Chapter 2
The London tickets had been Gavin’s idea.
That was what made the humiliation feel surgical.
Three weeks earlier, he sat across from Maeve at their breakfast table, wearing the soft expression he used when he needed her to believe he was still capable of tenderness.
“Let’s go back to London,” he said.
Maeve looked up from her tea.
London had been where he proposed ten years earlier, before Apex Global, before investor calls at midnight, before Valerie Wolfe became “indispensable” to the company and somehow always close enough to Gavin to touch his sleeve.
Maeve wanted to ask why.
Instead, she smiled carefully.
“London?”
“We need it,” Gavin said. “You and me. No board. No press. No Valerie.”
The last name landed too easily.
As if he had practiced it.
Maeve had been quiet long enough for him to reach across the table.
“I know things have been strained.”
Strained.
That was the word men used when they had already broken something but wanted the woman to carry the weight of naming it.
Still, Maeve bought the tickets.
First class.
Two seats.
Valentine’s Day departure.
She also bought red roses because a part of her still remembered who Gavin had been before ambition made him cruel.
Or maybe that was what she told herself.
The truth was uglier.
Maeve was not coming to Apex that afternoon only as a wife.
She was coming because Cynthia had warned her.
Cynthia Marlow, Apex’s chief legal architect, had called the night before and said, “Maeve, you need to see the atrium celebration yourself.”
Maeve asked, “What celebration?”
Cynthia went quiet.
Then she said, “Bring whatever he gave you. Tickets. Messages. Anything personal. And do not sign anything he places in front of you today.”
Maeve barely slept.
Gavin texted her that morning.
Can’t wait for London. Come by at five. I have a Valentine surprise.
So Maeve came.
Roses in hand.
Tickets ready.
Suitcase packed.
Hope already wounded, but still breathing.
May you like
Then the elevator doors opened onto confetti, champagne, and her husband offering another woman a ring.
Read Chapter 3 👉 Because Maeve did not walk into the atrium unprepared—Cynthia had already warned her that Gavin’s Valentine surprise was hiding a corporate trap.
