The Papers

Chapter 4: The Papers

The papers arrived on a Thursday morning.

Damian Moretti was seated at the long table in his private boardroom, surrounded by his legal team and two of his lieutenants. The sunlight cut through the tinted windows, casting hard shadows across the marble. Coffee steamed untouched beside him. His phone buzzed with messages he ignored.

He was reviewing a shipment deal from Naples when Alessio, his attorney of fifteen years, entered—pale, sweating, holding a single envelope with a crisp white seal.

He didn’t speak.

He simply placed the envelope in front of Damian and stepped back like a man presenting a grenade.

Damian paused.

He saw the seal.

Recognized the name of the law firm in the corner.

Marco Santini.

His jaw flexed. No emotion. Just calculation.

Slowly, he opened the envelope.

Unfolded the papers.

Read the words.

Petition for Dissolution of Marriage.

Filed by Rose Valenti Moretti.

A muscle ticked in his cheek. Silence fell like a blade in the room.

“Everyone out,” he said, voice low and even.

“But—” Alessio began.

Damian didn’t repeat himself.

Within seconds, the room cleared.

He sat alone, staring at the document. His eyes scanned the reasons listed:

Emotional abandonment

Infidelity

Psychological distress

Irreconcilable differences

All true.

All irrelevant.

He leaned back in his chair and slowly ran a hand through his hair. He wasn’t angry—not in the way people expected. Damian didn’t shout. He didn’t throw things. His fury was quieter than fire. It burned under the skin, cold and methodical.

She’d really done it.

Six years of silence, and now she thought she could walk away.

His Rose.

The girl with fire behind her eyes and a steel spine she had finally found again.

She was reminding him who she had been before he’d buried her beneath his name.

And he had to admit…

It stirred something in him.

Not rage.

Not possessiveness.

Obsession.

He picked up his phone and dialed.

The line rang twice before a familiar voice answered.

“Elena speaking.”

“Cancel tonight,” he said flatly.

A pause. “Cancel—what do you mean? I thought—”

“I said cancel.”

Click.

He hung up.

By nightfall, Damian was already moving.

Rose might think the law was on her side.

But she had forgotten something crucial—he didn’t follow rules.

He rewrote them.

Back at the estate, Rose was reading in the library when the door creaked open.

She turned—and there he was, leaning against the frame like a shadow come to life.

“I got your letter,” he said simply.

She rose to her feet slowly, placing her book down with steady hands.

“Good. Now it’s real.”

He walked in. Unhurried. Calm.

Too calm.

“Did you think I wouldn’t fight you?” he asked, watching her like a hawk.

“I hoped you wouldn’t care enough to.”

Something flickered behind his eyes.

He stepped closer, his voice a low warning. “You really think you can undo what we have with a few signatures?”

“I don’t want to undo it,” she said. “I want to survive it.”

Damian’s mouth curved into something dark. “You’re not leaving me, Rose.”

“Yes, I am.”

“I’ll drag this through every court in the country. You’ll never breathe free air again.”

Her hands curled into fists, but her voice was steady. “That’s the difference between us. You think this is about control. But I don’t need freedom to hurt you, Damian.”

He took a slow breath.

“You’re making a mistake.”

She smiled—a quiet, tragic smile that came from someplace deep.

“I made my mistake six years ago when I said ‘I do.’”

He watched her walk past him, spine straight, chin high.

For the first time in his life, Damian Moretti felt something foreign in his chest.

It wasn’t defeat.

It was the unfamiliar sting of something he thought himself immune to.

Loss.

End of Chapter 4

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