My Alpha Ex Husband Regrets

Deliah Hines sat alone at the long marble dining table in their Manhattan penthouse. The silence in the room was heavy, pressing against her eardrums like deep water. She stared at the plate in front of her. The truffle risotto, Jere's absolute favorite, had gone cold hours ago. The creamy texture had congealed into a stiff, unappetizing lump, much like the feeling currently settling in the pit of her stomach.

She checked the time on her phone for the fiftieth time. 11:45 PM.

The candles she had lit three hours ago were now just pools of wax, the wicks drowning in their own melt. It was quiet. Too quiet. The kind of silence that usually preceded a storm, or a funeral.

Deliah unlocked her phone again, the blue light harsh against her tired eyes. She opened Instagram, her thumb moving automatically, scrolling mindlessly to distract herself from the emptiness of the apartment. She didn't even know what she was looking for until she found it.

An anonymous account she had suspected before-one with no profile picture and a generic handle-had posted a new Story just four minutes ago.

Deliah's breath hitched. She tapped the circle.

The image filled her screen. It was low-light, intimate, taken at a table in a high-end restaurant. There was a single slice of cake with a candle, the flame blurring slightly in the capture. But it wasn't the cake that made Deliah's heart stop. It was the hand resting on the white tablecloth in the corner of the frame.

The caption was simple text overlaid in white: Finally back where we belong. Happy Birthday to me.

Deliah zoomed in on the hand. The skin was tanned, the fingers long and strong. On the wrist sat a Patek Philippe watch with a distinctive navy dial. She knew that watch. She had spent six months tracking it down for Jere as a wedding gift. And just below the thumb, there was a faint, jagged white scar-the result of a sailing accident when he was twenty.

It was undeniably Jere Bolton.

The realization hit her with the force of a physical blow. Today wasn't just a late night at the office. Today wasn't a board meeting that ran over. Today was Irina Collins' birthday.

Her phone buzzed in her hand, startling her. A text message from Jere appeared at the top of the screen.