performance in the ER was a negotiating tactic. You want more money."
I looked up at him.
"I want a divorce," I said. "The contract expires in three days."
He went still. Half a second, maybe less. Then he threw his head back and laughed at the ceiling.
"You're pathetic. This is getting old, Aurora."
He backhanded the stack off the desk. The pages went up and came down all over the rug like snow.
He never opened it. Seven years, and he has never once opened it.
"I don't have time for your games," he said, and turned to go.
Two steps, and her ringtone went off in his pocket. He had given her a custom one.
He picked up, and his voice dropped into something soft and sick.
"I'm here, baby. Does it hurt?"
I could hear her through the earpiece. Breathless. Frightened. "Darrel, the doctor said there might be a complication. I'm scared. Please come back."
His face went tight. He spun around, already moving.
And at the doorway he stopped and looked back.
Not at me. At the paper on the floor.
Half a second. His hand went to his cufflink and twisted it, once.
Then he grabbed his keys off the side table and was gone, and the front door slammed hard enough to echo off the ceiling.
I sat in the leather chair and listened to the sound die.
Then I got down on the rug and found the page I wanted. The signature page.
Baron Stark III, in fountain pen, in that old man's hard slanted hand.
I sat on the floor of my husband's study holding it, and I said a few flat words for a marriage that had never actually existed.
Then I pulled the burner out of the lining of my bag, powered it on, and dialed a number that does not appear in any directory in this country.
It connected on the first ring.
"Start," I said.
