Chapter 3 - The Empty Penthouse
When I walked into Halloway Global's corporate headquarters with my senior counsel beside me, front desk security didn't even recognize me at first.
The irony wasn't lost on me. Julian and I had kept our marriage completely out of corporate press for years, because he always insisted he needed to build his own reputation instead of being seen riding my family's name.
Bianca, meanwhile, had become a minor celebrity inside those very halls. A cluster of junior staffers stood around her desk asking about wedding dresses.
"We haven't set a date yet," she was saying, all fake modesty.
She spotted me and went rigid.
I walked straight past her toward Julian's corner office. Bianca tried to follow, but his executive assistant stepped in front of her.
"The meeting is private, Bianca."
"But I'm his—"
"Mr. Halloway explicitly said you're not to come in," the assistant said firmly, then added, almost patronizing: "The jeweler just delivered the ring he ordered. You can wait in the boardroom."
I walked into Julian's office without a backward glance.
He sat behind his enormous mahogany desk. The instant he recognized my attorney, his confident smile disappeared.
My attorney dropped the divorce settlement flat on his desk.
"What is this, Corinne?" Julian asked, voice tight.
"Exactly what it looks like."
He looked at me like I'd betrayed him personally. "Corinne, we swore to stay together. For life."
My attorney raised an eyebrow. "According to our records, Mr. Halloway, it was your own board of directors who recommended a quiet divorce to contain the reputational damage from your very public affair."
Julian looked away.
That's when I understood — he'd already spoken to his grandfather, the chairman. The family wanted to spin a clean, romantic narrative for shareholders: Julian had quietly ended an outdated marriage before pursuing a real relationship with Bianca. A much prettier lie.
"I don't actually want to divorce you, Corinne," Julian said, leaning forward the moment my attorney stepped out to take a call. "This is just for appearances."
I stayed silent, letting him keep talking.
Then he laid out his plan, and it was somehow even more delusional than I'd expected. We'd officially divorce. He'd publicly marry Bianca. We'd wait a year. Then he'd quietly divorce Bianca, sign an NDA, and come back to me.
"Even if I have to stand at an altar with her," he said, taking both my hands, "you'll always be my real wife."
A laugh threatened to escape me. I swallowed it and lowered my eyes instead, playing along.
"I agree," I whispered.
He froze, stunned. "Really?"
I nodded softly.
He pulled me into a hug tight enough to lift me slightly off the ground. "I knew you still loved me."
"I have one condition," I said against his shoulder.
"Anything."
"I want the liquid capital under your personal name that corresponds to our marital asset split. Finalized now, before any public wedding happens."
He frowned slightly.
I let my eyes glisten on cue. "I'm just so afraid you'll actually fall in love with her, Julian, and I'll be left with nothing at all."
His face melted into condescending pity. He reached up, brushed my cheek. "You foolish girl. Bianca could never mean to me what you mean to me."
He signed on the spot.
He had no idea I wasn't buying security.
I was buying my freedom, in full.
Over the next three weeks, my legal and forensic teams audited every account, investment, and property he held. I didn't try to strip him of anything that wasn't legally mine — I didn't need to. My family had substantial wealth long before Julian, and we'd keep it long after him. What mattered was severing every financial tie between us before the corporate disaster I already suspected was coming finally caught up to him.
The day our divorce was formally entered into the court record, Julian made one last request.
"Bianca wants the penthouse," he said smoothly. "Says she fell in love with it the morning she came for breakfast."
I looked at him for several long seconds. "Fine by me."
Relief washed over his face. He'd clearly braced for a fight.
That very afternoon, I hired a professional moving crew.
Every piece of furniture I'd bought. My private art collection. My books. My grandmother's antique silverware. The designer light fixtures. My plants. My personal things. The espresso machine.
When Julian walked into the penthouse that evening, he stepped into an echoing, hollow shell of a home.
"What happened in here?" he demanded.
Rosa, our housekeeper — who'd worked for my family long before I ever married him — looked at him flatly. "Mrs. Halloway took her belongings."
Julian looked around the empty rooms and offered a faint, arrogant smirk. "She's just throwing a dramatic tantrum."
Rosa looked at him with an expression I'll never forget. She untied her apron slowly and set it on the bare counter.
"And I'm leaving too, Mr. Halloway."
"Why?" he asked, genuinely baffled.
"Because I work for Corinne Ashford. Not for this apartment."
He looked confused for a moment, then shrugged it off entirely. "Just make sure she's safe out there."
He genuinely believed I was throwing a tantrum. He genuinely believed he'd come looking for me a year later and I'd still be waiting, his dutiful wife. He never understood that some women grieve a love in complete silence, long before they ever walk out the door for good.
I moved back to my parents' house in Rye.
My mother opened the front doors herself. She didn't say I told you so. She didn't ask why it took three years for me to see the truth. She just wrapped her arms around me. My father stood behind her in the foyer, quiet.
For years Julian had claimed my family looked down on him for his modest origins. There was a grain of truth in that. My father had been harsh when Julian first asked for my hand — told me plainly he'd never approve of a man who seemed far more interested in leveraging our name for corporate influence than in building a genuine marriage.
Back then I thought my father was being elitist. I argued with my family over it. I moved out.
Afterward, I'd used my own network to help Julian land high-level contacts, institutional backing, and investment opportunities no executive his age could have gotten on his own.
Julian always claimed he'd built his rise entirely by himself. I never once corrected him.
Now I finally understood what my father had seen from the start. It was never about which branch of which family Julian came from. It was that he was driven by an unquenchable need to prove himself superior — to his colleagues, to my family, to me.
When he landed the international expansion three years ago, he treated it like the ultimate validation of everything he'd worked for.
I'd offered to move out west with him. He'd refused.
Months later I flew out to surprise him at his hotel, unannounced. I never made it past the airport. One of his junior aides met me at arrivals, claimed Julian was out of state on urgent business, and suggested I take the next flight home.
Years later I learned the truth. Bianca had already been living in that hotel suite.
Julian had his own version of events, of course. According to him, it all started the night he got sick. Bianca stayed to take care of him. He felt vulnerable. She was there. Something happened, and he decided he had a "responsibility" toward her.
Responsibility. His favorite word for dressing up choices he'd wanted to make all along.
Out of responsibility, he funded her brother's business. Out of responsibility, he bought her parents a house. Out of responsibility, he took her to every high-profile dinner in town. Out of responsibility, he slept with her for three straight years.
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And when he came home to Manhattan, he'd planned to slowly phase her out — until he found out I'd reconciled with my parents. Then he decided to punish me instead. The affair became his way of proving he could discard me too.
His fatal mistake was assuming I'd just sit and wait for him to come back.
