Jeremy's POV
The phone call felt like a punch to the gut.
"Mr. Gillian, the divorce has been finalized," Ahmed said, businesslike. There was a pause that stretched into something ugly. "You never responded to the court notices, so the judge granted it in absentia."
That couldn't be right. I sat down hard, the world tilting. "That's not possible," I barked. "I never signed any papers."
"Sir," Ahmed said slowly, "three notices were sent to your registered address. You were served. The court proceeded after no response."
My hands shook. Audrey really had filed. I'd been blind, arrogant, too proud to listen, and now I'd been outmaneuvered. Rage and a bitter, stupid regret rose together in my chest.
I called Jason and couldn't keep my voice steady. "Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you..."
"Sir, I tried," Jason said defensively. "Every time I brought it up, you cut me off. I told Adel to tell you; she said she would."
Of course. Adel again. The name tasted like ash.
"It's your fault you never knew," Jason added, trying to explain. "You always hated Audrey. You wanted Adel. I thought..."
I didn't want excuses. I wanted the years back. I wanted to undo every careless word, every cruel dismissal. Instead, I had a headline and a hollow victory.
Finding Adel wasn't hard. I tracked her, called favours, whispered into phones I rarely used anymore. The scandal swallowed her, tabloids, message boards, the kind of public shame that kills careers. I watched as her world collapsed, piece by piece.
She came to my apartment that evening, mascara streaked down her face, desperation raw in her voice. "Jer, you have to help me. My career is ruined. Please, help me."
I looked at her, at the woman I thought was everything to me once, and felt something cold and certain settle over me. "Be grateful it's just your career that is ruined, Adel," I said, my tone flat. "If I'd let the Andersons or Simon get their hands on you, you wouldn't have a life to beg about. Or worse, Audrey herself might have made sure you paid."
She flinched at the name. Good. She should feel it.
"You should've thought about that before you killed my baby," I told her. "You made your bed. Lie in it."
She sobbed, pleading for forgiveness or at least for my influence to salvage what she could. I watched her crumble and kept my voice steady. "You wanted my attention? You have it now. But don't expect me to rescue you just because you're desperate."
Adel stood in the middle of my living room like a dare I'd accepted and regretted. Her dress was gone; the room smelled of the same perfume I had gifted her and the last of her bravado. She was ruining herself the way she'd ruined someone else, with flash and theatrics and the hungry certainty of a woman who believed the world owed her a place.
My body reacted before my brain did. Something hot and stupid rose in my chest a remembered hunger, the echo of nights when things had been simpler and I'd taken what I wanted without consequences. For a split second, every rational thought pulled away and the city outside the windows fell into a distant blur.
But the memory of Audrey, the small hopeful sound she'd made when she thought I'd finally seen her, crashed through that heat like ice. The memory of a tiny, impossible heartbeat that had once been mine, then gone. That made the temptation sour and ugly.
Adel's eyes were wet now, pleading. "Jer, please—" she whispered, and the sound should've made me take her in my arms. Instead it made my hands clench.
A thousand ugly impulses lined up behind that instinct: shove her out; humiliate her in return; make her feel the public shame she'd meted out to another. Leak a video. Destroy her. Make her career disappear. The list was a litany of retribution, each idea a sharpened tool for vengeance.
For a heartbeat, my mind slid along the darkest rails. Which would wound her most? Which would hurt Audrey the most? The thought was obscene, measuring someone's suffering as if it were a ledger I could balance.
Then I saw the look Audrey had given me in the hospital, hollow, distant, no pity left for me. I felt the bottom drop out of me. If I chose cruelty, I would become the thing I hated: the man who used power to break people. I could not let grief make me monstrous.
So I stepped back.
"No," I said, my voice quieter than I would've liked. "Not that way."
Adel blinked, confusion and hunger warring across her face. I studied her, the way she tried to be broken and glamorous all at once. I felt nothing soft for her anymore. Only the cold, clear focus of a man who'd been humiliated and who wanted accountability, not childish revenge.